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      What’s behind the US tariffs on Chinese EVs and what do they mean for Biden’s re-election chances?

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      Joe Biden has unveiled US tariffs on an array of Chinese imports, unleashing a potential trade war with Beijing, as the president seeks to woo American voters less than six month out from what’s set to be a close election rematch with Donald Trump.The new measures affect $18bn in imports, including steel, aluminium, computer chips solar cells, cranes and medical products – however its the 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles (EVs) that has dominated headlines.Why have the tariffs been imposed?Biden’s national economic adviser, Lael Brainard, perhaps best summed up the purpose of the huge new tariffs when she said that they would ensure that government investments in jobs are not undercut by “underpriced exports from China.”The US is concerned by the prospect of cheap, subsidised Chinese goods flooding US markets and undercutting the billions of dollars of government investment that have been poured into key manufacturing sectors via Biden’s Chips and Inflation Reduction acts.In the electric vehicle market, for instance, there are reports that China is producing 30m EVs a year, but can only sell 22m to 23m domestically.The Alliance for American Manufacturing has said the dumping of Chinese EVs to the US market would be an “extinction-level event” for its carmakers.“We’re not going to let China flood our market, making it impossible for American auto manufacturers to compete fairly,” Biden said in his speech announcing the tariffs.What will the tariffs mean for the sale of Chinese electric vehicles in the US?The huge new tariffs on Chinese-made EVs are unlikely to have any immediate impact on US consumers; that’s because China currently sells almost zero EVs in the US.However, experts say that the new tariffs are likely a preventive measure to stop China flooding the US market with its surplus product – and by that measure they’re likely to be effective.View image in fullscreenChinese EVs could still enter the US through other avenues though, as tariffs are applied based on where the final assembly for the vehicle takes place.Some experts are warning that there could be an accelerated shift of Chinese production to Mexico, as carmakers seek to bypass the tariffs, with some signs that this is already occurring.Hours after Biden announced the fresh tariffs, Chinese automaker BYD unveiled the Shark, a hybrid-electric pickup truck that will be exclusive sold in Mexico.The US is mindful of this risk, according to trade representative Katherine Tai, and there will probably be future efforts to head off tariff evasion problems.How will China respond?China’s commerce ministry said it would retaliate and take measures to defend its interests.An editorial in Chinese state media said US consumers would bear the consequences of the moves, adding that the Biden government was “writing a new chapter in undermining fair trade and environmental protection.”Late on Tuesday, Biden looked ahead to a potential response from China, saying Beijing will probably try to raise tariffs as well, possibly on unrelated products.Biden has said in the past that he is not seeking to launch a trade war, nor does he want the new economic measures to undercut efforts in recent months to ease tensions with Chinese president Xi Jinping.What do the new trade measures mean for the US election?Despite the high-profile economic legislation pushed through by his administration, polling shows Biden has struggled to convince voters of the efficacy of these policies.Against a background of low unemployment and economic growth above that of most other western nations, the White House will be hoping that the new tariffs don’t worsen inflation levels that have already angered US voters.“Some US industries and manufacturers will experience cost increases and supply-chain disruptions as a result of these tariffs but the Biden administration is clearly taking the view that these will be modest and can be managed,” said Cornell University’s policy experts, Eswar Prasad.Biden has followed the hard line on trade that Trump took as president, but says his measures are more targeted and less likely to harm US consumers than that of his Republican rival.Trump, who has floated the idea of tariffs of 60% or higher on all Chinese imports, said on Tuesday Biden’s new tariffs should be applied to other types of vehicles and products – and has threatened to go even harder on Chinese-made EVs by applying tariffs of 200%, should he be elected in November.With Reuters More

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      One path for Biden to lure blue-collar voters – find the economic villains: ‘You have to pick fights’

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      To the dismay of Democrats, blue-collar voters have lined up increasingly behind Donald Trump, but political experts say Joe Biden can still turn things around with that large and pivotal group by campaigning hard on “kitchen table” economic issues.With just six months to go until the election, recent polls show that Trump has stronger support among blue-collar Americans than he did in 2020. But several political analysts told the Guardian that Biden can bring back enough of those voters to win if he hammers home the message that he is helping Americans on pocketbook issues – for instance, by canceling student debt and cutting insulin prices.According to Celinda Lake, a pollster for the Democratic National Committee, Biden needs to talk more often and more effectively about how his policies mean “real benefits” for working families and how he’s battling on their behalf against “villains” like greedy pharmaceutical companies.“We need to have a dramatic framing that we’re going to take on villains to make the economy work for you and your family,” said Lake, who did polling for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The villains can be a lot of things – corporations that don’t pay any taxes or drug companies that make record profits while they gouge you on prices.”View image in fullscreenRepublicans have won over many voters by attacking Democrats on cultural issues, but Lake said Democrats can overcome that. “We need to recognize that the economic message beats the cultural war message,” she said, adding that the economic message should focus on specific examples of how Biden’s policies have helped workers and their families.