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      Sierra Leone’s Election: What to Know and Latest News

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      In Saturday’s vote, President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term to pursue an ambitious if unfulfilled education initiative, while the country is facing a crippling economic crisis.Since he became president of the small West African nation of Sierra Leone in 2018, Julius Maada Bio has dedicated 22 percent of the country’s budget to education, a policy that has sent an additional one million children to school and received attention from international backers.As Sierra Leoneans voted on Saturday for their next president — some lining up at polling stations hours before they were scheduled to open — Mr. Bio made that education initiative a key argument for voters to give him a second five-year term.But many voters have more urgent concerns than an education policy that has often fallen short: soaring inflation, youth unemployment, daily power cuts and relentless heat waves worsened by climate change.Across the country on Saturday, many polling stations remained closed because electoral materials or officials were missing.“Some of us have been here since 3 a.m. and still voting hasn’t started,” Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean writer, wrote on Instagram shortly before midday. “We don’t really understand what is going on.”New shade covers the Congo Market in Freetown, where relentless heat waves are making life increasingly difficult.Yagazie Emezi for The New York TimesWhat is at stake in the election?Sierra Leone, home to 8.4 million people and one of the world’s poorest countries, has gained attention for its new education policy, which if it succeeds, could inspire other countries in Africa and beyond.But economic matters top most voters’ concerns: The war in Ukraine has driven up fuel and food prices, including for rice, fish and gas.Year-on-year inflation is above 43 percent, the highest level in two decades. The national currency, the Leone, has had the worst depreciation in sub-Saharan Africa.“When Sierra Leoneans think they’ve reached the bottom, it gets worse,” said Cyril Jengo, an economist based in Freetown, the capital.The leading candidates say they plan to address the cost-of-living crisis, but Sierra Leone’s entire economy would need a revamp, analysts say, as it mostly relies on imports and is frequently hit by crises: the Ebola epidemic a decade ago, the coronavirus pandemic and now the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine.Who are the candidates?Out of 13 candidates, two have a credible chance of winning: Mr. Bio, the current president, and Samura Kamara, a former government minister.The election is a rematch: Mr. Bio was elected in 2018 after beating Mr. Kamara by a tight margin.Mr. Bio, 59, a former military officer who participated in two coups during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, briefly ruled the country in 1996 as the head of a military junta. He handed power to a democratically elected president a few months later and went to study in the United States. He returned to Sierra Leone, and ran for president in 2018.President Julius Maada Bio is seeking a second five-year term.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio has vowed to provide free health care to all children going to school, and to promote food self-sufficiency.Mr. Kamara, 72, is an economist who served as minister of finance and then foreign affairs when his party was in power in the 2010s.He has made broad promises about economic development, opportunities for youth and the fight against climate change.In 2021, Mr. Kamara was charged with embezzlement in a case tied to the renovation of Sierra Leone’s consulate in New York while he was foreign minister. Mr. Kamara’s supporters say the case, which is being heard by the Supreme Court, is politically motivated to discredit him. The case was adjourned so that he could run, but a ruling is expected in July.Samura Kamara is challenging Mr. Bio again after narrowly losing in 2018.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat is the president’s record?Through its education reform, Mr. Bio’s government has sought to ban school fees and recruited thousands of new teachers. More than 3.1 million children are now officially in school, up from under two million in 2018.But many parents still have to pay school fees, and teachers complain that they have not received the salary increase they were promised.Girls on their way to school in Freetown. Mr. Bio has dedicated 22 percent of Sierra Leone’s budget to education.John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Bio’s government has also adopted a land-rights policy aimed at protecting local communities against foreign companies seeking to exploit their land. And a new gender-equality policy requires employers to hire women to at least 30 percent of their positions — a minimum that the current government has not reached.But Mr. Bio has also been criticized for muzzling civil society groups and responding with violence to demonstrations last summer, resulting in more than 25 deaths. And his promises to address the economic crisis and develop agriculture sound hollow to many.“The poverty is endemic and deepening,” said Jimmy Kandeh, a Sierra Leonean professor emeritus of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “Whether the politics will deliver a change, I don’t think there’s much hope in that.”When, where and how do people vote?Some 3.4 million people are registered to vote on Saturday in Sierra Leone’s five administrative areas. They will also elect their members of Parliament, mayor or local chiefs, and local councilors.Observers from the African Union, the West African economic bloc known as ECOWAS, the European Union and the Carter Center are monitoring the vote. There is no electronic voting.What do polls predict, and when are results expected?Polls have Mr. Bio as the favorite. Many of the country’s 3.4 million voters vote along regional and ethnic allegiances.Presidential candidates must get 55 percent of the vote to win in the first round, and a runoff is likely, according to Mr. Kandeh. Results are expected to be announced by the electoral commission the following week. A runoff would be organized two weeks later.For the first time, polling officials will send results to a database run by the electoral commission via a dedicated app. Nigeria tested a similar method for the presidential election in February, but the process was plagued with problems, and the results were delayed.Joseph Johnson contributed research. More

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      For Turkey, Erdogan Victory Brings More Risky Economic Policy

