Biden to visit Maine for first time as president, tout manufacturing gains

[July 28, 2023]  By Jarrett Renshaw
 
(Reuters) - President Joe Biden will visit Maine on Friday in his first trip to the state since winning the White House to lay out the economic case for a second term and underscore domestic manufacturing.

U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks to the Truman Civil Rights Symposium on the 75th anniversary of the racial desegregation of the U.S. military, at the National Archives Museum in Washington, U.S. July 27, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Biden will visit and make remarks at Auburn Manufacturing Inc, a company that produces heat- and fire-resistant fabrics primarily with domestic-made materials. Biden will also issue an executive order that will boost incentives to manufacture new publicly funded inventions domestically.

"He'll discuss how Bidenomics is revitalizing American manufacturing and bringing investments,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “Big investments, investments that many cities haven’t seen before, as it relates to jobs, as it relates to making sure we are making things in America again.”

The town of 24,000 is located in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which gives it a special importance in U.S. presidential politics. While Maine is largely Democratic, the 2nd District is not. It’s more conservative, rural and working class than the state's only other congressional district.

Republican former President Donald Trump won the district twice, and it was the only district in New England that backed Trump in 2020.

Maine is one of just two states - the other is Nebraska - that award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, in addition to the two electoral votes that go to the winner of the statewide popular vote.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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