“We have to make sure the economic message isn’t focused on GDP and low unemployment rates and lower inflation, but on real benefits, things that people feel at the kitchen table,” Lake said. She talked of reduced prescription drug prices, limits on banks’ junk fees and increasing taxes on the wealthy so the nation can invest in things like making childcare more affordable.Patrick Gaspard, president of the Center for American Progress, also stressed the importance of economic messaging. “Biden needs to speak more on the economy, but you shouldn’t do it in terms of spiking the ball, which we’ve done too much of. You need to pick some fights,” said Gaspard, who was executive director of the Democratic National Committee under Barack Obama. “You have to pick fights with greedy corporations. It’s good to say, ‘I lowered insulin to $35 a month, and I’m bringing down the cost of a dozen drugs.’ But also say, ‘Big pharma is suing to stop us, and Maga Republicans and Donald Trump are standing with them on that. The fight is on, and I’m fighting for you on this.’”Several Democrats voiced concern about the party’s current messaging, arguing that the White House and the Biden campaign are too insular and in ways locked into an outdated vision – that if a president delivers good things to voters, like good-paying construction jobs created by the $1.2tn infrastructure package, and runs campaign ads about those things, that will win over many voters. One political consultant warned that many voters are uninformed, telling of a focus group where one woman was delighted that she would soon begin paying $35 a month for insulin, down from $350, but she had no idea that the Biden administration was largely responsible for that lower price.Even if the Biden campaign runs ads to make that point, several political experts said, Americans are so cynical about candidates and their campaigns that those ads might do little persuading. “The level of cynicism is so high that for many people, anything that comes from politicians or elected officials doesn’t pass the smell test,” said Steve Rosenthal, a longtime political consultant.Rosenthal said groups that blue-collar voters trust – labor unions, community groups and Facebook pages – need to step up to communicate important, election-related information, such as the fact that Biden played a major role in capping insulin costs.Speaking about crucial battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation, said, “It rests on the people in those states, the unions in those states, the civic institutions in those states to make clear what the stakes of a Trump presidency will be – for instance, he’ll push to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”View image in fullscreenPodhorzer acknowledged that Biden is having problems with blue-collar voters even though, he said, “Biden has done more by a large margin than either President Clinton or Obama to appeal directly to working people – and not just symbolically by joining the UAW’s picket line.” In the 2020 election, 48% of voters without a college degree voted for Biden, while 50% supported Trump, according to exit polls, White voters without a college degree backed Trump over Biden 67% to 32%, while voters of color without a college degree supported Biden, 72% to 26%. All told, 59% of 2020 voters didn’t have a college degree. Biden won the overall election because his comfortable 55% to 43% margin among college graduates more than offset his narrow loss among non-college graduates.Several Democratic consultants said that if the election were held today, Trump would win. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that Trump was leading Biden by between one and six percentage points in six of the main battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. A Fox News poll in April found Trump leading by three points in Michigan and six in Georgia but tied with Biden in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.“There’s an enormous amount of work that has to be done, and there’s a lot of room for movement,” Rosenthal said. “When the labor unions kick into gear and really start to communicate with their members, the numbers can change pretty dramatically.”Lake added, “I don’t think it’s too late at all.”Mike Lux, a political consultant who has worked on six presidential campaigns, helped write an influential report called Factory Towns that found that the Democratic presidential vote in the midwest declined most sharply in communities that suffered the steepest drops in factory and union jobs. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt was president, Lux said, blue-collar voters saw the Democrats as the party that would protect them, but many have drifted away, convinced that Democrats weren’t doing enough to protect them.Many blue-collar voters remain angry at Bill Clinton for getting Congress to ratify the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and normalize trade relations with China – trade moves that caused many US factories to close. “Working folks expected Democrats to fight for them,” Lux said. “But folks feel like Democrats have forgotten about them. They don’t feel like Democrats are talking to them or caring about them. It’s true that Republicans don’t do anything to help them, but they show up and wave the flag and pound their chest and say, ‘Nobody cares about you, but we do.’”Lux said many blue-collar voters were unhappy that presidents Clinton and Obama pushed the idea that everybody should go to college. “A feeling started to develop that working-class people weren’t as welcome in the Democratic party,” Lux said.In his eyes, the 2007-2009 recession, largely caused by Wall Street, has also been a big problem for Democrats. “There was a feeling that Barack Obama bailed out Wall Street and did not do much to bail out regular workers,” Lux said. “That was a huge moment. It led to folks giving the finger to the establishment, and that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016.”View image in fullscreenRuy Teixeira, a political scientist and co-author of the book Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, agreed with Lux. “Working-class people were counting on them [the Democrats]. They were the party that was on the side of the working class, and they felt betrayed.”Teixeira said the free trade initiatives “showed that the Democrats were not worrying about deindustrialization, not worrying about what’s happened to the median voter in the middle of the country. The Democrats were increasingly responsive to Wall Street. So some folks decided to give the Republicans a try.”Taking a position that has angered many progressives, Teixeira said the Democrats’ stance on “crime, race, gender and climate is a whole can of worms” that has turned off many blue-collar voters. He said the Democrats are obsessed with climate change in a way that alienates many blue-collar voters, who, he said, fear that the push for renewable energy will mean higher energy prices. Teixeira also said that Democratic concerns about transgender rights – a culture war focus of the Republicans – has turned off many blue-collar voters.