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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

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      The Week in Business: Trump on TV

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      Giulio BonaseraWhat’s Up? (May 7-13)CNN’s TrumpcastUntil last week, former President Donald J. Trump had not appeared on CNN since 2016. But at a town hall hosted by the network on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner in the 2024 presidential campaign, resumed the lies and name-calling that marked his presidency. Answering questions from the anchor Kaitlan Collins, he repeated misinformation about the 2020 election, called the writer E. Jean Carroll, who won a suit accusing him of sexual abuse and defamation, a “wack job” and derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person.” When Ms. Collins tried to correct Mr. Trump’s lies, he often talked over her. The largely sympathetic audience cheered him on throughout the evening. Critics of CNN’s forum said it was reckless to give Mr. Trump such a large platform for his message, especially because it proved difficult to fact check his statements in real time. The chairman of CNN, Chris Licht, defended the broadcast on Thursday, saying it underscored that covering Mr. Trump would “continue to be messy and tricky.”Inflation Is SlowingA closely watched report on Wednesday showed that inflation in the United States had reached a noteworthy milestone: April was the 10th straight month that the pace of price increases slowed. The Consumer Price Index climbed 4.9 percent from a year earlier, surpassing analysts’ expectations — in a good way. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had forecast a 5 percent climb. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel costs, also fell slightly. The report comes on the heels of the Federal Reserve’s 10th consecutive increase to its benchmark rate. The latest inflation data, along with other signs of a slowdown in the economy, could make the May increase the last one for now. Elon Musk’s AnnouncementElon Musk long ago asked users on Twitter if he should step down as chief executive of the platform. “I will abide by the results of this poll,” he said. The results came in: Almost 58 percent of the 17.5 million people who voted agreed that Mr. Musk should leave his post. But it was still somewhat surprising when Mr. Musk announced on Friday that he had chosen his replacement: He said his successor would be Linda Yaccarino, the chair of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal. Mr. Musk said Ms. Yaccarino, who recently interviewed him onstage at an advertising event in Miami, would focus on business operations while he would continue to work on product design and technology.Giulio BonaseraWhat’s Next? (May 14-20)Senate Hearings on the Banking CrisisTwo groups that have sought to blame each other for the recent bank failures will appear at a pair of Senate hearings this week — the heads of those banks and the federal regulators who oversee them. On Tuesday, Greg Becker, the former chief executive of Silicon Valley Bank, who stepped down from his post after the bank’s collapse in March, will testify before the Senate Banking Committee. Two former top executives from Signature Bank, which failed two days later, will also testify. They are expected to meet a harsh reception from lawmakers. In a letter summoning Mr. Becker to appear, the chairman of the committee wrote, “You must answer for the bank’s downfall.” Regulators can expect a grilling, too, at a separate hearing on Thursday. When regulators appeared before the committee last month, members of Congress on both sides of the aisle faulted shortcomings in oversight for the banking crisis. Regulators also pointed the finger at the banks’ mismanagement.More Turmoil at FoxDominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox News, which was settled for $787.5 million in April, may have been only the opening salvo in a long fight to hold the network accountable for airing misinformation about the 2020 presidential election. Last week, Nina Jankowicz, a prominent specialist in Russian disinformation and online harassment, filed a new defamation suit accusing Fox of spreading lies about her that led to serious threats to her safety and harm to her career. That’s not Fox’s only legal trouble. It still faces a defamation suit from another election technology company, Smartmatic, which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, the network’s star host who was recently ousted and is still under contract, has said he is starting his own show on Twitter, a sign that negotiations to reach an amicable separation with the network have broken down.Report Cards for Big Box StoresWalmart and Target, two of the country’s largest retailers, will release their quarterly earnings reports this week, providing a glimpse at how inflation — which is falling but persistent — is affecting consumers. For the three months that ended in January, Walmart reported that its revenue was 7.3 percent higher than a year earlier and said December was its best month for sales at its U.S. stores in its history. But the company warned of dimmer prospects for the rest of the fiscal year, suggesting that consumers’ ability to absorb higher prices could be approaching its limit. Other retailers struck similar downbeat notes, suggesting that they expected conditions to worsen in the coming months.What Else?Goldman Sachs said on Monday that it would pay $215 million to settle a gender bias suit accusing the bank of hindering women’s career advancement and paying them less than their male colleagues. Disney, in its quarterly earnings report last week, said that it had narrowed its streaming losses but that revenue from its old-line TV channels had fallen sharply. And Peloton said it was recalling more than two million exercise bikes because of reports of a faulty part. More

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      Will the Economy Make or Break Biden in 2024?

