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      Hard Questions if Biden’s Approval Doesn’t Follow Economy’s Rise

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      This is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around, including Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.President Biden promoting domestic chip manufacturing.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesDoesn’t it feel as if everything’s breaking President Biden’s way lately?His chief rival — whom Mr. Biden already beat in 2020 and whom Democrats, in a sense, beat again in the midterms — is facing criminal indictments and yet currently finds himself cruising to the nomination anyway.The economy — which teetered on the edge of recession for two years with inflation rising and real wages declining — seems as if it might be on track for a soft landing, with inflation falling, real wages rising and the stock market recovering.The backlash against “woke” — a topic Republicans seemed most keen on exploiting in the Biden era — appears to have receded significantly, whether because Donald J. Trump has taken up much of the oxygen; conservatives have overreached; or progressives have reined in their excesses and fallen back to defense after conservatives went on offense.It’s probably too soon to expect these recent developments to lift Mr. Biden’s approval ratings, which remain mired in the low 40s. But if these trends persist, many of the explanations for Mr. Biden’s low approval will quickly become less credible. If his numbers don’t start to move over the next several months — with the wind seemingly at his back — it will quickly begin to raise more serious questions about his standing heading into the 2024 election.To this point in his presidency, it has been fairly easy to attribute his low ratings to economic conditions. Yes, unemployment was low and growth remained steady. But inflation surged, real incomes dropped, stocks fell into a bear market, a recession seemed imminent, and voters could see the signs of a struggling economy everywhere, including supply chain shortages and onerous interest rates.It’s fair to question whether economic conditions have actually been as bad as voters say, but it’s also fair to acknowledge these kinds of conditions can yield a pessimistic electorate. Two bouts of inflation that are reminiscent of today’s post-pandemic economy — the postwar economies of 1920 and 1946 — were catastrophic for the party in power, even as unemployment remained low by the standards of the era.Historically, it can feel as if almost every major political upheaval comes with inflation, whether it’s the Great Unrest in Britain, the Red Summer in the U.S. or even the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany. If high bread prices can be argued to have helped cause the French Revolution, it’s easy to accept that 9 percent inflation (at its peak in June 2022) could hurt Mr. Biden’s approval ratings by five or 10 percentage points.But if inflation has been what’s holding Mr. Biden back, it’s hard to say it should hold him back for too much longer. Annual inflation fell to 3 percent last month, and real incomes have finally started to rise. The stock market — one of the most visible and consequential measures of the economy for millions of Americans — has increased around 15 percent over the last six months. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index surged 13 percent in July, reaching the highest level since September 2021 — the first full month Mr. Biden’s approval ratings were beneath 50 percent.There’s another factor that ought to help Mr. Biden’s approval rating: the onset of a new phase of the Republican primary campaign, including debates. As the Republican candidates become more prominent in American life, voters may start judging Mr. Biden against the alternatives, not just in isolation. Some of the Democratic-leaning voters who currently disapprove of Mr. Biden might begin to look at the Biden presidency in a different light.Perhaps in part for these reasons, this is about the time when many presidents see their standing turn around. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s approval ratings were clearly on the upswing at this stage of the election cycle — though both were still beneath 50 percent — as voters began to see and feel an improving economy.We will see in the months ahead whether Mr. Biden’s ratings begin to increase. I wouldn’t expect it to happen quickly: Mr. Reagan and Mr. Clinton’s ratings increased by less than a point per month between roughly this time and their re-election. Barack Obama’s ratings increased at a similar, if slightly slower, pace from his post-debt-ceiling-crisis nadir a little later in the year.But even if it is not quick, I would expect Mr. Biden’s ratings to begin to increase if these conditions remain in place. Today’s era may be polarized, but there are plenty of persuadable and even Democratic-leaning voters — who disapprove of his performance — available to return to his side.If the economy keeps improving and yet his ratings remain stagnant in the months ahead, it will gradually begin to raise hard questions about the real source of his weakness — including the possibility that his age, by feeding the perception of a feeble president, prevents voters from seeing him as effective, whatever his actual record. More

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      Can Biden Change the Economic Narrative?

