The dire warning implicit in President Joe Biden’s more than $2 trillion American Jobs Plan — which promises to rebuild American infrastructure, create union jobs, and jump-start manufacturing — is that if it fails to become law, China will outcompete the United States for decades to come.

Biden has been saying that China is “eating our lunch” for months, promising his plan would “put us in a position to win the global competition with China in the upcoming years.”

“This is not part of my speech,” he said during April 7 remarks to sell his plan, “but I promise you, you’re all going to be reporting over the next six to eight months how China and the rest of the world is racing ahead of us in the investments they have in the future, attempting to own the future.”

Mentioning China so often when talking about a domestic infrastructure plan might seem odd. But it makes sense if you realize that Biden’s signature domestic economic policy plan is also a critical element of a broader foreign policy strategy to thwart China’s growing power and global influence.

“When [Biden’s] thinking about the infrastructure investments necessary, a lot of it is in contraposition to what he is seeing China doing in terms of strategic investments,” National Economic Council director Brian Deese recently told the New York Times’s Ezra Klein.