Biden says ‘Bidenomics’ will restore the American dream

The President highlighted hundreds of billions of dollars in public investments during his first two years in office.

Joe Biden makes his economic pitch in Chicago on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

President Joe Biden has vowed to restore the American dream in a speech promoting his “Bidenomics” policy that he says will deliver a clean break with decades of ­Republican economic thinking benefiting the rich.

“Bidenomics is about the ­future. Bidenomics is just another way of saying restore the American dream,” the Democrat said in Chicago on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

The half-hour speech sought to reach working- and middle-class voters vital to Mr Biden’s hopes of re-election in 2024 – many of whom have drifted from the Democratic Party to back former president Donald Trump.

Mr Biden highlighted hundreds of billions of dollars in public investments during his first two years in office to revamp infrastructure and kickstart hi-tech manufacturing.

He aimed squarely at Mr Trump’s base by referring to the way globalisation had destroyed US industrial communities and stripped workers of “dignity, pride and hope”. Without naming Mr Trump, whom he defeated in 2020 but could well face again next year, Mr Biden said Republican leaders had brought ruin with tax cuts for the wealthy in the belief that the benefits would later “trickle down” to ordinary people.

“Bidenomics,” he said, is a “fundamental break with the economic theory that has failed America’s middle class for decades now.”

The President’s speech, heavily promoted by the White House, also saw him take credit for a powerful US recovery from Covid and subsequent supply chain nightmares. “The US has the highest economic growth rate of leading economies,” he said.

It’s a bold, potentially risky move for Mr Biden to put the economy at the centre of his re-election platform, brushing aside months of warnings that the world’s biggest economy might still hit a post-pandemic recession.

Putting his name on it is even ­bolder, with Bidenomics echoing and rebutting Republicans’ long-cherished Reaganomics, in reference to the 1980s boom under Ronald Reagan.

“Biden and the radical Democrat congress single-handedly ­created the highest inflation in decades,” Mr Trump said in response to the President’s speech, claiming ­erroneously his opponent had brought “the worst economic decline since the Great Depression”.

So far, the sales pitch is having trouble getting through – in large part due to the lingering inflationary pressures on a country that had grown used to modest price increases. A May poll by ABC News/Washington Post found Mr Trump leading by 18 percentage points on the question of who handled the economy better.

But the White House says inflation is on a steady decline, and that Bidenomics is changing the playing field in a way that will benefit the middle classes.

Huge spending bills passed by congress during Mr Biden’s first two years in power are pouring money into green energy technology, semiconductors, and not less than $US550bn for revamping the country’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

National Economic Council ­director Lael Brainard said on Tuesday that the Reagan-era trickle-down theory led to the hollowing out of US industrial cities with offshoring and abandonment of ambitious infrastructure upgrades. By contrast, Mr Biden is using government funding as a catalyst for a “boom in private ­sector spending in manufacturing construction”, she said.

Dr Brainard touted funding for expansion of broadband internet to every corner of the US as an echo of Franklin Roosevelt’s epic electrification program to modernise the nation in the 1930s.

As for getting voters to buy into the Bidenomics pitch, that will come as Americans start seeing the funds begin to kick in, White House deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said. “We’re seeing shovels in grounds, we’re seeing private investment come back to our country, we’re seeing millions of jobs created,” she said. “So now is the time, with all of those accomplishments, (when) the President can take this message to the American people and say this is what Bidenomics is. We’re just starting to feel the impact.”

Mr Biden told supporters he was “looking forward” to the re-election battle. “You know why? Because we’ve got a story to tell. We’re not only changing the country, we’re transforming the country.”

AFP