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      The Turkish lira has hit a new low, and analysts see few improvements ahead as re-elected President Erdogan pursues unconventional economic policies.Since winning re-election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has publicly doubled down on his idiosyncratic economic policies.“If anyone can do this, I can do it,” he declared in a victory speech last Sunday, referring to his ability to solve the country’s calamitous economic problems.His brash confidence is not widely shared by most analysts and economists.The Turkish lira dropped to a record low against the dollar this week, and foreign investors have been disheartened by the president’s refusal to stray from what is widely considered to be an eccentric economic course.Instead of combating dizzying inflation by raising interest rates and making borrowing more expensive — as most economists recommend — Mr. Erdogan has repeatedly lowered rates. He argues that cheap credit will boost manufacturing and exports.But his strategy is also fueling inflation, now running at an annual rate of 44 percent, and eroding the value of the Turkish lira. Attempts by the government to prop up the faltering currency have drained the dwindling pool of foreign reserves.As the lira’s value drops, the price of imported goods — like medicine, energy, fertilizer and automobile parts — rises, making it more expensive for consumers to afford daily costs. And it raises the size of debt payments for businesses and households that have borrowed money from foreign lenders.The national budget is also coming under increasing strains. The destructive earthquakes in February that ripped up swaths of southern Turkey are estimated to have caused more than a billion dollars in damage, roughly 9 percent of the country’s annual economic output.At the same time, Mr. Erdogan went on a pre-election spending spree to attract voters, increasing salaries for public sector workers and payouts for retirees and offering households a month of free natural gas. The expenditures pushed up growth, but economists fear that such outlays will feed inflation.President Erdogan in Istanbul last month. Foreign investors have been disheartened by his refusal to stray from what is widely considered to be an eccentric economic course.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesAn effort to encourage Turks to keep their savings in lira by guaranteeing their balances against currency depreciations further adds to the government’s potential liabilities.Critics of the president’s economic approach were somewhat heartened by reports that Mr. Erdogan is expected this weekend to appoint Mehmet Simsek, a former finance minister and deputy prime minister, to the cabinet. Mr. Simsek is well thought of in financial circles and has previously supported a tighter monetary policy.“What Turkey really needs now is more exports and more foreign direct investment, and for that you have to send a signal,” said Henri Barkey, an international relations professor at Lehigh University. One signal could be Mr. Simsek’s appointment, he said.Mr. Barkey argues that Mr. Erdogan will have no choice but to make a U-turn on policy by winter, when energy import costs rise and some debt payments are due.Others are more skeptical that Mr. Erdogan will back down from his insistence that high interest rates fuel inflation. Kadri Tastan, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank based in Brussels, said that regardless of the cabinet’s makeup, he didn’t believe a policy turnaround was imminent.“I’m quite pessimistic about an enormous change, of course,” he said.To deal with the large external deficit and depleted central bank reserves, Mr. Erdogan has been relying on allies like Russia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to help bolster its reserves by depositing dollars with the central bank or extending payment deadlines and discounts for imported goods like natural gas.In a note to investors this week, Capital Economics wrote that any optimism about a policy shift is likely to be short-lived: “While policymakers like Simsek would probably pursue more restrained fiscal policy than we had envisaged, we doubt Erdogan would give the central bank license to hike policy rates to restore balance to the economy.”Turkey’s more than $900 billion economy makes it the eighth largest in Europe. And Mr. Erdogan’s efforts to position himself as a power broker between Russia and the European allies since the war in Ukraine began has further underscored Turkey’s geopolitical influence.Mr. Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades, built his electoral success on growth-oriented policies that lifted millions of Turks into the middle class. But the pumped-up expansion wasn’t sustainable.As the lira’s value drops, the price of imported goods rises.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe borrowing frenzy drove up prices, spurring a cost-of-living crisis. Still, Mr. Erdogan persisted in lowering interest rates and fired central bank chiefs who disagreed with him. The pandemic exacerbated problems by reducing demand for Turkish exports and limiting tourism, a large source of income.Mr. Erdogan is likely to keep up his expansionary policies until the next local elections take place next year. Until then, Hakan Kara, the former chief economist of the Central Bank of Turkey, said the country would probably just “muddle through.”“Turkish authorities will have to make tough decisions after the local elections, as something has to give in eventually,” Mr. Kara said. “Turkey has to either switch back to conventional policies, or further deviate from the free market economy where the central authority manages the economy through micro-control measures.”“In either case,” he added, “the adjustment is likely to be painful.” More

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      Erdogan’s Election Prospects Take a Hit as a Challenger Drops Out