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      Back in the 1970s, Arthur Okun, an economist who had been a policy adviser to Lyndon Johnson, suggested a quick-and-dirty way to assess the nation’s economic condition: the “misery index,” the sum of inflation and unemployment. It was and is a crude, easily criticized measure. The measurable economic harm from unemployment, for instance, is much higher than that from inflation. Yet the index has historically done a quite good job of predicting overall economic sentiment.So it seems worth noting that the misery index — which soared along with inflation during 2021 and the first half of 2022 — has plunged over the past year. It is now all the way back to its level when President Biden took office.This remarkable turnaround raises several questions. First, is it real? (Yes.) Second, will ordinary Americans notice? (They already have.) Third, will they give Biden credit? (That’s a lot less clear.)The plunge in the misery index reflects both what didn’t happen and what did. What didn’t happen, despite a drumbeat of dire warnings in the news media, was a recession. The U.S. economy added four million jobs over the past year, and the unemployment rate has remained near a 50-year low.What did happen was a rapid decline in inflation. But is this decline sustainable? You may have seen news reports pointing out that “core” inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, has been “sticky,” suggesting that improvement on the inflation front will be only a temporary phenomenon.But just about every economist paying attention to the data knows that the traditional measure of core inflation has gone rotten, because it’s being driven largely by the delayed effects of a surge in rents that ended in mid-2022. This surge, by the way, was probably caused by the rise in remote work triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic rather than by any Biden administration policy.Alternative measures of core inflation that exclude shelter by and large show a clear pattern of disinflation; inflation is still running higher than it was before the pandemic, but it has come down a lot. If you really work at it, it’s still possible to be pessimistic about the inflation outlook, but it’s getting harder and harder. The good news about inflation, and about the economy as a whole, does look real.But are people noticing this improvement? Traditional measures of economic sentiment have become problematic in recent years: Ask people how the economy is doing, and their response is strongly affected both by partisanship and, I believe, by the narratives conveyed by the news media. That is, what people say about the economy is, all too often, what they think they’re supposed to say.But if you ask Americans more specific questions, such as whether now is a good time to find a quality job, they typically say yes. At the same time, their expectations about future inflation have declined substantially.And if you look at a novel indicator — what information people are searching for on the internet — you’ll find that searches for both “inflation” and “recession” soared in 2021-22 along with the misery index but have plunged over the past year.Finally, as always, it’s important to look at what people do as well as what they say. Strong consumer spending, record levels of air travel and many other indicators suggest that Americans are feeling pretty good about their economic circumstances.But will Biden get credit? Polls suggest that voters are still giving him very poor marks for his handling of the economy, despite the decline in the misery index.Some analysts have argued that this jaundiced view reflects a failure of wages to keep up with inflation. But this was true for most of the Reagan years too, and in any case real wages have been rising lately.So will voters’ views of the Biden economy eventually reflect the good news? Or did the inflation shock of 2021-22 establish a narrative of Biden as a poor economic manager that has become too deeply entrenched — both in the public consciousness and in the news media — to be dislodged even as the economy rapidly improves?Biden himself is trying hard to change that narrative, by pointing both to the improving data and to an impressive surge in manufacturing investment. But I have no idea whether he’ll succeed. One encouraging precedent for Biden: Ronald Reagan still had fairly low approval in mid-1983, then went on to win a landslide in 1984 on the strength of the economy’s recovery. Biden might yet turn the narrative on his economic policy around.And even if he can’t, it might not matter. High inflation was supposed to guarantee a huge red wave in the midterm elections. Instead, Democrats did surprisingly well, probably because abortion and other social issues played a bigger role than economics. Those social issues aren’t going away, while high inflation is. Arguably, Biden doesn’t need to convince Americans that his economic policies have been highly successful; he just needs to make the case that the economy isn’t doing too badly.And it isn’t. In fact, by most measures the economy is doing quite well.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 Trying to Co-opt Trump’s Biggest Strength

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      Joe Biden just offered a window into what a Biden-Trump rematch might look like. Well, part of it, at least.The wildness of Donald Trump’s political style often obscures — at least to his critics — the more banal dimensions of his appeal. The strongest of Trump’s arguments, and the one Biden has the most to fear from in 2024, is economic. In 2016, Trump ran as a businessman savant who would wield his mastery of the deal in service of the American people. “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” Trump said. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”Trump said that elites had sold you out. They traded your job to China. They let your bridges and roads and buildings crumble. They respected the work they did — work that happens behind a computer screen, work that needs fancy degrees, work that happens in offices rather than factories and cities rather than towns — and dismissed the work you did. They got rich and you got nothing. Exit polls found that Trump won large majorities among those who thought the economy was “fair” or “poor.”Trump did not, during his presidency, turn that critique into an agenda. There were islands of action — trade policy foremost among them — but the order of the day was incoherence. Infrastructure weeks came and went. Tax cuts were tilted toward the rich. There was no strategy to restore America’s manufacturing prowess or rebuild bargaining power for workers without college degrees.But Trump had the good fortune to take office during an economic boom. And he kept that boom going. He worked with congressional Republicans to tax less and spend more, budget deficits be damned. He appointed Jay Powell to the Federal Reserve, and Powell kept money cheap and the labor market hot. Unemployment, in February 2020, was 3.5 percent. Wages were rising and inflation was low.Then Covid hit, and Trump worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to