What should Biden be doing differently?

[jojoju1998]

Stop trying to act like the economy is well. People think he's even more senile than he is.

Yeah, but he can't run on the economy being poor either. Trying to change perceptions is just about the best bet.

The economy is not poor. It's solid.

Since when did the average person ever measure the health of the economy by wonky things like "wage growth minus inflation" or by feelings like "vibecession?" It's completely ridiculous.

The economy is way too complex. So regular people have always looked at broader indicators like job and GDP growth, which are both historically strong, the stock market, which is at record highs, or cost of living, which saw a spike but has fallen back down to earth for over a year now. That's how Trump talked about the economy when he was President, and the media and the voters never questioned it.

Anybody who thinks Biden shouldn't talk up his own strong economic record is asking him to completely hobble his campaign and undermine his own accomplishments in a way people have never expected of a President before.

The fact is, for whatever reason, a lot of people have just decided that the economy is bad, but could not tell you why. Many are the same people who also rate their own financial situation as good -- they've gotten promotions and raises, have more savings, are going on nice vacations, and continue to spend lots of money despite higher prices. They also are more likely to rate their local or state economy as good, but apparently the U.S. economy, which encompasses all that, is horrible.

Somewhere down the road, a disconnect occurred and has stuck in people's minds. So, Biden and his surrogates need to set the record straight.

Remember, Americans are not as wonky as we are. In 1984, The Econ Lyn was actually worse off than it is now. Higher inflation. Relatively lower growth. Reagan however looked strong, manly, an American. And people “felt “ like the economy was Improving.

As both head of state, and head of government, the us presidency has a far bigger aura than the prime minister of Canada. So people demand, that Biden “ acts “ like a president, and all the vibes fall from there.


Obama despite a far worse economy in 2012, used that playbook. The relatable yet “ strong “ President.

[jojoju1998]

He is in a tough spot. The backlash against globalization is complete in both parties. However, the reality no one in Washington wants to talk about is that globalization, especially trade with China, did lower prices significantly on a huge number of goods. The China-WTO era 2000-2020 was an era of very low inflation. That enabled lower interest rates. The average person got used to both. Rolling it back with a combination of tariffs, bans, and sanctions, and a push for "friendshoring" and industrial policy essentially means trading a pure economic decision for a political one. That has implications.

The conventional wisdom has become that no one who supports trade with China can win in the Midwestern swing states, and that may be true. Everyone, from the Dem elites on down to the average Trump supporter, has told themselves a story that China is to blame for everything and that America's big mistake was to trade with China, and that trade with China has never brought anything good to America. That ignores the fact that trade with China was never done out of charity. It was because China just happens to be very good at making a lot of stuff for a very low price, and utilizing that capability in exchange for paper dollars that the Fed could print at will had benefits for America. Forcibly shifting supply chains to countries in geopolitical favor was never going to be economically optimal and was always going to have costs. It was never going to solve all the problems that we told ourselves were due to China.

Now Biden has the worst of all worlds. There are only about 200,000 more manufacturing jobs today than there were four years ago. After Trump created about 400,000 in his first term. But the 4 - 5 million manufacturing jobs lost in the first two decades of the millenium have not come back. That's due to a combination of increased productivity and manufacturing and imports simply shifting from China to places like Mexico and Vietnam -- where good cost more to make, but still cheaper than in America. The trade deficit has not meaningfully narrowed under Biden -- on the contrary, it is higher today than it was in the globalization era!

The implementation of industrial policy may pay off in the future, but it's not going to happen in time for the election. Meanwhile, we've made a bunch of changes for the sake of sticking it to China that we've told ourselves were supposed to solve problems, but effectively just make the global economy less efficient, and it's coming at a detriment to Biden.

The irony is that the manufacturing jobs that ARE coming back are less in number. We are far more productive than we were 20-30 years ago, but the technology, the automation, the AI stuff means that it will take less people to make stuff.

But no one wants to tackle that big issue; and it will be a defining issue for the world in the next 20 years, and I don't know if Biden is capable of solving this issue. ( And to be fair, Trump as well. ).