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      Now that President Biden has announced his intention to run for a second term, economists and politicos are assessing whether his candidacy will be helped or hurt by the performance of the economy. If there’s a recession, will it be over and mostly forgotten by Election Day?Oxford Economics did an initial run of its election forecasting model, which takes economic factors into account, and found that Biden is in line to get around 55 percent of the popular vote, without any assumption about his opponent, according to a research briefing on Wednesday. Paul Krugman, my Opinion colleague, wrote Thursday that “the idea that the economy is going to pose a huge problem for Democrats next year isn’t backed by the available data.”The truth is, though, that we really don’t know who will win the 2024 election, or even what role the economy will play in it. As somebody who writes about economics, I’d love to say that the state of the economy leading up to Nov. 5, 2024, will matter a lot. But that does not seem to be the case, according to people I spoke with this week. One possible reason is that voters have become more polarized and set in their preferences, and thus less swayed by the ups and downs of the economy.For example, let’s say former President Donald Trump captures the Republican nomination. Most Biden supporters wouldn’t vote for him no matter how bad the economy got in 2024 — just as most Trump supporters won’t vote for Biden no matter how good the economy gets under the incumbent. James Carville’s admonition in 1992 that it’s “the economy, stupid” doesn’t hold up in this era of hyperpartisanship.In 1978 a pioneering article by the Yale economist Ray Fair, “The Effect of Economic Events on Votes for President,” made the case that “economic events as measured by the change in real economic activity in the year of the election do appear to have an important effect on votes for president.” In January, the model predicted, using his economic projections as inputs, that Biden, if renominated, would get 50.07 percent of the two-party presidential vote next year, with no assumption about the Republican opponent.Fair’s model, which he has tweaked over the years, correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every election from 1980 through 2008 except for 1992, when it incorrectly predicted Bill Clinton would get only 43 percent of the two-party popular vote against George H.W. Bush. It hasn’t done well lately, though: It predicted the Democrat would get less than half the popular vote in the two-candidate matchup in 2012, when President Barack Obama won a second term; in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost to Trump in the Electoral College; and in 2020, when Biden beat Trump.I asked Fair if it was fair to say that polarization of voters has weakened the predictive value of economic indicators. He acknowledged that Trump, an especially polarizing figure, had underperformed in both 2016 and 2020 given economic conditions that the Fair model considered favorable to him. (And he said it could happen again if Trump is the G.O.P. candidate next year.) But he said he’s not convinced that his economic model has lost its predictive power. “Personally, I think there’s still a pretty big middle group” of voters who are influenced by economic factors, he said.A good example of why it’s dangerous to over-rely on economic models is what happened in the spring of 2020, when Covid hit. Based on historical patterns, several of the best-known models (though not Fair’s) put a heavy weight on how the economy performs in the second quarter of an election year, namely April through June. Because of the Covid shutdown, the gross domestic product fell at an annual rate of 29.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Going by that one data point, the election should have been a disaster for the incumbent, Trump. But voters understood that Trump couldn’t be blamed for Covid. What’s more, the economy grew at an annual rate of 35.3 percent in the following quarter as it rebounded from the shutdown. In the end, Trump did worse than Fair’s model had predicted, but way better than predicted by models that heavily weighted second-quarter economic growth.Another problem with some economics-based forecasting models such as Fair’s is that they predict the popular vote, rather than the one that really matters, the Electoral College vote, which depends on state-by-state results. Fair is sticking to forecasting the popular vote because he thinks it’s of academic interest. Some other forecasters have switched to predicting the Electoral College result, but it’s much trickier. The outcome of the election comes down to a handful of swing states, and within those few states, to the behavior of a small minority of voters whose minds aren’t made up. “The Electoral College throws a monkey wrench into the business,” Alan Abramowitz, an emeritus professor of political science at Emory University, told me.One thing that puzzles me is why it’s even worthwhile to plug economic factors into an election forecast. If the relevance of the economy is that it affects voters’ feelings about the candidates, why not just cut to the chase and focus on the voters’ feelings? (Nate Cohn, my colleague on the news side, pointed out this week in another subscriber-only newsletter that the polls are showing a tight contest, with Biden slightly ahead of Trump and slightly behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in hypothetical matchups.)I asked Charles Tien, a political science professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and Hunter College, why he and others put economic indicators into their models. “When you add in the economy, it improves the results,” he said. But he acknowledged that it’s not obvious why that’s the case. When I asked Fair the same question by email, he wrote, “My empirical results are quite strong that the economy has mattered over time.” I wonder if it’s because economic indicators signal something about voters’ situations that they don’t fully express in surveys, which in any case have become less reliable as response rates have declined.Peter Enns, a political scientist at Cornell who ran the Cornell-based Roper Center for Public Opinion Research until last year, told me he thinks it’s too soon for predictions about the 2024 race. First, because there are too many unknowns, such as the field of candidates and the business cycle. Second, because at this stage voters should be focusing on who should win, not who will win. OK, that’s fair. No more horse-race prognosticating from me. For now.The Readers WriteWhat your newsletter about innovation misses is the input by experimentation. Our five senses are permanently providing us with personal experience that facilitates new creative thoughts. Only when chatbots are equipped with sensors can they become independent thinkers.Heinrich MullerRancho Palos Verdes, Calif.As for fertility, maybe all you men should think a little. Maybe women do not want to be saddled all through their adult years with raising your kids! Or maybe if men did a little more of the work, women wouldn’t mind so much.Marilynn MillerChicago areaTo test peer effects on fertility, why not hire actors to wheel baby carriages around one area and not around a demographically matched area nearby? Joking, of course.David AuerbachDurham, N.C.With the large run-up in housing prices that you mentioned, selling a home and buying a new one may involve a huge increase in property tax payments. This may be a significant disincentive to selling in addition to higher mortgage rates.Randy K. VogelLaguna Hills, Calif.Quote of the Day“I used to say to our audiences: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’”— Upton Sinclair, “I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked” (1935) 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