While President Joe Biden and the media detail the sales-pitch element of "Bidenomics," former President Donald Trump is mocking it as a strategy at the root of the "worst economic decline since the Great Depression."
"'Bidenomics' is the opposite of President Trump's historic economy," the Trump campaign said in a detailed statement deriding Biden's plan on Wednesday. "President Trump's success is low taxes, low regulations, low inflation, maximizing American energy production for affordable energy, fair trade, and no job-killing globalist agreements.
"'Bidenomics' is high taxes, crippling regulations, crushing inflation, war on American energy, soaring energy costs, job-killing globalist intentional agreements like the Paris Climate Accord, and total economic surrender to China and other foreign countries. America first economics vs. America last."
"Every plank of President Trump's economy makes it easier, more attractive for American jobs, American workers, and American families in the U.S.," the statement continued. "Every plank of 'Bidenomics' hurts jobs and workers in America and rewards outsourcers and foreign producers."
"Biden and the radical Democrat Congress singlehandedly created the highest inflation in decades," the statement said. "They spent trillions of dollars and pursued the socialist joke known as the Green New Deal.
"Now the inflation and high interest rates that Biden caused have resulted in the Biden banking crisis — a disaster of historic proportions."
Biden made his pitch Wednesday to a skeptical public that the U.S. economy is thriving under what he now touts as “Bidenomics” — even as a new poll showed that could be a hard sell as the foundation for his 2024 reelection campaign.
In a major economic speech in Chicago, Biden said his administration’s efforts were sparking recovery after Republican policies had crushed America’s middle class. But the poll said only 1 in 3 U.S. adults approves of his economic leadership.
That 34% figure is even lower than his overall approval rating of 41%, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Biden’s approval figures have barely moved for the past year and a half, a source of concern for a president pursuing a second term on his ability to govern and focus on workers. He wants voters to connect local roads and bridge projects, factory construction and the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy to the millions of dollars in initiatives he signed into law during the first two years of his administration.
“Bidenomics is about the future,” he declared in his Wednesday speech to cheering supporters. “Bidenomics is just another way of saying, Restore the American dream.”
At the same time, he sought to paint previous Republican tax cuts as deeply flawed, saying they helped the rich but failed the middle class for decades as the promised “trickle down” benefits never seemed to come to the less wealthy.
As he was departing Washington on Wednesday, Biden said he believes the U.S. will avoid the recession that many economic analysts have been expecting. Republican leaders such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said last year that the high inflation under Biden’s watch meant that “we are in a recession,” but many economists disagree under their definitions.
GOP officials say their tax cuts have encouraged business investments and profits that have improved pay for workers and bolstered the stock market, while greater government spending would cause prices to keep rising and waste money.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.