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      With Turks going to the polls on Sunday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had hoped for a swift victory. But the departure of one challenger is likely to benefit his main competitor.Three days before Turks vote in crucial presidential elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chances of securing a swift victory took a hit on Thursday when one of his challengers left the race, a move likely to benefit Mr. Erdogan’s main competitor.The withdrawal of one of the race’s four contenders also increased the possibility that the main opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, could obtain a simple majority of votes on Sunday, a win that would suddenly end Mr. Erdogan’s 20-year streak as Turkey’s most prominent politician.The simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections will set the future course for Turkey, a major economy at the intersection of Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and a NATO ally of the United States.Opponents of Mr. Erdogan also view the elections as a make or break moment for Turkish democracy. A win for Mr. Erdogan, they say, would enable a leader who has extended his control over much of the state to gain even more power, whereas a loss could allow for a more democratic future.“That is the real choice we seem to be facing now: going down the road to authoritarianism or switching track and going back to democracy,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political science at Sabanci University in Istanbul.The election could also alter Turkey’s foreign affairs. Under Mr. Erdogan, Turkey has pursued a nonaligned foreign policy that has unnerved its NATO allies. While Turkey condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has sent aid to the Ukrainian military, Mr. Erdogan has pursued a closer relationship with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Erdogan has also hobbled efforts to expand NATO. Although Turkey eventually voted to allow Finland to join the alliance, greatly lengthening its border with Russia, Mr. Erdogan has so far refused to do the same for Sweden. Turkey has accused the Swedes of harboring Turkish terrorists. European officials have countered that Mr. Erdogan appears to be leveraging Turkey’s position in the alliance to settle political scores.Supporters of Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his party during a rally in Kayseri, last month.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesAt home, Mr. Erdogan’s standing has sunk, primarily because of extremely high inflation that has eaten into family budgets. Many economists attribute the inflation, which exceeded 80 percent last year, to Mr. Erdogan’s ill-advised financial policies.Seeking to unseat Mr. Erdogan is a coalition of six opposition parties that have backed a joint presidential candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a former civil servant. Mr. Kilicdaroglu has vowed that if he wins he will undo Mr. Erdogan’s legacy by restoring the independence of state institutions like the central bank in the Foreign Ministry, releasing political prisoners and strengthening democratic norms.Recent polls have suggested a slight lead for Mr. Kilicdaroglu, which would likely receive a lift from the withdrawal of one of the other candidates on Thursday.That candidate, Muharrem Ince, was predicted to win votes in the single digits, but even that could have been enough to deprive any other candidate of winning a majority, prompting a runoff between the top two vote-getters on May 28.Mr. Ince announced on Thursday that he was withdrawing from the race after sex tapes that supposedly showed him in compromising positions surfaced on social media. Mr. Ince dismissed them as fakes, but withdrew from the race nevertheless. He did not endorse another candidate, but pollsters said voters who would have voted for him were more likely to choose Mr. Kilicdaroglu over Mr. Erdogan.Since the ballots have already been printed, Mr. Ince’s name will still appear at the polls.Muharrem Ince, who dropped out of the election this week, with his supporters in Ankara, in April.Cagla Gurdogan/ReutersAnother candidate, Sinan Ogan, is also in the race, but his support is thought to be negligible.Analysts caution that many Turkish polls have proven unreliable in the past, and that how this one plays out could be surprising. Mr. Erdogan remains popular among a significant share of Turks, who like his nationalist rhetoric, credit him with developing the country or simply have a hard time imagining anyone else in power.Mr. Erdogan has also tapped state resources to increase his chances. In recent months, he has raised the minimum wage, increased civil servant salaries, changed regulations to allow millions of Turks to receive government pensions early and expanded assistance programs for the poor.Marketing himself as a leader who has increased Turkey’s stature on the world stage, he had a Turkish-built warship parked in central Istanbul, became the first owner of Turkey’s first domestically produced electric car and observed, via video link, the first fuel delivery to a Russian-built nuclear plant near the Mediterranean.He and his ministers have attacked the opposition as incompetent, backed by foreign powers and out to undermine family values by expanding L.G.B.T. rights.The opposition has tried to sell voters on the prospect of a brighter future if they win, vowing to tame inflation, restore political rights and move Turkey away from what they consider one-man rule.“This election is very important, and we have to end this autocratic, crazy system,” said Bilge Yilmaz, an economist who oversees economic policy for one of the six opposition parties. “The country deserves better, needs to do better.” More

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      Turkey’s Election: What You Need to Know

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      With the economy in crisis, the vote on Sunday is shaping up to be one of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s toughest fights to hold onto power in his 20 years as the country’s premier politician.Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are shaping up to be a referendum on the long tenure of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the country’s dominant politician over the last two decades.Mr. Erdogan, 69, has led Turkey since 2003, when he became prime minister. At the start, he was widely hailed as an Islamist democrat who promised to make the predominately Muslim country and NATO member a bridge between the Muslim world and the West. But more recently, critics have accused him of mismanaging a deep economic crisis.Now, Mr. Erdogan, who has long staved off challengers with a fiery populist style, finds himself in an extremely tight race as he seeks a third five-year term as president.What’s at stake?At the top of voters’ concerns is the reeling economy. Inflation, which surpassed 80 percent last year but has since come down, has severely eroded their purchasing power.The government has also been criticized for its initially slow response to the catastrophic earthquakes in February, which left more than 50,000 people dead. The natural disaster raised questions about whether the government bore responsibility, in part, for a raft of shoddy construction projects across the country in recent years that contributed to the high death toll.The election could also affect Turkey’s geopolitical position. The country’s relations with the United States and other