Even before the pressure on United States President Joe Biden withdrew from the November election due to considerations of his age and physical condition, he was wasting Americans’ interest in his handling of the economy.
Despite the economic expansion and low unemployment, Biden, who withdrew from the race on Sunday after weeks of turmoil over his candidacy, has struggled to convince the electorate that he is better off with his leadership.
In May, weeks before a disastrous debate against Donald Trump cemented perceptions of Biden’s decline, only 23% of Americans surveyed through the Pew Research Center rated the economy as “excellent or good. “
A much higher percentage of Americans (41 and 36 respectively) rate the economy as “fair” or “poor. “
Much of the discontent came from Biden’s own electoral base, with Democrats and the Democratic-leaning electorate seeing the economy definitely emerging from 44% in January to 37% in May.
What’s worse for Biden is that the American electorate has consistently viewed his Republican rival Donald Trump as something more when it comes to the economy, a belief that persisted after the June 27 debate.
In a Pew ballot released earlier this month, 34% of respondents said they were very confident in Trump’s ability to make smart economic policy decisions, and 17% said the same about Biden.
Biden’s approval score largely followed his poor score on the economy.
For most of this year, Biden has remained below 40 percent approval and has followed Trump as the preferred choice for the 47th United States president, according to an average of polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight.
While Biden can boast a strong economic record on many tactics (adding the fastest expansion of any complex primary economy and the creation of 15. 7 million jobs), his administration is also blamed for the highest inflation since early from the 1980s.
Inflation topped Americans’ list of considerations in 2022 and 2023, according to Pew, and in May, just about 62% of respondents said it remained a “very big problem. “
Although inflation has fallen sharply from its peak of 9. 1% in June 2022, it is still hovering around 3%, above the United States Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
And while the speed of value expansion has slowed, consumers are still paying much more than they did a few years ago.
Since Biden took office in 2021, costs have risen more than 19%.
This partly explains why 65% of adults surveyed by the Federal Reserve last year said monetary tightening had negatively impacted their monetary situation, although 72% said they were “doing at least well monetarily. “
At the same time, under Trump’s presidency, prices had risen only about five percent, which is why more and more Americans are feeling better under his presidency.
In a CBS News poll released in February, 65% of respondents said the economy was smart under Trump, compared with 38% who said the same under Biden.
While the COVID-related chain-of-origin disruptions that drove much of the rise in inflation were largely out of Biden’s control, most Americans blame inflation on government policies, according to a study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research in May.
The public also considers rising inflation to be a “clearly negative” phenomenon, even if it possibly means higher economic growth, while there is “widespread confidence that inflation can be managed without making significant concessions, such as cutting economic activity or increasing unemployment,” according to the study.
While wages are recovering faster than inflation after lagging price growth during the pandemic, they have yet to meet their point since the beginning of Biden’s term in real terms.
On Friday, Washington Post columnist Heather Long summed up the difficulty Biden faces in selling a positive economic message.
“Overall, Biden deserves more credit for this strong economic rebound. But he and his team failed to acknowledge the pain of emerging costs (nor did they demonstrate that they were doing much to address them in 2022 and 2023),” Long said in an article. in X.
“This is a key economic lesson for the future: Americans hate inflation. “