flood the economy with trillions of dollars in support payments. Joblessness spiked, but workers overall didn’t suffer. This is Trump’s deepest well of strength in a 2024 rematch. Only about a third of voters approve of the job Biden has done on the economy. Polls show Trump is the more trusted economic manager, by far.On Wednesday, in Chicago, Biden previewed the counterargument he’ll make in a much-hyped speech defining “Bidenomics.” Biden’s case is this: What Trump only promised, I delivered.Biden set his economic policies in contrast to “40 years of trickle-down.” Trickle-down economics usually describes the theory that tax cuts at the top will lead to prosperity at the bottom. Biden is using it to describe a more expansive economic order — what sometimes gets called “neoliberalism.” Trickle-down, in his telling, was the philosophy that “it didn’t matter where you made things.” It “meant slashing public investment” and looking the other way as “three-quarters of U.S. industries grew more concentrated.” Forty years, as alert readers will note, encompasses not just the administrations of Donald Trump and George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton and, yes, Barack Obama.This is a point worth dwelling on. The Biden administration is thickly populated with veterans of the Obama and Clinton White Houses. But it doesn’t see itself in comfortable continuity with those legacies. It sees itself, in key ways, as a break with them.Back in May, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser (and a key aide, before that, to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), made this explicit during a speech to the Brookings Institution. Sullivan slammed the belief that “the type of growth did not matter.” That had led, he said, to administrations that let Wall Street thrive while “essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied.” He dismissed the “assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently.”And he tendered a modest mea culpa for his own party. “Frankly, our domestic economic policies also failed to fully account for the consequences of our international economic policies,” he said. In letting globalization and automation hollow out domestic manufacturing, Democrats had been part of a Washington consensus that “had frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests.”Biden’s speech in Chicago tried to show he was a Democrat who had learned these lessons. First, there was his emphasis on place. “I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up and stay where they grew up,” he said. “That’s Bidenomics.” Later, he said it again. “I believe that every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job no matter where they are — in the heartland, in small towns, in every part of this country — to raise their kids on a good paycheck and keep their roots where they grew up.”I talked to Jared Bernstein, the chairman of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, about the thinking here. “One of the pretty bereft assumptions of traditional economics is that you don’t need to worry about place because, as long as there are good jobs somewhere, people will go there and get them,” Bernstein told me. “It doesn’t really work that way.” One reason it doesn’t work that way is housing costs. “The idea that you can relocate from rural America, where housing is cheap, to expensive-housing America, even with the pay differentials, is a bit of a fantasy,” he said.Biden’s answer is built around the investments being made by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. You don’t install wind and solar farms in Manhattan and San Francisco. You don’t even necessarily do it in blue states, much to the chagrin of Democratic governors. Biden pointed to Weirton, W.Va., “where a steel mill closed in the beginning of the century” and, because of him, an iron-air battery plant is “being built on the same exact site, bringing back 750 good-paying jobs, bringing back a sense of pride and hope for the future.” The Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research firm, estimates that Biden’s red states will get $623 billion in clean energy investments by 2030, compared with $354 billion for blue states.All these factories and battery plants and electric-vehicle charging stations and auto manufacturing facilities give Biden his strongest line against Trump. After comparing the infrastructure weeks Trump never delivered and “the infrastructure decade” he did, Biden noted: “Construction of manufacturing facilities here on U.S. soil grew only 2 percent on my predecessor’s watch in four years. Two percent. On my watch, it’s grown nearly 100 percent in two years.”Biden made a point of saying that in the economy he’s building, “we don’t need everyone to have a four-year degree. It’s great if you can get one; we’re trying to make it easier for you to get one. But you don’t need it to get a good-paying job anymore.”Bernstein didn’t pull his punch on this one. “I’ve been part of Democratic administrations where, basically, the solution to labor market woes was to go to college. The president has seen through that.” Biden, he continued, “realizes something everybody should know. About two-thirds of the work force isn’t college-educated. And there’s no version of Bidenomics that leaves two-thirds of the labor force out.”But here, Biden’s policy argument was a little thinner. He talked up his support for unions and apprenticeship programs, but he named more proposals to help people go to college than to help them get good jobs without a degree.The best thing Biden has done for less-educated workers is preside over a tight labor market. Unemployment has been below 4 percent since February 2022, and workers who are often on the margin are making gains. The Black-white employment gap has nearly closed, and wage gains have been particularly strong for workers without a college education. But the Biden administration’s pride in those numbers only underscores the real problem it faces: Americans felt good about the economy under Trump. They don’t feel good about it under Biden.The reason is simple: Real wages have been falling because inflation has been rising. Biden’s long-term investments, his efforts to rebuild American manufacturing and create millions of news jobs decarbonizing the American economy, will take time to pay off. People have to live in the economy now, not a decade from now.The good news — for both Biden and America — is that real wages have risen over the past few months. Inflation is down by more than half since its peak. Forecasters who were confidently predicting a recession in 2023 are now hedging. Mark Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics, thinks we’ll escape the downturn altogether. Whether the good economic news continues may well decide the 2024 election. Biden has co-opted the best of Trump’s ideas and pursued them with a diligence and focus that Trump never did. But that won’t mean much if voters still find themselves yearning for Trump’s economy.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 Isn’t Getting the Credit for the Economy He Deserves