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The Democrats have to orient themselves away from the median liberal, college- educated voter who they get a Soviet-style majority from and orient themselves toward the median working-class voter, not just white, but non-white voters,” Teixeira said. “It’s not easy to do. They have to turn the battleship around.”Another reason blue-collar voters have turned away from Democrats is the decline in union membership – from 35% of all workers in the 1950s to 10% today. Rosenthal remembers going to a steelworkers’ union hall in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, several decades ago – it had 15 bowling lanes and a bar. “Around 30% of workers were in unions,” Rosenthal said. “Another 10% or 15% were in union households, and a lot of other workers drank at the bar or bowled there.” The steelworkers’ hall served as a community center where people received information from the union and there was robust support for Democrats. The new book Rust Belt Union Blues describes a transformed landscape where many union halls have closed and gun clubs have often replaced them as gathering places for the working class – and there, the ambience is pro-Trump.Another factor contributing to the Democrats’ woes is that over half the nation’s local news stations are in the hands of Sinclair and other rightwing owners, said Lux. That often makes it harder for Biden and other Democrats to get their message across.As a result, Lux said, Democrats have to work extra hard to get their message out – for instance, through community Facebook pages that explain that the new bridge in town is being built thanks to Biden or that the Biden administration has helped blue-collar Americans by extending overtime coverage to 4 million more workers and banning non-competes that cover 30 million workers.“The Democrats have to lean into issues that mean a lot to working people,” Lux said. “We have to keep showing up in Ottumwa [a working-class town in Iowa] and keep showing up in Youngstown [a blue-collar Ohio town].”The Biden administration often seems to communicate its economic agenda in dribs and drabs. One day it blocks two giant grocery chains from merging, saying the merger could push grocery prices higher. Another day it caps banks’ junk fees, and yet another day it boasts about the low unemployment rate.Lake says the administration is going about this the wrong way. “They tend to start the message with their accomplishments,” she said. “They need to start the message with the overall narrative and then go to their accomplishments.”Lake said Biden’s economic message wasn’t getting across effectively. “They need more repetition,” she said. “They need more volume. It’s really difficult to break through.”Several political analysts said love it or hate it, Donald Trump – unlike Biden – has an unmistakable narrative: Make America great again. Too many immigrants are crossing the border. The elite and deep state are out to get you.“In a war between good policies and good stories that speak to people’s identities and emotions, good stories are going to win,” said Deepak Bhargava, president of the JPB Foundation and former head of the Center for Community Change.Gaspard said Biden had a good economic story to tell and agreed that he wasn’t telling it very effectively. “He needs to talk more and more about growing the economy by building out the middle class,” Gaspard said. “Talking about the amount of dollars going to a big social program does nothing to sway voters. You need to talk about how Donna is going to be able to afford insulin and Josh is going to be able to afford to send kids to daycare. Things that are relatable to people.”He said it was important to point to villains and draw contrasts with the other side: “You need to say Trump will cut taxes on the wealthy and that will hurt the working class. You need to ramp up efforts to say Trump will raise prices and hurt working families with his 10% across-the-board tariffs. That will mean a $1,500 tax that’s passed on to all working families. That’s massive, and it makes it painstakingly clear that Trump isn’t concerned about workers.”View image in fullscreenGaspard said that in his economic messaging, Biden needed to “recognize the insecurities that working folks – white, Black and brown – are feeling” whether about the cost of living or other matters. “Biden needs to call out General Mills and Kimberly-Clark for raising the price of cereal and diapers,” Gaspard said. “People like it when you’re fighting for them.”Amid all the talk about wooing blue-collar voters, Lake said young voters were too often forgotten. She urged Biden to address their concerns. “They’re very hard-pressed economically,” she said. “We haven’t been talking enough about issues facing young voters. It’s not just student loans. They’re worried about how much jobs pay and for many of them, it’s impossible to buy a house.”With his blue-collar support soft, Biden is looking to labor unions to help put him over the top in crucial swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for Biden, his lead over Trump in union households has slipped: from 56% to 40% in 2020 exit polls to 50% to 41% early this year, according to an NBC News Poll.Rosenthal, who like Podhorzer used to be the AFL-CIO’s political director, said it was vital for unions to step up – and soon – emphasizing that they can make the crucial difference in battleground states where the victory margin can be just a few thousand votes. Rosenthal said the labor movement had a huge amount at stake, considering that Biden has been the most pro-union in memory – he has invited union organizers to the White House and appointed many pro-union officials to the National Labor Relations Board.“If Biden loses, and if he loses because he didn’t win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and if he doesn’t win those states because the union household vote isn’t where it should be, there will never be another Democratic candidate who will give a shit about the union movement,” Rosenthal said. “Why should they, if he can’t win in those critical states? There is way more at stake for the labor movement in this election than for the rest of the country.” More

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      Companies are using inflation to price-gouge Americans – and making it worse | Robert Reich