NATO allies have been strained as Mr. Erdogan has strengthened ties with Russia, even after its invasion of Ukraine last year.When Mr. Erdogan first became prime minister in 2003, many Turks saw him as a dynamic figure who promised a bright economic future. And for many years, his government delivered. Incomes rose, lifting millions of Turks into the middle class as new airports, roads and hospitals were built across the country. He also reduced the power of the country’s secular elite and tamed the military, which had held great sway since Turkey’s founding in 1923.But in more recent years, and especially since he became president in 2014, critics have accused Mr. Erdogan of using the democratic process to enhance his powers, pushing the country toward autocracy.All along, Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party remained a force at the ballot box, winning elections and passing referendums that allowed Mr. Erdogan to seize even more power, largely with the support of poorer, religiously conservative voters.But economic trouble began around 2014. The value of the national currency eroded, foreign investors fled and, more recently, inflation spiked.A master of self-preservation, Mr. Erdogan earned a reputation for marginalizing anyone who challenged him. After an attempted coup in 2016, his government jailed tens of thousands of people accused of belonging to the religious movement formerly allied with Mr. Erdogan that the government accused of cooking up the plot to oust him. More than 100,000 others were removed from state jobs.Today, Turkey is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists.After the earthquake, workers cleared rubble from what was an apartment complex in Antakya, Turkey, in February.Emily Garthwaite for The New York TimesWho is running?Mr. Erdogan faces stiff competition from a newly unified opposition that has appealed to voters’ disillusionment with his stewardship of the economy and what they call his push for one-man rule. They are backing a joint candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a retired civil servant who has vowed to restore Turkish democracy and the independence of state bodies like the central bank while improving ties with the West.Mr. Kilicdaroglu is the leader of the Republican People’s Party.Recent polls suggest a slight edge for Mr. Kilicdaroglu, 74, who is campaigning in opposition not only to Erdogan’s polices, but also to his brash style. He has fashioned himself as a steady Everyman and has pledged to retire after one term to spend time with his grandchildren.“The opposition has made a pretty good case that Turks have suffered economically because of Mr. Erdogan’s mismanagement,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkey scholar at the Brookings Institution.Other candidates include Muharrem Ince, who split from the Republican People’s Party to found the Homeland Party. Votes for him and another candidate, Sinan Ogan, could prevent either of the two front-runners from winning an outright majority, which would lead to a runoff on May 28.Kemal Kilicdaroglu is the front-runner among the opposition candidates for president.Sedat Suna/EPA, via ShutterstockWill these elections be free and fair?As in previous elections, Mr. Erdogan has used his expanded presidential powers to try and tilt the playing field in his favor.In recent months, he has increased the minimum wage, boosted civil servant salaries, increased assistance to poor families and changed regulations to allow millions of Turks to receive their government pensions earlier, all to insulate voters from the effects of rising prices.In December, a judge believed to be acting in support of Mr. Erdogan barred the mayor of Istanbul, a potential presidential challenger at the time, from politics after convicting him of insulting public officials. The mayor has remained in office pending appeal.Electoral posters for the Republican People’s Party, or C.H.P., in Kayseri.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThis would not be the first time that potential opponents of Mr. Erdogan have been sidelined.Selahattin Demirtas, of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, ran his presidential campaign from prison in 2018. The Turkish authorities have accused him of affiliation with a terrorist organization, but rights organizations have called his imprisonment politically motivated.Turkey has fought a decades-long battle with Kurdish separatists in the country and considers them terrorists.Mr. Demirtas’ party, the country’s third largest, has come under pressure from the constitutional court in the lead-up to the election. It is now running its campaign under a different party.The news media, largely controlled by private companies loyal to the government, have “worked as loyal propaganda machines,” said Ms. Aydintasbas, saying pro-government journalists have downplayed the economic crisis and trumpeted Mr. Erdogan’s response to the earthquake crisis as heroic.A local official in Antakya counting voting lists and slips ahead of this weekend’s election.Umit Bektas/ReutersWhat’s next?Voters will cast their ballots for the president and Parliament at polls across the country, which will open on Sunday at 8 a.m. local time and close at 5 p.m. Preliminary presidential results are expected later that evening, and parliamentary results on Monday.If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes, the election will go to a runoff on May 28.Gulsin Harman More

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      Joe Biden and the Not-So-Bad Economy

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      Joe Biden has, to nobody’s surprise, formally announced that he is seeking re-election. And I, for one, am dreading the year and a half of political crystal ball gazing that lies ahead of us — a discussion to which I will have little if anything to add.One thing I may be able to contribute to, however, is the way we talk about the Biden economy. Much political discussion, it seems to me, is informed by a sense that the economy will be a major liability for Democrats — a sense that is strongly affected by out-of-date or questionable data.Of course, a lot can change between now and November 2024. We could have a recession, maybe as the delayed effect of monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve. We might all too easily face a financial crisis this summer when, as seems likely, Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling — and nobody knows how that will play out politically.Right now, however, the economy is in better shape than I suspect most pundits or even generally well-informed readers may realize.The basic story of the Biden economy is that America has experienced a remarkably fast and essentially complete job