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      The misery index is a crude but effective way to measure the health of the economy. You add up the inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If you’re a president running for re-election, you want that number to be as low as possible.When Ronald Reagan won re-election, it was about 11.4, when George W. Bush did so it was 9, for Barack Obama it was 9.5, and today, as Joe Biden runs for re-election, it’s only 7.7.Biden should be cruising to an easy re-election victory. And that misery index number doesn’t even begin to capture the strength of the American economy at the moment. There are a zillion positive indicators right now, as the folks in the administration will be quick to tell you. The economy has created 13 million jobs since Biden’s Inauguration Day. According to the Conference Board, a business research firm, Americans’ job satisfaction is at its highest level in 36 years. Household net worth is surging.We learned Thursday that the U.S. economy grew at an annualized 2 percent rate in the first quarter of this year, well above the economists’ expectations of around 1.4 percent. The best part of it is that the new prosperity is helping those who have long been left behind. In the four years of Donald Trump’s administration, spending on manufacturing facilities grew by 5 percent. During the first two years of Biden’s administration, such investment more than doubled and about 800,000 manufacturing jobs were created.This is not just coincidence. It’s a direct outcome of Biden policies: the Inflation Reduction Act, with its green technology provisions, the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS Act.Biden’s stimulative spending did boost the inflation rate, but inflation is now lower than in many other developed nations and our economy is stronger.So Americans should be celebrating. But they are not. According to an NBC News survey conducted this month, at least 74 percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. The Gallup economic confidence index over the past year has been starkly negative; people haven’t felt this bad about the economy since the throes of the global financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index is also tremendously downbeat. Joe Biden’s approval numbers have been stuck around a perilously low 43 percent for a year.As the maestro political analyst Charlie Cook noted in 2020, on average, presidents tend to lose their re-election bids when about 70 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and they tend to win when fewer than half of Americans think that.Why are Americans feeling so bad about an economy that’s so good? Partly, it’s inflation. Things have stabilized recently as inflation has dropped, but for a while there, real wages really were falling. Prices on things like gas and food are now significantly higher than they were three years ago.The Biden folks are hoping that as inflation continues to decline and as they get the word out, Americans will begin to feel better about things. But it’s not that simple.Part of it is the media. A recent study found that over the past couple of decades headlines have grown starkly more negative, conveying anger and fear. That’s bound to spread bad vibes through the populace.But the main problem is national psychology. Americans’ satisfaction with their personal lives is nearly four times as high as their satisfaction with the state of the nation. That’s likely because during the Trump era we have suffered a collective moral injury, a collective loss of confidence, a loss of faith in ourselves as a nation.America has suffered two recent periods of national demoralization. In the 1970s, during Vietnam and Watergate, Americans lost faith in their institutions. During the Trump era, Americans also lost faith in one another. Those who supported Trump were converted to the gospel of American Carnage, the idea that elite Americans seek to destroy other Americans, that we are on the precipice of disaster. Those who opposed Trump were appalled that their countrymen could support him, disgusted by his rampant immorality, alarmed that their democracy was suddenly in peril.The anthropologist Raoul Naroll argued that every society has a “moral net,” a cultural infrastructure that exists, mostly unconsciously, in the minds of its members. America’s is in tatters. This manifests a loss of national self-esteem. People begin to assume national incompetence. Fearful and anxiety-ridden people are quick to perceive the negative aspects of any situation, hypersensitive to threat, prone to pessimism.You can’t argue people out of that psychological and moral state with statistics and fact sheets. Biden is going to have to serve as a national guide, not just an administrator. He has to get outside the protective walls that have been built around him and make himself the center of the nation’s attention, not Trump. He’ll have to come up with a 21st-century national story that gives people a sense of coherence and belonging — that we are marching in a clear direction toward some concrete set of goals.Good jobs numbers alone don’t heal a brutalized national psyche, and that’s our main problem right now.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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      Republicans’ Problem in Attacking Biden: They Helped Pass His Economic Bills

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      No doubt they will take swings at him anyway. But it may be more difficult to land punches given that plenty of them voted for the bipartisan infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing bills.President Biden isn’t the only one doing a full summer embrace of federal spending on infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing — so are some of the Republicans aiming to remove him from office next year.The White House has labeled the president’s new economic campaign Bidenomics, a portmanteau that until now has been a pejorative used by Republicans and conservative news outlets primarily to underscore inflation.But in a speech on Wednesday in Chicago about the economy, Mr. Biden latched on, with a renewed focus on the two most significant bipartisan legislative accomplishments of his term, the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. He hopes these measures will help brand him as the cross-aisle deal maker he sold to voters in 2020, appeal to political moderates who formed a core of his winning electoral coalition and impress upon tuned-out voters what he has done in office.One significant benefit for Mr. Biden: Republicans helped pass those bills.While G.O.P. presidential candidates and the Republican National Committee continue to paint Mr. Biden’s economic stewardship as a rolling disaster, Republican senators who helped shape the legislation say they anticipated that those accomplishments would accrue to Mr. Biden’s political advantage — as well as to their own.Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican who helped write the enormous bill aimed at revitalizing the domestic semiconductor industry, said the work on a law that he called “off-the-charts popular” had started with Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, during President Donald J. Trump’s administration.