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      We learned this week that the Consumer Price Index climbed 3.5% in March from a year earlier, up from 3.2% in February, and faster than most economists anticipated.This poses a conundrum for central bankers who have made it clear they want to see further evidence that inflation is cooling before they cut interest rates.The Fed’s high interest rates haven’t pushed America to the brink of a recession, fortunately, but they haven’t slowed inflation as much as policymakers had hoped.The question is whether Fed officials can cut interest rates at all this year.Joe Biden acknowledged that “prices are still too high for housing and groceries”, and said he was “calling on corporations, including grocery retailers, to use record profits to reduce prices”.What’s the president getting at?Corporate profits reached a record high in the fourth quarter of last year.The easiest explanation for record corporate profits at the same time prices remain elevated is that corporations have enough monopoly power to keep prices high.(Note that many corporations are also shrinking the size of the products you’re buying without lowering their prices – a variant of the same thing.)This is one of the biggest reasons the American public is not yet crediting Biden with a great economy. Most people still aren’t feeling it.In 2023, PepsiCo’s chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not be. Pepsi hiked its prices by double digits and announced plans to keep them high in 2024.If Pepsi were challenged by tougher competition, consumers would just buy something cheaper. But PepsiCo’s only major soda competitor is Coca-Cola, which – surprise, surprise – announced similar price hikes at about the same time as Pepsi and has also kept its prices high.The CEO of Coca-Cola claimed that the company had “earned the right” to push price hikes because its sodas are popular. Popular? The only thing that’s popular these days seems to be corporate price gouging.We’re seeing this pattern across much of the economy – especially with groceries. At the end of 2023, Americans were paying at least 30% more for beef, pork and poultry products than they were in 2020.Why? Near-monopoly power. Just four companies now control processing of 80% of beef, nearly 70% of pork, and almost 60% of poultry. So of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases.The problem goes well beyond the grocery store. In 75% of US industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did 20 years ago.What should be done?First, antitrust laws must be enforced.Kudos to the Biden administration for enforcing antitrust more aggressively than any administration in the last 40 years. This administration has taken action against alleged price fixing in the meat industry – which has been a problem for decades.The Biden administration has sued to block the merger of Kroger and Albertsons – two giant grocery chains.Kroger operates 2,750 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia. The company’s 19 brands include Ralphs, Smith’s, King Soopers, Fred Meyer, Food 4 Less, Mariano’s, Pick ’n Save, and Harris Teeter. Albertsons operates 2,273 stores in 34 states. Its 15 brands include Safeway, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Acme and Shaw’s. Together, Kroger and Albertsons employ around 700,000 people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Biden administration is suing Amazon for using its dominance to artificially jack up prices, in one of the biggest anti-monopoly lawsuits in a generation.The Biden administration is suing Apple for using its market power to control its apps and prevent other businesses from offering them.The administration successfully sued to block the merger of JetBlue and Spirit Airlines, which would have made consolidation in the airline industry even worse.But given how concentrated American industry has become, there’s still a long way to go. Biden should make his antitrust enforcement against corporate power a centerpiece of his campaign.Second, big corporations must not be allowed to use their power to gouge consumers.Senator Elizabeth Warren and others recently unveiled the latest version of their Price Gouging Prevention Act.“Giant corporations are using supply chain shocks as a cover to excessively raise prices and sometimes charging the same price but shrinking how much consumers actually get,” Warren charges.The bill would empower the Federal Trade Commission (which would also get $1bn in additional funding) and state attorneys general to stop companies from charging “grossly excessive” prices, regardless of where alleged price gouging took place in a supply chain.The legislation would also protect small businesses – those earning less than $100m – from litigation if they had to raise prices in good faith during crises, and require public companies to disclose more about their costs and pricing strategies.I don’t have any illusions that this bill will find its way into law soon. Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, and not all Democrats support it. Meanwhile, Republicans and their business backers are dead set against it – and are eager to blame continued high prices on Biden, not on corporations.But this bill is just as necessary as aggressive antitrust enforcement – and an example of what could and will be done if Democrats sweep the 2024 elections.The record profits of large corporations are coming out of the paychecks of average Americans, who are still struggling to get by.Biden and the Democrats must say this loudly and clearly and tell the public what they are doing – and will do – to stop corporate monopolies and price gouging.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      He voted Trump in 2016, Biden in 2020. He’s the kind of voter candidates are desperate to swing

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      For the past 35 years, Scott Richardson and his wife, Theresa, have run a small, cheerful restaurant and catering business outside Philadelphia. Occasionally Yours has long been a community meeting spot in the town of Swarthmore. More recently, it has taken on another, unexpected, role – on the stage of national politics.Richardson is an independent-minded small business owner in a key swing state – exactly the kind of person US presidential candidates are desperate to woo. In 2016, when Pennsylvania went Republican for the first time since 1988, he voted for Donald Trump. Then, in 2020, dismayed by Trump’s Covid response, he switched to Joe Biden, in no uncertain terms. Richardson’s vote tracked how the state went in both elections.This year, polls show Biden and Trump evenly matched in Pennsylvania, with approval ratings for both men at historic lows. And Richardson himself isn’t ecstatic about the options.“I just don’t understand how in a country of 300 and whatever we are, 50, 60 million people, that these are the two gentlemen that we have to choose from,” he says. “I just don’t understand how we can be in this position, but we are.”But he is clear on one thing: he’s sticking with Biden.