Opinion | Biden’s 2024 election hopes hinge on selling sceptical US voters on his economic plan’s success
- The US president is beginning to promote Bidenomics as his success story, an important step as his economy has yet to win over American voters
- In the coming year, he must not only continue his impactful economic policies but make them understandable to persuadable voters
Under Biden, the Misery Index stood at 7.8 per cent in May. For comparison, this figure is well below that of his predecessors in recent decades in the months of their re-election, including Ronald Reagan (11.4 per cent), Bill Clinton (8.7 per cent), George W. Bush (9 per cent) and Barack Obama (9.5 per cent).
Republican presidents, in particular, usually commit themselves to Reaganomics, an economic policy named after Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. In summary, Reaganomics was about sweeping tax cuts, reduced welfare spending, increased military spending and domestic market deregulation.
What the Biden administration thinks of Reaganomics was made clear during a speech by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who essentially gave a eulogy for trickle-down economics when he noted that the efficiency of free markets and the benefits of free trade have been overstated. The US needed a new industrial policy, one that goes “beyond traditional trade deals” and will lead to “new international economic partnerships”, he said.
