'Bidenomics': the US president tries to sell his economic management to skeptical citizens

US President Joe Biden landed Wednesday morning in a Chicago covered by smoke from the fires in Canada to give a speech on his economic policy. "They call it Bidenomics. I don't know what the hell that is, but it's working," the president said at a rally in Philadelphia on June 17, using for the first time the expression he has ended up adopting. Hit by inflation, citizens – that is, voters – do not seem too convinced. The visibility of the economy is like that of Chicago. Economists don't know whether a soft landing or a recession is coming.

"Bidenomics is about building the economy from the center out and from the bottom up, not from the top down, introducing three fundamental changes. First, make smart investments in America. Second, educate and train American workers to grow the middle class. And third, promote competition to reduce costs and help small businesses," Biden said in a speech of just over half an hour.

Despite the spectacular scenery, the intervention of this Wednesday in the Old Post Office of Chicago has been quite tarnished by lighting and sound problems. A somewhat dark Biden against the light, whose voice at times was lost and at times thundered, has defended the achievements of the economy.

"Currently, the United States has recorded the highest economic growth among the world's major economies since the pandemic. We've created more than 13 million jobs, more jobs in two years than any other president in a four-year term. And friends, that's no coincidence. It's Bidenomics in action," he said.

The differential and most successful aspect of Biden's policy consists of the promotion of infrastructures and investment aid in key sectors such as microprocessors or clean energy, with a focus on a certain economic protectionism for large projects. The infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Law have been his great legislative successes in economic matters. In addition, it has averted the risk of a default with a beneficial agreement on the debt ceiling.

Biden points to the recovery of jobs destroyed by the pandemic, although that had more to do with the timing of the handover in the White House than with his own policies. The president, in any case, presents himself as a defender of workers and the middle classes and defines himself as the most pro-union president in history.

In the should, its fiscal stimulus to get out of the pandemic encouraged excess demand and helped inflation soar as Ukraine's war and supply chain bottlenecks constrained supply. Both in price stability and in the performance of the economy itself, the role of the president and his administration is often less decisive than that of the Federal Reserve, but citizens do not vote for the head of the central bank and yes for the tenant of the White House.

The Democrats achieved in the legislative elections of November 2022 a much better result than expected thanks to two arguments: the defense of democracy against extreme Trumpism and abortion, after the Supreme Court ruling that repealed it as a constitutional right throughout the country. Its great liability at that time was skyrocketing inflation, much more than now, which eclipsed other achievements in economic matters.

Campaign for 2024

Now that the pace of price increases has slowed, Biden wants to use the economy as well as an electoral argument with an eye on the 2024 elections. He already showed it at a rally in Washington the same day he announced his campaign for re-election and followed that line 10 days ago at a rally in Philadelphia.

Biden will thus be able to design a campaign based on three axes: democratic values (a mine, facing Trump); the right to abortion – which he defends, but with which he is not very comfortable: "I am a practicing Catholic. I'm not very fond of abortion," he admitted Tuesday at a closed-door event outside Washington. and the economy.

With the launch of his re-election campaign and the improving economy, Biden has seen the valuation of his work rebound four percentage points in the last month, to 43%, the highest point since August 2022, according to a poll published this week by Gallup, one of the main demographic institutes and the one that has been measuring the popularity of presidents the longest. The recovery comes two months after receiving the lowest approval rating of his presidency. Still, 54% of American adults disapprove of his performance. The fieldwork was conducted between June 1 and 22, just after the agreement to suspend the debt ceiling.

Despite that, citizens' perception of Biden's economic policy remains poor. A poll just released by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that only one in three U.S. adults (34%) approve of his financial management. In the case of Democratic voters, according to that poll, while 72% approve of his work in general, only 60% approve of his economic management at a time when inflation has fallen to less than half of what it was a year ago and unemployment is at its lowest in half a century. Interestingly, Donald Trump achieved an approval rating of 90% among Republicans, even when unemployment was skyrocketing.

The dramatic thing for Biden is that this low approval occurs at the best economic moment of his term and that the risk of a recession before the presidential elections of 2024 is still very present, since the Federal Reserve still has a couple of bullets in the form of rate hikes to shoot against inflation. In any case, it is the recession that does not come. "I've been hearing every month that there's going to be a recession next month," Biden said Wednesday. "I don't think there is," he added.

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