“The Biden administration deserves credit for advancing the proposal and, irrespective of the timing of its origin, helping it become law,” Mr. Young said.“The Biden administration deserves credit for advancing the proposal and, irrespective of the timing of its origin, helping it become law,” Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, said of the CHIPS and Science Act.Al Drago for The New York TimesSenator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, more grudgingly acknowledged the president’s role in securing a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that had eluded the past two administrations.“When senators from different parties come together to work on solutions to our nation’s problems and then the president jumps in front of the parade, it does not mean he’s the grand marshal,” Mr. Cassidy said.Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill won votes from 19 Republican senators and 13 Republican House members. Sixteen Senate Republicans and 24 Republicans in the House voted for the semiconductor legislation.It will be difficult for Republicans to land criticism when they themselves are taking credit for the same achievements. The White House on Wednesday highlighted praise for the Biden administration’s broadband spending from Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington and Gus Bilirakis of Florida, Republicans who both voted against the infrastructure legislation that funded it, along with Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.But perhaps no Republican acclaim for the infrastructure legislation brought Mr. Biden more joy than a tweet from Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama that said it was “great to see Alabama receive crucial funds.”“To no one’s surprise, it’s bringing along some converts,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday of his bipartisan legislation. “There’s a guy named Tuberville from Alabama, a senator from Alabama, who announced that he strongly opposed the legislation. Now he’s hailing its passage.” Mr. Biden then dryly drew the sign of the cross on his chest.Steven Stafford, a spokesman for Mr. Tuberville, said that Mr. Biden and his allies had “twisted” the senator’s words. “Now that the bill is law of the land, the people of Alabama deserve their fair share,” he said.And even as Mr. Biden on Monday played up the $42 billion of broadband spending in the infrastructure law, another Republican senator who did vote for it, Susan Collins of Maine, was trumpeting the $272 million from it that is going to her state.Of course, the White House’s celebration of Republican plaudits for legislation Mr. Biden signed will matter little unless the president can persuade voters that these achievements are improving their material well-being.Mr. Biden’s defenders have long maintained that the economic policies he is highlighting in the Bidenomics rebrand are very popular with voters. The problem, these allies say, is that few people connect them with Mr. Biden.And Wednesday’s speech came at a moment when Mr. Biden’s approval ratings on the economy are in dangerous territory.“When senators from different parties come together to work on solutions to our nation’s problems and then the president jumps in front of the parade, it does not mean he’s the grand marshal,” said Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAn Associated Press/NORC poll released Wednesday found that just 34 percent of adults approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy. Among Democrats, only 60 percent — and a mere 47 percent of those 45 years old or younger — approved of his economic stewardship.The millstone is inflation, which has tempered sharply from its peak last year but remains above the norm. Whether inflation is at 9 percent or 4 percent, prices remain high, which may be why the president speaks less about the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan, which passed early in his tenure and has been blamed even by the Federal Reserve for part of the surge of inflation. It is also why Republicans continue to mock what they call the inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022 on strictly Democratic votes.“It makes sense for him to emphasize the bipartisan bills that passed that should have economic impact as opposed to the totally partisan bills that drove inflation,” said former Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, who voted for both the infrastructure and semiconductor bills before his retirement early this year.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, made clear that his party intended to lump all of the achievements being promoted by Mr. Biden into the inflationary maw, including the infrastructure and semiconductor legislation.“Both of those bills caused inflation, which is Biden’s biggest albatross in the upcoming election,” he said, “so I don’t think they did him any favors,” referring to Republicans who helped pass the measures.In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Biden said that the pandemic relief plan had driven unemployment down from above 6 percent to below 4 percent. He suggested that his economic leadership would achieve an even broader goal he placed at the center of his 2020 campaign: restoring the soul of America.“It’s going to help lessen the division in this country by bringing us back together,” Mr. Biden said. “It makes it awful hard to demagogue something when it’s working.”The Republicans aiming to unseat Mr. Biden weren’t buying the economic kumbaya. The Trump campaign on Wednesday said “Bidenomics has created the worst economic decline since the Great Depression.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in a Fox News appearance, said Mr. Biden’s policies mean “everybody pays more for basic staples of life.”Republicans are loath to concede that the passage of two major bills makes Mr. Biden a bipartisan statesman. Those bills are “not only not emblematic, it’s the exception,” said Josh Holmes, a longtime political adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, who voted for the infrastructure bill.In truth, more bills than those passed with bipartisan support in the last Congress. Mr. Biden enters the 2024 election cycle as the beneficiary of an extraordinary bout of productivity that included a modest gun control law, a legal codification of same-sex marriage, and a revamping of procedures for counting Electoral College votes after Mr. Trump tried to hijack that obscure process.Senators from both parties put aside their tendency to push for only the legislation they want or pocket the issue for the next election.“We can’t get in a place in the country where you don’t vote for something you believe needs to pass because you think it might help the other side,” Mr. Blunt said.Democrats point to the circumstances that Mr. Biden inherited in 2021 — the attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters determined to overturn the election results.“There was a sizable group of Senate Republicans who looked the death of democracy in the eye on Jan. 6 and decided to try to show people that democracy could still work,” said Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut.But Mr. Murphy also credited the legislative skills of Mr. Biden, honed over 36 years in the Senate.“A lot of my progressive friends were angry he wasn’t punching Republicans in the mouth so much,” Mr. Murphy said, “but he kept the door open for Republicans to work with us on infrastructure, guns and industrial policy.”Cecilia Kang More

