“Bidenomics” is supposed to stop Trump
Biden is already putting everything on one card
By Roland Peters
6/29/2023 3:13 am
US economic data is looking good. During a keynote address in Chicago, President Biden appears confident. The Democrat wants to be elected for a second term in 2024 and is aggressively promoting his “bidenomics”. That can still be dangerous for him.
A multi-page one has been circulating for several days PDF in the US media. In it, two White House employees explain with text, numbers and infographics why President Joe Biden is said to have been the best president ever for the economy: because of the success of his “Bidenomics”. Which is why he would continue to be the best man at the helm of the United States.
The term was coined by US business media and Biden’s team adopted it: “Bidenomics”, which means social market economy in the sense of the middle class. Support the low-wage sector, expand the middle class, make state investments for the future, such as infrastructure and education, promote competition and next close loopholes for companies and the super-rich, which Democrats believe pay too little tax.
“This notion is a fundamental break with an economic theory that hasn’t worked for America’s middle class for decades,” Biden said in a keynote speech in Chicago, railing against the opposing neoliberal principle of “trickle-down” associated with globalization because of the Factory jobs have been exported overseas and communities have been “hollowed out”. “I’m supposed to be fine, but I’m tired of waiting for trickle-down,” Biden said. The trickle-down theory claims that wealth trickles down from upper-income brackets to lower-income brackets, so their wealth must be maximized through things like tax cuts.
Biden wants to be re-elected in 2024. He is already taking the full risk for this, tying the state of the US economy to his name. The document announced that Biden would promote and explain what constitutes this economic policy in the coming days, weeks and months. He hardly has an option, but his unique selling point as the oldest US president ever means: now or never.
Attacks on Trump
Full steam ahead into the election campaign: US President Joe Biden during his keynote speech
(Photo: AP)
His team does not want to leave media sovereignty over the state of the United States to the Republicans. They get a lot of attention anyway. More than a dozen applicants, led in polls by ex-President Donald Trump ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, are already bustling with appointments in the first primary states. As early as August, they had the first of many television debates. Biden has to show his presence, otherwise he will go under in the media.
It’s not likely, but should the US economy falter for any reason, the Republicans would have a gigantic target to attack in the campaign. US voters often decide based on the state of the economy. In May, Biden officially announced that he intends to run for a second term next year. There are currently many indications that the duel between Democrat Biden and Republican Donald Trump, which Biden trumped in 2020, will be repeated.
Also last month, just a third of Americans said the economy was on track, possibly because of inflation. In polls, Trump is said to have significantly more economic competence than Biden. Despite his interim results, which he lists in Chicago: 13.4 million new jobs in two years, the longest period with an unemployment rate below 4 percent in more than 50 years, the highest job satisfaction since the 1980s, the greatest support for unions in the country country for 60 years. Never before have more small businesses been registered than during his tenure, more than 10 million.
Around 40 percent of Americans attest Biden a good job overall. But that is only solid for the time of the term of office, nothing more. Despite his political successes in Congress, which are seen positively across all parties. This is exactly what he is doing from now on campaigning for his re-election. The infrastructure package that Trump kept promising but, unlike Biden, never delivered. The historic anti-inflation package with support for renewable energies and electromobility against climate change. Most recently, broadband internet funding for rural areas.
The subsidy package for the national semiconductor industry, the Chips Act, is also a central argument of Biden. Investments in factories have increased by 80 percent since it was adopted. In the four years before, it was two percent more, says the President. The audience almost hoots at this clear attack on Trump, who boasts that he has it manufacturing brought back to the US. The geopolitical background is to become more independent from China.
Campaigning for rural voters
In the speech in Chicago, Biden is therefore brimming with self-confidence. His “Bidenomics” is now the headline of his presidency and at the same time a rhetorical alternative to the “Reaganomics” of former President Ronald Reagan, who raised the trickle-down theory to economic policy in the 1980s. Low taxes for companies and on wealth, keep state benefits as small as possible, privatize. Biden repeatedly rants from the pulpit in Chicago: “The principle has destroyed jobs, hollowed out countless communities in the Midwest and driven the state into a deficit”.
Biden comments on his typical dropouts with self-mockery. He doesn’t mention Trump or any other candidate – but he does say that it becomes more difficult for “demagogues” if something works. Although Biden won in 2020 because he wasn’t Trump, he also knows why: Mainly because of the mobilization of the suburbs and the women there, whom he explicitly mentions. Their unemployment rate is at a 70-year low and they make up “half the workforce,” whereupon audible female cheers break out and the President adds, “… and probably two-thirds of the intelligentsia.”
Biden is also fishing for typical Republican clientele in rural areas like the Midwest. “Being able to raise children with a good salary where you grew up yourself” is “Bidenomics”. “It won’t restore the American dream right away,” but it will reduce the country’s divisions, he says. And possibly leave him and the Democrats in government for four more years.