market recovery. This recovery was initially accompanied by distressingly high inflation; but inflation, while still high by the standards of the past few decades, has subsided substantially. The overall situation is, well, not so bad.About jobs: Unless you’ve been getting your news from Tucker Carlson or Truth Social, you’re probably aware that the unemployment rate is hovering near historic lows. However, I keep hearing assertions that this number is misleading, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the labor force — which was true a year ago.But it’s not true anymore. There are multiple ways to make this point, but one way is to compare where we are now with projections made just before Covid struck. In January 2020 the Congressional Budget Office projected that by the first quarter of 2023 nonfarm employment would be 154.8 million; the actual number for March was 155.6 million. As a recent report from the Council of Economic Advisers points out, labor force participation — the percentage of adults either working or actively looking for work — is also right back in line with pre-Covid projections.In short, we really are back at full employment.Inflation isn’t as happy a picture. If we measure inflation by the annual rate of change in consumer prices over the past six months — my current preference for trying to extract the signal from the noise — inflation was almost 10 percent in June 2022. But it’s now down to just 3.5 percent.That’s still above the Fed’s target of 2 percent, and there’s intense debate among economists about how hard it will be to get inflation all the way down (intense because nobody really knows the answer). But maybe some perspective is in order. The current inflation rate is lower than it was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.Or consider the “misery index,” the sum of unemployment and inflation — a crude measure that nonetheless seems to do a pretty good job of predicting consumer sentiment. Using six-month inflation, that index is currently about 7, roughly the same as it was in 2017, when few people considered the economy a disaster.But never mind these fancy statistics — don’t people perceive the economy as terrible? After all, news coverage tends to emphasize the negative: You hear a lot about soaring prices of gasoline or eggs, much less when they come back down. Even amid a vast jobs boom, consumers report having heard much more negative than positive news about employment.Even so, do people consider the economy awful? It depends on whom you ask. The venerable Michigan Survey still shows consumer sentiment at levels heretofore associated with severe economic crises. But the also well-established Conference Board survey — which, as it happens, has a much larger sample size — tells a different story: Its “present situation” index is fairly high, roughly comparable to what it was in 2017. That is, it’s more or less in line with the misery index.And for what it’s worth, both the strength of consumer spending, even in the relatively soft latest report on G.D.P., and the failure of the much-predicted red wave to materialize in the midterm elections look a lot more Conference Board than Michigan.Again, a lot can happen between now and the election. But what strikes me is that consumers already expect a lot of bad news. The Conference Board expectations index is far below its “present situation” index; consumers expect 4 to 5 percent inflation over the next year, while financial markets expect a number more like 2. If we either don’t have a recession or any recession is brief and mild, if inflation actually does come down, voters seem set to view those outcomes as a positive surprise.Now, I’m not predicting a “morning in America”-type election; such things probably aren’t even possible in an era of intense partisanship. But the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden Is Running on His Record as President. Here’s Where He Stands.

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      President Biden has acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintains, is an argument for his re-election.WASHINGTON — Just hours after formally kicking off his re-election campaign, President Biden appeared on Tuesday before a crowd of union supporters chanting “four more years” to outline his case for a second term.In his telling, unsurprisingly, the record sounds pretty good — more jobs, more roads and bridges, more clean energy, more opportunities for workers without college degrees. In just two and a half years, he argued, he has helped restore America following a debilitating pandemic and societal collapse. “Our economic plan is working,” he maintained.But as with any incumbent seeking a renewal by voters, there is the record he is running on and the record he is running away from. During his address to more than 3,000 members of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Mr. Biden made no mention of the promises he has failed to achieve so far or the setbacks that have left him with some of the lowest approval ratings of a president at this point in their term.Mr. Biden’s record looks different depending on the angle from which it is viewed, all the more so in polarized times when voters and viewers migrate to their own corners of the information world for radically different vantage points. The president is either the mature leader fixing the country as he stands against the forces of evil or he is the leader of the forces of evil destroying the country.“Under my predecessor, infrastructure week became a punchline,” Mr. Biden told the union members, mocking former President Donald J. Trump’s failure to pass legislation rebuilding the nation’s worn public facilities that his successor did succeed in enacting. “On my watch, infrastructure has become a decade headline — a decade.”Mr. Trump, now seeking a rematch against Mr. Biden in 2024, gave his potential opponent no credit. “When I stand on that debate stage and compare our records,” he said in a statement, “it will be radical Democrats’ worst nightmare because there’s never been a record as bad as they have, and our country has never been through so much.”Along with the $1 trillion infrastructure package, which passed with Republican votes, Mr. Biden can boast of sweeping legislative victories that would have seemed improbable when he took office. Among other measures he pushed through a Congress with narrow Democratic majorities were a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package; major investments to combat climate change; lower prescription drug costs for seniors; increased corporate taxes; expanded treatment for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and incentives to turbocharge the semiconductor industry.He has been unable, however, to fulfill