The president of the United States, Joe Biden, insists again and again that the country’s economy is doing well and is strong, but he does not seem to convince voters, concerned about the increases in food and gasoline prices, a discontent that He has been able to capitalize on his rival, Republican Donald Trump.
The Democratic leader, who aspires to be re-elected in the elections on November 5, has baptized his economic policy as ‘Bidenomy’ and usually boasts of good macroeconomic data, but these are not fully reflected in the pockets of citizens.
This same week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that the US economy created 175,000 new jobs in April, a good figure, although below the successful average of 224,000 new monthly jobs created in the last anus.
Biden was quick to issue a statement on Friday in which he boasted of having achieved these figures despite having inherited “an economy on the brink” when he arrived at the White House in January 2021, in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. .
“Now we see my plan in action, with more than 15 million jobs created since I took office, with record rates of women employed, wages growing above prices and unemployment below 4% for a record 27 months in a row,” he said.
But former President Donald Trump (2017-2021), Republican candidate for the next elections, responded that “the numbers are horrible.” “Our economy is very bad,” he said before entering his trial in New York.
The truth is that the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States grew by 1.6% in the first quarter of the year, which represented a slowdown compared to the vigorous advance of 3.5% registered in the last quarter of last year.
In any case, Biden trusts that the historical trend will be fulfilled according to which Americans have re-elected all their presidents when the economy was growing and have only thrown leaders out of the White House when there has been a recession.
But this time it could be different, since Trump leads the national polls and leads Biden in several states that are key to defining the winner of a presidential election in the United States.
At the center of citizen discontent is the constant rise in food and gasoline prices, aggravated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which has been a headache for much of Biden’s mandate.
Although inflation is already far from the peak of 9.1% that was recorded in June 2022, it does not seem to give any respite: in the first quarter of the year it was 3.5% and refuses to drop to the target of 2%.
According to a recent YouGov poll, inflation is the issue that worries Americans most, as noted by 23% of respondents, followed by immigration (13%), health care (10%), employment (10% ) and the climate crisis (7%).
Another Echelon Insights survey indicates that 48% of voters believe that Trump would run the economy better than Biden and only 40% consider that the Democrat is performing better than the Republican.
This same week, the United States Federal Reserve (Fed) decided, once again, to keep interest rates unchanged, in the range of 5.25% to 5.5%, their highest level since 2001.
The institution that directs the country’s monetary policy justified its decision precisely because of the “lack of progress” that has been made in recent months to reduce inflation.
But even if inflation were to drop to 2% in the coming months, analysts doubt there would be enough room for Biden to gain credit with voters who see their daily lives become more expensive. EFE
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