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      Biden to Deliver Major Address on the Economy in Chicago

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      President Biden hopes to claim credit for what the White House describes as a record-breaking economic revival in America.President Biden’s attempt to earn a second term in the White House begins with a concerted campaign to claim credit for what he describes as a record-breaking economic revival in America.Mr. Biden will make that case in what his aides say is a “cornerstone” speech on Wednesday, using the backdrop of the Old Chicago Main Post Office to reassert the lasting benefits of “Bidenomics” as the 2024 campaign cycle heats up.He will argue that his willingness to plunge the American government more directly into supporting key industries like silicon chips has revitalized manufacturing. He will say investments in rebuilding crumbling infrastructure will pave the way for future growth. And he will insist that spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programs like student debt relief will let more people find their way to a comfortable, middle class life.“Since the president has taken office, 13 million jobs have been created,” Lael Brainard, Mr. Biden’s top economic adviser, said Tuesday. “The unemployment rate is near historic lows, below 4 percent for the longest stretch in nearly 50 years. And we’ve received record low unemployment for groups that too frequently have been left behind.”The boasting about Mr. Biden’s economic achievements is a calculated shift from the more cautious approach of his first two years, when millions of Americans were still struggling to recover from the devastating impact of the pandemic on their financial well-being.And the positive spin from the president and his advisers largely ignores the frustrations of many Americans who are still suffering from the effects of high inflation, interest rates that make borrowing more expensive, and the expense of everyday spending on necessities like health care, child care, groceries, gas and more.“While families suffer, the Biden administration is in a fantasy world, insisting their ‘policy has indeed worked,’” Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the National Republican Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Americans don’t want Biden to ‘finish the job.’”Mr. Pigott cited figures showing that the price of a gallon of gas remains about a dollar higher than it was when Mr. Biden took office, despite declines since the price shocks when Russia invaded Ukraine. He said numbers from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association show about 20 million Americans are behind on their utility bills.But administration officials are betting that with the pandemic largely in the rear view mirror, people will soon begin to appreciate the positive effect they say the president’s policies are having on their own lives.“I think people all across the United States of America are starting to see shovels in grounds in their communities,” said Olivia Dalton, the deputy White House press secretary. “As we get further into implementation, people are going to continue to feel that. They’re going to continue to see that and they’re going to continue to hear from this president about how we’re going to continue to make progress for them.”For now, most Americans have refused to give Mr. Biden the kind of credit that he and his advisers say he deserves. Polls show that about three-fourths of those surveyed believe the country under Mr. Biden’s leadership is on the wrong track. Only about a third say they approve of his handling of the economy.The president’s advisers say they believe it will take time for two things to happen: First, Americans must shake off the economic hangover from the pandemic. And second, they must begin feel the benefits of Mr. Biden’s policies in action.“People are just starting to see the impact of all of the successes of the last couple of years under this president’s economic agenda,” said Olivia Dalton, the deputy White House press secretary.Eventually, Mr. Biden will have to shift his focus to the future, and make specific promises to Americans about what kinds of new economic policies he would pursue in a second term.That could include making progress on the economic pledges he had to abandon as he made legislative compromises since taking office. He failed to win sufficient support for his proposals to roll back tax cuts implemented by former President Donald J. Trump. He also dropped proposals for universal preschool, free community college and heavily subsidized child care. More

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      Can Bidenomics Revive Biden’s 2024 Presidential Bid?

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      The president plans to extol his economic achievements in a big campaign-style speech. But inflation and recession fears could overshadow the message.President Biden heads to Chicago tomorrow to hail his economic record.John Minchillo/Associated PressBidenomics gets a reboot President Biden plans to double down on his economic record in a big campaign-style speech on Wednesday. He will hail the country’s record job growth, along with the administration’s signature policy wins aimed at expanding manufacturing, reinvesting in aging infrastructure and reorienting the economy for a clean-energy future.Yet despite the good news, Mr. Biden hasn’t seen a big jump in his popularity, and he trails his Republican rivals, according to some polls. High inflation and recession fears are dragging down his approval ratings, and the Biden administration is rethinking its messaging to try to convince Americans they should vote for him next November.