The Weeks of Truth Begin for Joe Biden – Economy

It is characteristic of Joe Biden’s situation that his followers have even jumped on rather bad news these days to give themselves and their President new courage: After a year of increasing employment success, the number of workers in the United States is in May only increased by 390,000. That was the lowest increase in a long time and a first indication that the “ultra-hot US job market”, which Washington is constantly talking about, is slowly starting to cool down a bit. For a campaigning head of state, such a declining job boom is initially only of limited help. With the decline, however, the struggle between companies for skilled workers is also easing a little, which recently drove up many wages and thus fueled a problem that has long since become a matter of fate for Biden – the high inflation rate.

There is no doubt: the weeks of truth have begun for the President. If he does not succeed in significantly improving the bad mood in the country before the parliamentary summer recess in August, then his party will not even have to stand in the congressional elections on November 8th. In any case, there is currently a lot to suggest that the Democrats could lose their wafer-thin majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives again after only two years. In the second half of his term in office, Biden would then be faced with a largely hostile, even partially hostile Congress and would be de facto politically paralysed.

In order to finally initiate the turnaround, the White House has launched a large-scale economic-political PR offensive in the past few days. More than a dozen of the President’s supporters, ranging from Ministers Janet Yellen and Gina Raimondo to economic advisers Cecilia Rouse and Brian Deese to ordinary civil servants, have swarmed across the country to deliver the same message to voters on television and at public events to hammer in: Joe Biden, the man of the job boom and an almost historically low unemployment rate, will also get the problem of high prices under control – if Congress lets him. The aim of the efforts is to win back disappointed voters, reduce fears of inflation and thus prevent the Republicans from exploiting the issue in their favor during the election campaign.

Biden’s numbers do not match the attitude towards life of many people

The President himself flanked the efforts with a guest contribution in Wall Street Journal, in which he boasted of his economic successes and at the same time addressed the fears of many citizens. “Americans are worried. I know the feeling. I grew up in a family that cared a lot if the price of gas or groceries went up,” he wrote. However, practically no other country in the world is economically as well positioned as the USA to deal with the current problems: American families have more money and less debt than when he took office in January last year, companies are investing like rarely before, and the number of industrial jobs is increasing more rapidly than it has been for 30 years.

The only problem is: Biden’s economic policy record figures do not match the attitude towards life of many people – and in the guest article the President once again failed to answer what the supposedly well thought-out “plan” looks like that he is constantly talking about and with which he wants to lead his country into a good future. Although he announced measures to reduce freight charges and drug prices, fix delivery problems and build cheap rental housing. All of these initiatives have existed for a long time without having had any resounding success.

Instead, the president tried to blame Vladimir Putin alone for the high inflation rates and to call on Congress and the US Federal Reserve to take action – a strategy that not only a columnist of the online news portal political he wrote, leaving the answer so unequivocally open that everyone knew what it would have been.

The matter of attitude to life could prove to be even more difficult. Because even if it may be true that many citizens are objectively better off than before Biden took office, surveys show that most people have a queasy feeling. There are still empty supermarket shelves where baby food should actually be stacked. There is the stock market, where prices have recently plummeted more and more often. There are the stickers in the stores that say, for example, that a simple pack of bacon suddenly costs nine dollars. And there are above all the gasoline prices, which at five, six, sometimes almost eight dollars per gallon are two and a half times as high as just two years ago. German drivers may laugh at such prices, because converted to local values, a liter of US gasoline costs little more than 1.30 or 1.40 euros in many areas. But you have to keep in mind that not so long ago, fuel in the USA cost just 50 cents a liter and that there is almost nowhere in the country a functioning public transport system that would offer an alternative to the car.

The White House’s strategy could also backfire

In the worst case, the White House’s strategy could even backfire, since experience has shown that many citizens do not like it very much when a politician makes them understand that their feelings are being misled. The next test is already scheduled for this Friday when the Washington Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the new inflation report. Experts assume that the situation on the price front has hardly changed in May and, as in the previous month, there will again be an eight in front of the decimal point.

Only one tableau has to worry Biden more than the inflation rate – his poll numbers. According to calculations by the statistics portal Fivethirtyeight, 505 days after his inauguration, just 41 percent of Americans are still satisfied with their head of state. On the other hand, 54 percent think little or nothing of him. With the exception of Gerald Ford, none of the other 13 post-war presidents was so unpopular at this point in his reign – not even one whom Joe Biden had felt superior to in every respect: Donald Trump.