“In 2016, I voted for Trump because I was ready to have it mixed up – you know, just turn things upside down,” he says. But “my definition of turning things upside down and what actually happened are two completely different scenarios.” Trump, he says, was “inept” when it came to handling the pandemic, doing far too little to confront it even when it was clear it was coming. In Richardson’s view, Biden got handed a “crappy, crappy economy” and has slowly been getting the US back on its feet.In July 2020, Richardson told the Washington Post it was now his “life’s mission” to swing voters from Trump to Biden. A month later, he was on stage, virtually, at the Democratic national convention, describing what his business had endured during Covid. “We’ve literally had to reinvent our business several times since the beginning of the year,” he told Eva Longoria, the host on that August evening. “To be honest with you, I’m just frustrated.” He wished Americans could just unite “on this one issue” and forge ahead. Once again, plenty of Richardson’s fellow Pennsylvanians seemed to share his view: the state went blue.As their 2024 rematch approaches, Biden and Trump are dueling for Pennsylvania for a second time. The result, as ever, could hinge on perceptions of the economy. And while some key figures look good for Biden – unemployment below 4%, the stock market breaking records, the rate of inflation way down from its 2022 peak – for many Americans, those numbers haven’t translated into a sense of financial wellbeing.Richardson has never been wedded to a particular party: he grew up in a deeply Republican area of upstate New York, spent years as an independent, registered Republican to support Bob Dole in the 90s, then switched to Democratic to back Barack Obama. Now both parties are vying for people like him.When it comes to the economy, “I don’t believe in fast change,” he says. The economy “couldn’t get much worse than when [Biden] took over”. But now he’s seeing “slow growth, consistent employment numbers”.He has seen inflation gradually decline at the smaller suppliers he uses. “Lettuce was $3 for a nice beautiful head, and then during the inflation it maybe went for $4.50. And now it’s like $3.25.” That doesn’t mean things are easy, especially for people with low incomes: “I mean, you’re going into the grocery store, it used to cost you $100. Now it costs you $150.”Still, Occasionally Yours is thriving. As the world reopened, customers returned to the restaurant, and demand for catering grew. “People got really, really anxious to have parties,” he says. Sales last year were “through the roof better” – up more than 20%, he says.Richardson acknowledges that his own experience isn’t necessarily representative; different industries experience different headwinds. “But it seems to me that people are still spending money.”He credits much of his own business’s recent success not to the economy but to its capacity for change. Over the years, Occasionally Yours has seen a succession of redesigns and menu updates. “People say ‘if you build it, they will come’,” he says. “My experience is if you put an avocado on it, they will come.”He thinks some of his pro-Trump friends with small businesses are misdirecting their anger at Biden, when their real enemy might be big-box stores. “Maybe you’re blaming factors on politics that maybe aren’t as big a factor in your life,” he says, “but the news tells you that they are.”There are some areas, he says, where politics can have a big impact. Richardson has been most impressed by the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Biden pushed.“I’ve been to Florida, up into New England and over into Ohio and across the north – there is not one state, one county, anywhere I traveled that doesn’t have a damn bridge torn apart, or something being fixed,” he says. “It’s something that, in my opinion, our country needed for many, many years and now it’s actually getting done – and those are great-paying friggin’ jobs.” He has questions about how the country will pay for it, but “a country, you know – you need to invest in it in order for it to get better”.View image in fullscreenRichardson has also benefited from a rare experience: he’s met the president in person. In June 2020, he got a call from the then candidate’s team asking if he’d like to join a roundtable for small business owners. He agreed – not because he was a particular fan, but because “who the hell wouldn’t? What an opportunity.”His first words to Biden were “I voted for Trump in 2016”. “And I believe what [Biden] said to me was, ‘We all have our crosses to bear.’”At the meeting, Richardson was touched by Biden’s reaction to a woman’s story of grief at losing someone to Covid. Biden told the woman: “I can tell you from personal experience: there will be a time in your life when the thought of your loved one will bring a smile to your face instead of a tear to your eye.” He’d heard Biden say it before, “but when you’re right there listening to him and how sincere he was … from that point on I was voting on the character of the man,” Richardson says. “I’ve met other politicians and, to me, they were phoney as hell.”That roundtable led to his appearance at the DNC, filmed from the restaurant. “I mean, I was nervous nervous, heart racing, I’m gonna have a panic attack type of thing.” Afterward, there was some political backlash: the restaurant got a few one-star reviews from strangers, and Richardson received a few profanity-laced phone calls. Still, “it was something that I’ll never forget, a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”Now, after 35 years of working every weekend, Richardson is ready to pass the baton: three and a half decades to the day after the Richardsons signed the lease to open their restaurant, a new business is taking over the location. The Richardsons are retiring.In the meantime, he’s hoping not to see the dawn of a new Trump era – in addition to the former president’s handling of the economy and Covid, Richardson is disgusted by his business practices. “He played all these games for so many years. And because of his ego, he gets drawn into being president, which is the maximum ego trip. It exposed all his private matters … I think it’s gonna come back to haunt him.” More

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      Cookie Monster and Ohio senator make odd allies in shrinkflation complaint

