Biden introduces commerce and labor secretary nominees

President-elect Joe Biden on Friday introduced key nominees for his economic and jobs team, including Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo for commerce secretary and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh for labor secretary.

The two picks mark the completion of Biden’s announcements for his Cabinet secretary nominees, and come less than two weeks from the President-elect’s inauguration.

Biden touted the diversity and historic firsts in his Cabinet, and said he had fulfilled his promise of having his Cabinet look like America.

“This will be the first Cabinet ever that is evenly composed with as many women as men in the Cabinet. This will be the first Cabinet ever with the majority of people of color occupying this Cabinet,” the President-elect said. He noted his nominees would, if confirmed, include the first female treasury secretary, the first African American defense secretary and the first Native American Cabinet secretary.

Biden spoke of the challenges his administration will face when he takes office in the middle of a pandemic and economic downturn, when so many Americans have lost their jobs and are struggling financially.

Biden said his administration would prioritize distributing emergency economic aid to “small businesses on Main Street that aren’t wealthy and well connected, that are facing real economic hardships through no fault of their own.” He said he would focus on supporting Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and women-owned small businesses.

The President-elect stressed that Americans and small businesses struggling amid the pandemic need immediate and direct economic relief, including $2,000 stimulus checks.

“$600 is simply not enough, when you have to choose between paying rent, putting food on the table, keeping the lights on,” Biden said of the stimulus checks that were recently approved by Congress.

He sympathized with Americans across the country who have lost their jobs and are now forced to line up at food banks to feed their families. He pointed out that the gap between White unemployment and Black and Latino unemployment “remains much too large.”

In the wake of the two Democratic US Senate wins in Georgia, the President-elect said he hoped that having Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate will increase the changes of raising the minimum wage.

Biden on Friday also announced Isabel Guzman, the director of California’s Office of the Small Business Advocate, to lead the Small Business Administration and Don Graves, who was the executive director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness at the Obama White House, as his nominee for deputy secretary of commerce.

Raimondo is the first woman governor of Rhode Island, and has served in the role since her election in 2014. She was among the women considered to serve as Biden’s vice president, and has been praised for her leadership amid the coronavirus pandemic. Raimondo was also considered for Biden’s health and human services secretary, but The New York Times reported last month that labor unions helped block Raimondo from becoming his pick to lead HHS because of her record on pension changes.

Walsh is a veteran union operative and rose to lead Boston’s Building and Construction Trades Council, a group that represents ironworker and electrician unions, among others. Walsh has been serving as Boston’s mayor since 2013, and was a rumored potential Labor pick in 2016 if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency. Walsh’s selection is a victory for AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who rallied his federation of 56 unions to back the Boston mayor soon after Biden won the election.

Guzman is the director of California’s Office of the Small Business Advocate, a government office that works to support and grow small businesses in America’s most populous state. Prior to taking over the state office, Guzman was the deputy chief of staff and senior adviser at the US Small Business Administration, the office she will now lead.

Graves served in the Obama White House as the executive director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and as the deputy assistant secretary for small business, community development and housing policy at the US Department of Treasury. Graves was previously a partner with Graves, Horton, Askew & Johns, LLC. He was the former director of public policy for the business roundtable and was previously a policy adviser for the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Domestic Finance.

The announcements come days after pro-Trump supporters stormed and breached the US Capitol. Five people are dead, including a US Capitol Police officer, after President Donald Trump urged his supporters to fight against the ceremonial counting of the electoral votes in Congress, repeating lies about the election being stolen from him and promising to join them.

Biden on Thursday slammed the police for their different treatment of the pro-Trump mob and Black Lives Matter protesters during demonstrations last year. The day prior, he said the rioting at the US Capitol amounted to an “unprecedented assault” on US democracy, and called for Trump to immediately go on national television and “demand an end to this siege.”