“Bidenomics” will be at the heart of the president’s message. In a memo shared with journalists this week, two top Biden advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon, use the term repeatedly to frame the president’s accomplishments. They credit Bidenomics with helping the country bounce back from the pandemic “more quickly than most experts thought possible.” But as The Times’ Michael D. Shear reports, voters appear skeptical.What is Bidenomics? The president himself joked that the messaging is a work in progress. “I don’t know what the hell that is,” he told a rally this month. “But it’s working.” The Donilon-Dunn memo tries to give the messaging around Bidenomics a reboot. They point to how, for example, the CHIPS Act, the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure law are creating jobs in the high-tech, manufacturing and green sectors.The numbers behind Bidenomics look impressive. Employers have added 13 million jobs during his presidency. And the unemployment rates of Black and Hispanic Americans are at or near a historic low. The White House also averted a potentially disastrous debt-default standoff with the Republican-controlled House, a victory that largely registered as a nonevent with voters.Those successes aren’t translating into an uptick in support. According to a Pew Research Center survey, Biden’s approval ratings fell to the lowest level of his presidency this month.Mr. Biden’s reboot will compete with a contrasting message from the Fed. Hours before the president steps to the microphone in Chicago, the Fed chair Jay Powell will engage with other central bankers in a panel discussion in Portugal on a topic that’s been weighing on the markets: how further interest rate increases are probably needed to bring down stubbornly high inflation.At the same gathering in Portugal yesterday, Gita Gopinath, the International Monetary Fund’s deputy managing director, warned central banks not to ease up in their inflation fight. “Monetary policy should continue to tighten and then remain in restrictive territory until core inflation is on a clear downward path,” she said.For now, the boosterism of Bidenomics may get overshadowed a by a hawkish Fed.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Goldman Sachs plans to add an ally of David Solomon to the board. Tom Montag, who led trading at the firm before joining Bank of America as a senior executive, is set to return as a director. DealBook hears that the move is seen by some internally as a message from the board that Mr. Solomon, Goldman’s embattled C.E.O., isn’t going anywhere soon.KPMG plans to lay off 5 percent of its U.S. employees. The accounting giant, which had 39,000 workers in the United States last year, cited “economic headwinds” in announcing the move. It’s the latest sign of how a slowing economy is battering a wider array of businesses, including white-collar industries.Janet Yellen reportedly plans to travel to China next month. The Treasury secretary is arranging a meeting with her new Chinese counterpart, according to Bloomberg, in another effort to lower tensions between Washington and Beijing. But China’s premier, Li Qiang, chastised Western countries today for trying to limit ties to Chinese businesses.Could Saudi money disrupt tennis’s pay-equity goals?The WTA, the women’s pro tennis tour, will commit on Tuesday to bringing prize money for its tournaments in line with that of men’s competitions, in what’s meant to be a major step toward pay equity in the sport.But the question looms: How will Saudi Arabia greet the effort? The kingdom has poured billions into pro sports as part of a global campaign to expand its soft power, and is keen to bring its deep pockets to the ATP men’s tour, potentially aggravating the sport’s already sizable pay divide.The WTA’s effort is set to ramp up over the course of a decade, to allow the tour to raise the revenue necessary to bring its payouts in line with those of men’s competitions. (While men and women receive equal prize money for Grand Slam tournaments, the campaign is focused on the two tiers of competitions below that.)Saudi Arabia’s plans for tennis complicate the matter. As the kingdom has dug into sports like soccer and golf, its playbook has involved flooding competitions with cash to attract top-flight players. It may now do so for tennis, where it already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, is bidding to host the ATP Next Gen Finals and has plans to launch a similar women’s event.But the WTA hasn’t committed to that plan — or to holding any competitions in Saudi Arabia, which only recently gave women the right to drive, and which faces criticism over its human rights record. The WTA has taken stances on human rights before, notably by suspending operations in China for 18 months over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai.Things could change, given that the WTA has held talks with Saudi officials. But it’s unclear how the kingdom’s plans for tennis will affect the effort by the women’s tour to more tightly integrate with the ATP.In other Saudi sports news, a five-page pact between the PGA Tour and Saudi-sponsored LIV Golf shows the two sides have agreed on ending their litigation — but it lacks details of their planned alliance.A new shield for pregnant workersA new federal law will go into effect on Tuesday that provides protections for pregnant workers. More than a decade in the making and passed in December with bipartisan support, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is meant to help close loopholes in existing rules that left millions of women subject to discrimination, The Times’s Alisha Gupta writes for DealBook.What the act requires: Companies with more than 15 employees, including hourly workers, must provide “reasonable accommodations” for pregnancy, childbirth and related medical events like fertility treatments, abortion and pregnancy loss.Left intentionally undefined, reasonable accommodations can include a stool to sit on during long shifts, a flexible schedule to accommodate morning sickness or time off to recover from childbirth complications. But companies aren’t expected to suffer “undue hardship” in their business.It’s an effort to stop pregnancy discrimination. Advocates say that the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 was riddled with ambiguity. That has had disastrous consequences for many women:Twenty-three percent of mothers have considered leaving their jobs because of a lack of accommodations or fear of discrimination, according to a poll last year by the Bipartisan Policy Center.At least a third of the more than 2,000 pregnancy discrimination complaints that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received last year were about companies that failed to accommodate pregnant workers.The law signals growing recognition of pregnancy discrimination’s economic toll. The Fairness Act helps ensure that women no longer have to choose between “maintaining a healthy pregnancy or a safe recovery from childbirth and a paycheck,” said Dina Bakst, the co-president of the advocacy group A Better Balance, which helped Congress draft the new law.$377 million — The medical costs associated with pickleball injuries in the United States this year, according to a new research report by UBS analysts.Remembering Jim CrownJames Crown, the billionaire financier who was a longtime board member of JPMorgan Chase and General Dynamics, died on Sunday, The Times’s Emily Flitter writes for DealBook. He was 70.The scion of a Chicago industrialist family, Mr. Crown became a major figure in business, philanthropy and political giving. He died on his birthday in Aspen, Colo., when a vehicle he was driving crashed into a barrier on a racetrack, according to the Pitkin County coroner’s office.Mr. Crown was C.E.O. of Henry Crown and Company, which managed the fortune built up by his grandfather Henry by investing in an array of real estate and corporate investments. He joined the firm after working for Salomon Brothers.Mr. Crown was also a prominent corporate director. He had served on the board of what became JPMorgan Chase since 1991: His family had owned a major stake in Chicago’s Bank One, where he was a director and helped recruit Jamie Dimon as C.E.O. In 2004, Bank One merged with J.P. Morgan.