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      The Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown endorsed a key voice in the American public square – Cookie Monster – in a complaint about shrinkflation.“Me hate shrinkflation!” the Sesame Street character posted on social media on Monday, referring to an economic phenomenon Merriam-Webster defines as “the practice of reducing a product’s amount or volume per unit while continuing to offer it at the same price”.“Me cookies are getting smaller,” Cookie Monster added, appending a frowning face emoji.Brown, a leading progressive in the US Senate facing a tough fight for re-election, said: “Me too, Cookie Monster. Big corporations shrink the size of their products without shrinking their prices, all to pay for CEO bonuses. People in my state of Ohio are fed up – they should get all the cookie they pay for.”Cookie Monster’s tweet was not the first from a Sesame Street character to make news in recent weeks. Last month, Elmo, the particularly toddler-friendly red furry muppet, prompted an outpouring of existential dread when he simply asked followers: “How is everybody doing?”Nor was Brown the first prominent Democrat to seize on shrinkflation as a campaign issue. Last month, Joe Biden used a video released on Super Bowl Sunday to say the American public was “tired of being played for suckers” by makers of popular snacks.“Some companies are trying to pull a fast one by shrinking the products little by little and hoping you won’t notice,” the president said.“Sports drinks bottles are smaller, a bag of chips has fewer chips, but they’re still charging just as much. As an ice-cream lover, what makes me the most angry is that ice-cream cartons have actually shrunk in size.”Biden’s love for ice cream is as well known as Cookie Monster’s love for cookies, though both president and puppet have advocated for children to eat healthy foods too.Among some observers, Brown’s agreement with Cookie Monster about the evils of shrinkflation prompted thoughts of another similarity between the senator and the Sesame Street star.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBoth are known and celebrated for distinctive, gravelly voices.The historian Kevin M Kruse once said Brown sounded “like Tom Waits smoked a carton of Pall Malls and gargled hot asphalt”.Cookie Monster – originally provided by the celebrated puppeteer Frank Oz, now performed by David Rudman – has also been widely compared to Waits. More

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      Is Biden’s student debt action enough to win back young voters angry over Gaza?

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      Maxwell Frost, the only gen Z member of Congress, was front and center when Joe Biden announced last week that he was canceling $1.2bn of student loan debt for more than 150,000 Americans.“President Biden knows that canceling student debt is an important issue for young people across our country,” said Frost, who has been a surrogate for Biden’s campaign. “The president’s actions on student debt are in stark contrast with Donald Trump, who spent his entire time in office sabotaging efforts to aid borrowers who are just trying to make ends meet.”Frost’s comments underline how much Biden wants young voters to know that he hasn’t given up on fixing student debt, even after the supreme court struck down his cancellation plan last summer.But like some of Biden’s other most progressive policies convincing young voters that he has a decent track record on the issues – not least the war in Gaza – that will drive them to the ballot box is proving challenging.“[Biden] coming to the table to talk about student debt forgiveness is a huge win ,” said Antonio Arellano, NextGen’s vice-president of communications.“In America, young voters right now are the largest eligible voting bloc in modern American history, surpassing baby boomers. And they’re being very clear about where they stand,” Arellano said. “So it would be in the best interest of the administration to listen to the young people that are simply demanding humanitarian priorities and protections for folks that are just in the crosshairs of this greater war.”When contrasted against Trump, Biden’s student loan policies appear decidedly progressive. Biden’s federal student loan program would have seen 43 million borrowers receive some relief, including up to $20,000 off loans for some borrowers. But the supreme court’s conservative majority, including the three justices appointed by Trump, struck down the plan last June.The ruling was a blow to millions of borrowers across the country. An estimated 45 million Americans hold a total of $1.6tn in student loan debt.“The fight is not over,” Biden vowed after the decision, noting that the “hypocrisy of Republican elected officials is stunning”.Since then, Biden has kicked off several loan forgiveness measures along with piecemeal cancellations worth up to $138bn for 3.9 million borrowers. The most recent cancellation was targeted toward those who had borrowed $12,000 or less and have had their debt for at least 10 years. Many of these borrowers probably have much higher debts because of accumulated interest over the years.The White House has been instituting “huge fixes to the broken student debt system. It’s not debt cancellation … but these are drastic changes”, said Natalia Abrams, president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, a student borrower advocacy group.Biden’s continued poor polling on student debt may be in part down to timing. Young voters may not be seeing the immediate relief themselves. Even if young low- and middle-income are on Biden’s new Save plan, which adjusts monthly payments based on a borrowers monthly income, those on the plan won’t see forgiveness after at least 20 years.“They haven’t been borrowing for 10 years,” Abrams said. “I can see how young people, because they’re new to the lending system, feel left out … but [student debt] is impacting people of all ages.”Student debt remains one of the biggest issues motivating young voters. The national youth-focused nonpartisan voter registration and education program NextGen says emails and call-outs about student debt get the most engagement on their site. But young voters see Biden’s policies on the issue in a wider context of other issues, particularly the Israel-Gaza war.When the White House announced where Biden would be delivering a speech on his most recent student debt cancellation, it waited a day before to disclose the location, likely to avoid another one of the many pro-Palestinian protests that have interrupted his events for months.“Doing a few good things here like canceling student debt and continuing on those promises [Biden] made won’t take away from a lot of bad things we’re doing elsewhere,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for the progressive political action committee Justice Democrats.