other major promises, including an assault weapons ban; an immigration overhaul providing a path to citizenship for migrants in the country illegally; two years of free community college; free universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds; national paid sick leave; greater voting rights protections; and policing changes to counter excessive force. Some of those were never realistic in the first place, but Mr. Biden was the one to highlight them as priorities.His economic record is similarly complicated. More than 12 million jobs have been created since he took office as the economy bounced back from the pandemic, and unemployment is at or near its lowest level in a half-century. But inflation rocketed up to its highest level in four decades, which some critics blamed on excessive federal spending under Mr. Biden, although cost increases have been a global phenomenon. Likewise, gas prices shot up to record levels. While both have begun to come back down — inflation has fallen from 9 percent to 5 percent — Americans remain skittish about the economy, according to polls, and economists still worry about a possible recession.After fitful starts, Mr. Biden has presided over the easing of the Covid pandemic and accompanying restrictions despite vaccine resistance among many, especially on the political right. But he has failed to quell a surge of migration at the southwestern border, where attempted crossings have hit record highs, and Republicans blame him for a wave of crime, which actually began while Mr. Trump was still in office.Mr. Biden has worked to reverse Mr. Trump’s impact on the judiciary, pushing through more judicial appointments through the Senate in his first two years than his predecessor had, but the pipeline has slowed in recent months with the absence of an ailing Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, from the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Biden fulfilled his promise to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson.Where he has not been able to work his will on lawmakers, he has relied on an expansive interpretation of his executive power to achieve policy goals, most notably his decision to forgive $400 billion in student loans. But such actions are inherently subject to court challenges, and analysts expect the Supreme Court to overrule the student loan decision.In the international arena, Mr. Biden worked to revitalize international ties that had frayed under Mr. Trump, recommitting to NATO and rejoining the Paris climate change accord. But his effort to resurrect the Iran nuclear agreement abandoned by Mr. Trump has gone nowhere.Mr. Biden’s withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan after 20 years turned into a debacle, leading to a swift and brutal takeover of the country by the Taliban and a chaotic withdrawal of troops and allies, with fleeing Afghans swarming American planes and a suicide bomber killing 13 American troops and 170 civilians.Although Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. Biden over the episode, the president was carrying out a pullout deal that his predecessor struck with the Taliban, a pact that one of Mr. Trump’s own national security advisers called a “surrender agreement.” Some experts argue the fiasco at the Kabul airport emboldened President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to assume that Mr. Biden was weak.But Mr. Biden rallied the world when Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine last year to isolate Moscow and cut off much of its financial ties with the West. With bipartisan support, Mr. Biden has committed more than $100 billion to arm Ukraine’s military and enable its government and people to survive the Russian onslaught. American assistance helped the Ukrainians surprise Russian invaders by preventing the takeover of their capital and most of the country, but the situation remains volatile.It remains volatile at home as well. Mr. Biden made the theme of his inaugural address his desire to unite the country after the divisions of the Trump years. And while he has to some extent lowered the temperature in Washington and worked at times with Republicans, America remains deeply polarized.Republicans accuse Mr. Biden of being the divisive one, citing his rhetoric assailing “MAGA Republicans” and blaming him for the investigations of his rival, Mr. Trump, although there is no evidence of involvement by the president.In his campaign kickoff video and subsequent speech on Tuesday, Mr. Biden acknowledged that he has not accomplished all he wished to. But that, he maintained, was an argument for his re-election. “We’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said. More

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      Jobs Report Bolsters Biden’s Economic Pitch, but Inflation Still Nags

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      WASHINGTON — Gradually slowing job gains and a growing labor force in March delivered welcome news to President Biden, nearly a year after he declared that the job market needed to cool significantly to tame high prices.The details of the report are encouraging for a president whose economic goal is to move from rapid job gains — and high inflation — to what Mr. Biden has called “stable, steady growth.” Job creation slowed to 236,000 for the month, closing in on the level Mr. Biden said last year would be necessary to stabilize the economy and prices. More Americans joined the labor force, and wage gains fell slightly. Those developments should help to further cool inflation.But the report also underscored the political and economic tensions for the president as he seeks to sell Americans on his economic stewardship ahead of an expected announcement this spring that he will seek re-election.Republicans criticized Mr. Biden for the deceleration in hiring and wage growth. Some analysts warned that after a year of consistently beating forecasters’ expectations, job growth appeared set to fall sharply or even turn negative in the coming months. That is in part because banks are pulling back lending after administration officials and the Federal Reserve intervened last month to head off a potential financial crisis.Surveys suggest that Americans’ views of the economy are improving, but that people remain displeased by its performance and pessimistic about its future. A CNN poll conducted in March and released this week showed that seven in 10 Americans rated the economy as somewhat or very poor. Three in five respondents expected the economy to be poor a year from now.As he tours the country in preparation for the 2024 campaign, Mr. Biden has built his economic pitch around a record rebound in job creation. He regularly visits factories and construction sites in swing states, casting corporate hiring promises as direct results of a White House legislative agenda that produced hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments in infrastructure, low-emission energy, semiconductor manufacturing and more.On Friday, the president took the same approach to the March employment data. “This is a good jobs report for hardworking Americans,” he said in a written statement, before listing seven states where companies this week have announced expansions that Mr. Biden linked to his agenda.But as he frequently does, Mr. Biden went on to caution that “there is more work to do” to bring down high prices that are squeezing workers and families.Aides were equally upbeat. Lael Brainard, who directs Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, told MSNBC that it was a “really nice” report overall.