“He has been a trusted adviser to me for nearly 20 years, playing a key role in helping our company navigate numerous business and economic challenges,” Mr. Dimon wrote to employees on Monday.Mr. Crown was also the lead director of General Dynamics, the aerospace giant that bought his grandfather’s Material Service Corporation in 1959.He also played a role beyond corporate America. Mr. Crown split his time between Chicago and Aspen, where he once served as chair of the Aspen Institute, which is holding its annual Ideas Festival now. As managing director of the Aspen Skiing Company, he played a big role in the American skiing industry.Mr. Crown was also a major Democratic donor, and he attended last week’s state dinner for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. “Jim represented America at its best — industrious, big-hearted and always looking out for each other,” President Biden said in a statement.THE SPEED READ DealsLordstown Motors, the embattled electric truck maker, filed for bankruptcy protection and sued the electronics giant Foxconn over its failure to invest in the company. (Reuters)Group Black, a Black-owned media investment firm, is reportedly in talks to buy control of the publisher of Sports Illustrated. (WSJ)Despite companies’ concerns about universal proxy, which makes it easier for investors to vote for board candidates from different slates, the policy had a muted impact in proxy fights this year. (Kirkland & Ellis)PolicyPresident Biden announced a $42 billion initiative to expand access to high-speed internet to all American households by 2030. (CNBC)Federal efforts to help develop next-generation vaccines are running into bureaucratic hurdles that may hamper efforts to fight future pandemics. (NYT)The wife of Justice Samuel Alito leased a 160-acre plot of land in Oklahoma to an oil company, as the Supreme Court justice weighed in on cases involving the E.P.A. (The Intercept)Best of the restHow the North Sea, long one of Europe’s biggest hubs for oil and gas production, may pivot to wind power. (NYT)“Will Taylor Swift’s ‘Eras Tour’ Become the First $1 Billion Tour?” (WSJ)Richard Ravitch, the developer and public servant who helped rescue New York City from financial collapse in the 1970s, died on Sunday. He was 89. (NYT)The New York Mets may have the biggest payroll in the major leagues and a deep-pocketed owner in Steve Cohen — but that hasn’t translated into success on the field. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Biden Expresses Confidence on the Economy. Voters May Be Skeptical.

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      President Biden believes that focusing on the economy will help his campaign for a second term, despite inflation and high interest rates.President Biden has grown confident enough in the economy he leads — despite continuing inflation and high interest rates — that he is campaigning for re-election by eagerly attaching the name “Bidenomics” to his approach.“Folks, here’s the bottom line,” Mr. Biden said as he began a three-week, administration-wide effort to focus on the economy. “By investing in America, we are delivering results. More than 13 million jobs created since I took office.”In a memo to reporters, two of the president’s top advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon, credited “Bidenomics” with helping the country bounce back from the pandemic, saying the economy “has recovered more quickly than most experts thought possible.”The pair repeated the phrase “Bidenomics” nine other times in the three-and-a-half-page memo — a sign that the president’s strategists believe that focusing on the economy will help his campaign for a second term.In their memo, Mr. Donilon and Ms. Dunn cited polling that shows Americans broadly support some of the president’s key economic policies. But that analysis ignores some dark signs for the president as the 2024 election begins to heat up.Independent polls show that large majorities of the country do not believe that the president’s economic policies have set the country in the right direction. In an NBC poll released on Sunday, 74 percent of Americans said the nation was on the wrong track.Previous polls have shown that much of the concern centers on the president’s economic policies. One Associated Press survey in May found that only 33 percent of adults approved of his handling of the economy.On Monday, Mr. Biden tried to show that his policies have tangible results. He said more than $40 billion would be distributed nationwide to expand high-speed internet lines — a program he compared to efforts by Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring electricity to rural parts of the country almost 100 years ago.The disconnect between Mr. Biden’s enthusiasm for his accomplishments and the poll numbers about America’s feelings on the subject may prove to be the biggest test for the new White House strategy.Asked on Monday whether the president and his top aides were confident that they could change the public’s perception of the economy — and his handling of it — Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, gave a blunt answer.“We’re going to try,” she told reporters.To that end, Mr. Biden’s team has collected data that focuses squarely on the positive. One chart distributed by the White House on Monday shows significant improvement from before the pandemic: a higher household net worth and disposable income, lower credit card delinquency and fewer bankruptcies, and a decline in the number of uninsured and those with debt in third-party collection.Mr. Biden’s advisers — both inside the White House and at the small but growing campaign operation — are quick to offer examples of how things have gotten better: for manufacturing businesses, people who order insulin regularly and local governments struggling with aging infrastructure.Mr. Biden’s aides are also happy to accept comparisons to “Reaganomics,” which has for decades been used to describe the economic policies of former President Ronald Reagan. The president’s advisers argue that Mr. Biden’s rejection of tax cuts and his focus on policies that help the middle class are a good contrast with Reagan.White House officials said that Vice President Kamala Harris and many of the president’s top cabinet officials would travel across the country over the next three weeks to deliver similar remarks on the president’s economic record. On Wednesday, Mr. Biden will deliver what aides are calling a “cornerstone” speech in Chicago meant to broadly explain his economic approach.Now, the challenge for the president and his team is to find a way for their message to break through with the American people.On the one hand, the president arguably has one of the biggest megaphones in the world, and his advisers intend to use it. But his message is competing with a war raging in Europe and the political and legal chaos surrounding former President Donald J. Trump as the government pursues legal action against him.Will giving his economic approach a catchy name — “Bidenomics” — help? Ms. Jean-Pierre said she believed it would.“I think it’s pretty clever,” she told reporters. More