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Not to take away from the student debt crisis – that’s incredibly important. But canceling student debt does not make people forget that you are aiding and abetting the ethnic cleansing and murder of nearly 30,000 Palestinian people and supporting a far-right extremist government in Israel that is doing it,” Andrabi said.Andrabi said addressing one outstanding issue while ignoring another is “almost patronizing” to young voters.“To think that they would all of a sudden forget that millions of them have been in the streets for months demanding a ceasefire is insufficient. It hasn’t cleaned the slate for what has happened to the Palestinian people,” Andrabi said.Many of the issues important to young voters – including student debt, climate justice, reproductive justice and the violence in Gaza – are “inseparable”, Andrabi argues. Financially contributing to the Israeli military while they drop bombs and rockets on the Gaza strip produce carbon emissions which heat the planet.“We’re also seeing a reproductive health crisis in Gaza,” Andrabi said, referencing the tens of thousands of pregnancies in Gaza classified as high-risk due to the violence.“It’s not that one issue is more important than the other – I think every voter has their own calculus. But to act like this is a completely separate issue for a group of voters would be incorrect, especially as we’re seeing so many of the same problems happen to the Palestinian people.”Strategists say Biden is likely relying on young voters supporting him as the candidate against Trump, rather than for his own policies as president. That’s why some Democrats in Michigan, like the US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, are pushing voters to protest his stance on the Israel-Gaza war by marking themselves as “uncommitted” in the upcoming primary.“There’s a lot of frustration … and the administration not only needs to hear those concerns, but they need to feel them,” said Michael Starr Hopkins, a Democratic strategist. “One of the biggest mistakes they’ve made is not acknowledging people’s concern. They internalize them, but they don’t show externally that they’re taking it into consideration.”Hopkins noted that Biden’s strength can be conveying empathy. “He is always better when he comes out and acknowledges people’s pain and suffering.” More

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      Voters may at last be coming round to Biden’s sunny view of the economy

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      Joe Biden has spent most of his presidency insisting to Americans that the economy is on the right track. Poll after poll has shown that most voters do not believe him. That may be changing.After months of resilient hiring, better-than-expected economic growth and a declining rate of inflation, new data shows that Americans are becoming upbeat about the US economy, potentially reversing the deep pessimism Biden has struggled to counter for much of the past three years.That trend could reshape campaigning ahead of November’s presidential election, in which Biden is expected to face off against Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Experts believe the president’s case for a second term will benefit from more optimistic views of the economy – but the hangover from the inflation wave that peaked a year and a half ago presents Republicans with a potent counterattack.“Over the last couple of years, people have been feeling the most pain on day-to-day spending, on things like groceries and gas prices and prescription drugs. And, fortunately, those prices are beginning to come down, which gives Democrats a stronger hand than we had just a few months ago,” said Adam Green, co-founder of advocacy group the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.“For a campaign that says that they want to finish the unfinished business of the Biden presidency, our polling shows that it’s perfectly OK to acknowledge that there has been pain, and there’s more business to do,” said Green.He added that the Biden campaign should “really focus the voters’ attention on the forward-looking agenda of one party wanting to help billionaires and corporations, and the Democratic party wanting to challenge corporate greed and bring down prices for consumers”.Biden has been unpopular with voters, according to poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, even as employment grew strongly and the economy avoided the recession that many economists predicted was around the corner. While it’s not the only factor, pollsters have linked voters’ disapproval with Biden to the wave of price increases that peaked in June 2022 at levels not seen in more than four decades, and which have since been on the decline. An NBC News poll released this month showed Biden trailing Trump by about 20 points on the question of which candidate would better handle the economy, a finding echoed by other surveys.But new data appears to show Americans believe the economy has turned a corner. Late last month, the Conference Board reported its index of consumer confidence had hit its highest point since December 2021, while the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment has climbed to its highest level since July of that year.View image in fullscreen“The people who give positive views of the economy, they tend to point to, the unemployment rate is low, and they also point to that inflation is down from where it was,” said Jocelyn Kiley, an associate director at Pew Research Center, whose own data has found an uptick in positive economic views, particularly among Democrats.Trump and his Republican allies have capitalized on inflation to argue that Biden should be voted out, though economists say Biden’s policies are merely one ingredient in a trend exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and global supply chain snarls that occurred as a result of Covid-19. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who is the last major challenger to the former president still in the race has said the economy is “crushing middle-class Americans”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut voters’ improving views of the economy could blunt those attacks ahead of the November election, where the GOP is also hoping to seize control of the Senate from Biden’s Democratic allies and maintain their majority in the House of Representatives. Lynn Vavreck, an American politics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Trump might have to fall back to tried-and-true tactics from his 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton, such as promising to institute hardline immigration policies.“The economy is growing. People don’t really say that they feel good about it, but if you’re gonna load up your campaign on those people’s feelings, I feel like that’s a little risky,” said Vavreck, who has studied how economic conditions can affect presidential campaigns.