“Generally this report is consistent with steady and stable growth,” Ms. Brainard said. “We’re seeing some moderation — we’re certainly seeing reduction in inflation that has been quite welcome.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.But analysts warned that the coming months could bring a much more rapid deterioration in hiring, as banks pull back on lending in the wake of the government bailout of depositors at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote Friday that he expected job gains to fall to just 50,000 in May, and for the economy to begin shedding jobs on a net basis over the summer. But he acknowledged that the job market continued to surprise analysts, in a good way, by pulling more and more workers back into the labor force.“Labor demand and supply are moving back into balance,” Mr. Shepherdson wrote.In May, Mr. Biden wrote that monthly job creation needed to fall from an average of 500,000 jobs to something closer to 150,000, a level that he said would be “consistent with a low unemployment rate and a healthy economy.”Since then, the president has had a complicated relationship with the labor market. Job creation has remained far stronger than many forecasters — and Mr. Biden himself — expected. That growth has delighted Mr. Biden’s political advisers and helped the economy avoid a recession. But it has been accompanied by inflation well above historical norms, which continues to hamstring consumers and dampen Mr. Biden’s approval ratings.The March report showed the political difficulty of reconciling those two economic realities. Analysts called the cooling in job and wage growth welcome signs for the Federal Reserve in its campaign to bring down inflation by raising interest rates.But that cooling included a decline of 1,000 manufacturing jobs, for which some groups blamed the Fed. “America’s factories continue to experience the destabilizing influence of rising interest rates,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a trade group. “The Federal Reserve must understand that its policies are undermining our global competitiveness.”Republicans blasted Mr. Biden for falling wage growth. “Average hourly wages continue to trend down even as inflation has wiped out any nominal wage gains for more than two years,” Tommy Pigott, rapid response director for the Republican National Committee, said in a news release.Representative Jason Smith, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said the report showed that “small businesses and job creators are reacting to the dark clouds looming over the economy.”In his own release, Mr. Biden nodded to one of the clouds that could turn into an economic storm as soon as this summer: a standoff over raising the nation’s borrowing limit, which could result in a government default that throws millions of Americans out of work. Republicans have refused to budge unless Mr. Biden agrees to unspecified spending cuts.Mr. Biden has refused to negotiate directly over raising the limit. He closed his jobs report statement on Friday with a shot at congressional Republicans’ strategy. “I will stop those efforts to put our economy at risk,” he said. More

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      The Fed’s Struggle With Inflation Has the Markets on Edge

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      The central bank’s success or failure will affect your wallet and, maybe, the next election, our columnist says.Clarity about the future of inflation and the stock and bond markets would be wonderful right now, but that’s just what we don’t have.What we do have are enormous quantities of inconclusive data. There is something for everyone, and for every possible interpretation.The Federal Reserve is intent on whipping inflation now — to borrow an infamous phrase from the Ford administration, which failed spectacularly to “WIN” in the 1970s. But despite a series of steep interest rate increases by the Fed, and its stated intention to raise rates further this year, inflation remains intolerably high.“We’re stuck in the messy middle,” Josh Hirt, senior economist at Vanguard, said in a note this month.It’s a muddle right now, and the lurching stock and fixed-income markets reflect investors’ uncertainty.In testimony before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, made it clear that the central bank not only intends to keep raising interest rates, but will increase them even more than “previously anticipated” if it deems that necessary to squelch inflation.It’s too soon to say how effective the measures taken by the Fed have been. The economy has been generating a lot of jobs and unemployment is quite low, but corporate earnings are beginning to fall. At some point, the economy is going to slow down — Vanguard thinks that may not happen until the end of the year. We may be heading into a recession. Or we may not be. The verdict isn’t in yet.Really long-term investors can ride out the turmoil, and those who prize safety above all else have reasonably good options now, too: There are plenty of attractive, high-interest places to park your cash.But what transpires in the next few months will still be critical for consumers and investors, and may even determine the outcome of the next presidential election. Considering what’s at stake, it is worth wading a little more deeply into this morass.The Fed and InflationThe Fed finds itself in a difficult spot. It has declared that it intends to bring inflation down to its longtime 2 percent target, but prices keep rising much faster than that.Our Coverage of the Investment WorldThe decline of the stock and bond markets this year has been painful, and it remains difficult to predict what is in store for the future.Value and Growth Stocks: Eight tech giants are no longer “pure growth” stocks, while Exxon and Chevron are, according to a new study. Here is what that means for investors.2023 Predictions: There are plenty of forecasts coming for where the S&P 500 will be at the end of the year. Should you be paying attention to them?May I Speak to a Human?: Younger investors who are navigating market volatility and trying to save for retirement are finding that digital investment platforms lack the personal touch.Tips for Investors: When you invest and where matters for taxes. But a few rules of thumb can stave off some nasty surprises.That 2 percent target is an arbitrary number, without much science to it. Whether 2 percent inflation is better than, say, 1.5 or 2.5 or 3 percent inflation — and how the inflation rate should be measured — are all open for debate. Let’s save those issues for another day.For now, the Fed has drawn a red line at 2 percent, and its credibility is at stake. The Consumer Price Index in January rose at more than three times that target rate.  