“You could do that, and that would be a bit of a gamble, or you could find an issue on which you believe you are closer to most voters than Joe Biden, that is not about the economy, and you could try to reorient the conversation around that issue.”There is already evidence that harnessing outrage over the flow of undocumented immigrants into the United States is key to Trump’s campaign strategy. The former president’s meddling was a factor in the death of a rare bipartisan agreement in Congress to tighten immigration policy in exchange for Republican votes to approve assistance for Ukraine and Israel’s militaries.With the economy humming along, Trump is apparently nervous that the US economy could enter a recession at an inconvenient moment. “When there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover,” he said in an interview last month, referring to the US president who is often blamed for the Great Depression that began 95 years ago.Even though the rate of inflation has eased, albeit haltingly, prices for many consumer goods remain higher than they were compared with when Biden took office, which his opponents can still capitalize on, said the Republican strategist Doug Heye.“Consumers go to the grocery store, and they spend money, and they’re upset with what things cost, and that should always be what they’re talking about,” Heye said.While Biden has been quick to take credit for the strong hiring figures during his administration, polls show that hasn’t landed with voters. In recent months, the White House has shifted strategy, announcing efforts to get rid of junk fees and accusing corporations of “price gouging”.Evan Roth Smith, head pollster for the Democratic research firm Blueprint, said that lines up with his findings that voters care less about job growth and more about the fact that everything costs more.“Voters just felt a prioritization mismatch between what they were experiencing, the kind of pressures they were under, which isn’t that they didn’t have jobs, it’s that they couldn’t pay their bills,” Smith said.“Makes all the sense in the world that if the White House and president and the Biden campaign are touting this stuff, that they are going to make headway, and are making headway with voters in getting them to feel like Joe Biden in the Democratic party do understand.” More

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      Fellow Republicans, it’s time to admit that the US economy isn’t bad

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      The Republican primaries are under way and – not surprisingly – the candidates have been ganging up on Bidenomics. Spoiler alert: they don’t like it. Fact check: they are wrong.To a man – and one woman – the Republican candidates all say that the US economy is bad and that Americans are struggling financially. They’re warning about sky-high deficits, over-the-top government spending and a potentially catastrophic level of national debt. They point out that interest rates are at a 20-year high and the costs of core things like food, gas and housing are significantly more than they were just a few years ago. They point to a downturn in manufacturing and falling small business confidence.“Bidenomics is crushing American families,” said the Republican candidate Nikki Haley. “We’re paying more for gas, groceries and other basic necessities.”“I’ll rip up Bidenomics on day one of my presidency,” the Florida governor and presidential challenger Ron DeSantis warned.Yes, prices and rates are up. But really? Is the economy so bad? I’m a Republican and a small business owner with hundreds of clients in many industries and honestly the economy isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s been really, really good.Just ask Donald Trump, who implicitly admitted this when he recently said he hoped for a “crash” and that it would “be in the next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover”.If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers.Last quarter’s gross domestic product showed growth of 5.2%. That’s a number that dwarfs all other pre-Covid recovery numbers in recent memory. Unemployment is at a record low. Each month the economy is adding hundreds of thousands of new jobs. There are millions of more open jobs available today compared with 2019.Yes, prices are higher, but inflation is down from a 9% annual rate to about 3%, so whatever the Federal Reserve did to offset the treasury’s spending on fiscal programs seems to be working. The stock market is near all-time highs, as is household wealth. Credit card delinquency rates are lower than they’ve been for the past 30 years as are delinquencies on all loans across the banking system. Holiday retail sales were strong and online sales boomed. Plenty of capital is available for businesses that need it and corporations have more cash on hand than in any year before the pandemic.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI speak to dozens of industry associations each year and here’s what I’m hearing: just about everyone had a good 2023. The CEOs of our major banks reported strong earnings, after taking into consideration special assessments and one-time charges. Retailers and restaurants have recovered from the pandemic. Convention traffic in Vegas is back to normal. There are almost as many travelers through the airports as there were before Covid. Businesses in the service industries recorded their 12th consecutive month of growth.Sure, there are struggles. Businesses in the real estate industry are challenged by high housing prices and a 13-year low in home sales. Manufacturing has been in contraction for the past 14 months. Media companies are flailing. Technology firms are struggling to find financing. The cost of capital is slowing down financing for small businesses. However, we live in a giant country. California’s economy is as large as that of the entire United Kingdom. North Carolina’s economy is bigger than Sweden’s. Texas’s is bigger than Canada’s. Not every business is going to be doing well in an economy this size. There will always be those that are struggling, be it because of their location, their industry, or the makeup of their customer and supplier base.There are plenty of things that could knock things off course in 2024. Wars. Oil prices. A terrorist attack. Another pandemic. If you want to find the bad in the economy you can do it. And that’s what all the Republican candidates are doing and fair enough, it’s an election year. It’s also true that Bidenomics may not be the reason behind our strong economy. But saying the US economy is bad just isn’t true no matter who you vote for. More