The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which the Fed favors — and which, not coincidentally, generally produces lower readings than the C.P.I. — rose at a 5.4 percent annual rate in January, which was more than in the previous month. No matter how you slice it, inflation is ugly.So the Fed has few immediate options. It will keep raising the federal funds rate, the short-term interest rate it controls, in an effort to slow the economy and squelch inflation. The only questions are how high it will go and how rapidly it will get there. Traders in the bond market, who set longer-term rates through bidding and purchases, have had trouble coming up with consistent answers.  The central bank has already raised the short-term federal funds rate substantially and quickly, to a range of 4.5 to 4.75 percent, up from near zero just a year ago. But the federal funds rate is a blunt instrument, and the economic effects of these rate increases operate with a significant lag,The Fed could easily plunge the economy into a major recession. In a misguided bet that the Fed would beat inflation quickly or that a recession would arrive so definitively that the Fed could reverse course, bond traders began moving longer-term rates lower in October. That optimism also set off a stock market rally.But lately, with inflation and the economy failing to respond as traders had expected, the outlook has turned gloomier. Treasury yields reached or exceeded 5 percent for so-called risk-free securities in the range of three months to two years. That’s an attractive proposition in comparison with the stock market, and it’s no accident that stocks have fallen.Bonds and StocksEven 10-year Treasury yields have ascended to the 4 percent range. Compared with stocks, Treasuries in a murky market are, for the moment, exceptionally attractive.Falling earnings haven’t helped the stock market, either. For the last three months of 2022, the earnings of companies in the S&P 500 declined 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the latest I/B/E/S data from Refinitiv. And if you exclude the windfall from the energy sector, where prices were bolstered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, earnings fell 7.4 percent, the data showed.Corporate prospects for 2023 have begun to dim a bit, too, executives and Wall Street analysts are concluding. On Feb. 21, both Home Depot and Walmart warned that consumer spending had come under strain. The S&P 500 fell 2 percent that day, the worst performance for the short year to that date, in what Howard Silverblatt, a senior analyst for S&P Dow Jones Indices, called a “turnaround point” for the stock market.Whipping InflationIt’s early yet in 2023, but so far, stock investors are maintaining a relentless focus on the Fed, whose policymakers next meet March 21 and 22 and are all but certain to raise short-term interest rates further. The only questions are by how much, and how high rates will end up before the Fed concludes that it has accomplished its objective.  But with Mr. Powell aspiring to achieve the performance of his illustrious predecessor Paul A. Volcker, who vanquished inflation in the 1980s and set off two recessions to do it, it’s a fair bet that the Fed won’t back off its rate tightening policy soon.Bring down inflation and you are likely to be remembered as a hero. Bungle the job and you may well be memorialized as officials in President Gerald R. Ford’s administration have been, for their hapless effort to “whip inflation now.” In a widely derided public relations stunt in 1974, when inflation was running above 12 percent, the Ford White House distributed buttons with the WIN acronym, but that administration never beat inflation.It wasn’t until the next president, Jimmy Carter, appointed Mr. Volcker that the Fed even began to get control of inflation — and Mr. Volcker didn’t finish the job until the Reagan administration was well underway.The 2024 ElectionThe outcome of the next presidential election could well depend on whether the Fed gets the job done this time — and whether it causes a severe recession in the process.Ray Fair, a Yale economics professor who has been predicting presidential and congressional elections for decades, points out in a succinct note on his website that the political effects of the Fed’s efforts will be large. In his work, Professor Fair relies only on economic variables — and not the customary staples of political analysis — to forecast elections. His record is excellent.He outlines two paths for the economy. Because President Biden is an incumbent, and is likely to run for re-election, good economic results would be expected to help his cause.“In the positive case for the Democrats, if inflation is 3 percent in 2023 and 2 percent in 2024,” Professor Fair wrote, and if the economy grows at 4 percent rate in 2024 before the election, his economic model says the Democratic candidate is highly likely to win the presidency.On the other hand, he said, “in the negative case for the Democrats, if inflation is 5 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024” and if the economy shrinks 2 percent in 2024 — in a recession — a Republican is highly likely to be the next president. He added, “Somewhere in between regarding the economy will mean a close election.”These statements assume that only the two main political parties mount credible campaigns. A well run third-party candidacy would complicate matters considerably.I’m not making any bets, either on politics or on the economy.  It’s all too complex and confused now.As always, for investments of at least a decade and, preferably, longer, low-cost index funds that mirror the entire markets are a good choice.Bonds are a safe and well-paying option right now. So is cash, held in money market funds or high-yield bank savings accounts.We may well be at a turning point, but taking us where, exactly? Unless you somehow know, it may be wise to play it safe for a while. More