- Biden struggled with economic approval
- Inflation remains a significant issue
- Trump seen as more trustworthy economically
Even before pressure grew on US President Joe Biden to resign from the November election owing to worries about his age and fitness, he was losing public support for his economic policies.
Despite presiding over strong economic growth and low unemployment, Biden, who dropped out of the campaign on Sunday following weeks of controversy surrounding his candidacy, struggled to persuade people that they were better off under his leadership.
In May, weeks before a dismal debate performance against Donald Trump, she confirmed impressions of Biden’s fall; only 23% of Americans polled by the Pew Research Center said the economy was “excellent or good.
A much larger proportion of Americans (41 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively) evaluated the economy as “only fair” or “poor.”
Much of the displeasure came from Biden’s voter base, with the proportion of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters who saw the economy positively drop from 44 per cent in January to 37 per cent in May.
Worse for Biden, US voters generally saw his Republican opponent, Donald Trump, as more trustworthy on the economy, a sense that lasted throughout the June 27 debate.
In a Pew poll issued earlier this month, 34% of respondents said they were very confident Trump would make sound economic policy decisions, while only 17% said the same about Biden.
Biden’s overall approval rating mirrored his poor economic performance.
According to an average of polls produced by the FiveThirtyEight website, the president’s approval rating has remained below 40 per cent for nearly the entire year.
For practically the whole time, Biden trailed Trump as the favourite candidate for the 47th US President.
While Biden could count on a solid economic record on many fronts, including the best growth of any major advanced economy and the creation of 15.7 million jobs, his administration was also blamed for the most significant inflation since the early 1980s.
According to Pew, inflation was the number one issue for Americans in 2022 and 2023, and as recently as May, roughly 62 per cent of respondents said it was still a “very big problem.
While inflation has fallen substantially from its peak of 9.1 per cent in June 2022, it remains above 3 per cent, beyond the US Federal Reserve’s 2 per cent objective.
While price increases have halted, consumers are still paying significantly more than they were a few years ago.
Since Biden entered office in 2021, prices have risen by more than 19%.
This explains why 65 per cent of respondents polled by the Federal Reserve last year said price fluctuations hurt their financial status, despite 72 per cent saying they were “doing at least okay financially.”
At a similar stage in Trump’s presidency, prices had only risen by around 5%, which was a big reason why more Americans reported feeling better under his presidency.
According to a CBS News poll conducted in February, 65 per cent of respondents said the economy was healthy under Trump, while 38 per cent said the same about circumstances under Biden.
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While COVID-related supply chain problems caused much of the inflation rise, which was mainly outside Biden’s control, most Americans blame inflation on government policies, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research survey published in May.
According to the study, the public perceives higher inflation as an “unambiguously negative” phenomenon, even when it can signal greater economic growth. There is a “widespread belief that managing inflation can be achieved without significant trade-offs, such as reducing economic activity or increasing unemployment.”
While wages are once again growing faster than inflation after lagging behind price growth during the epidemic, they have yet to catch up to where they were in real terms at the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
Heather Long, a Washington Post columnist who covers economics, summed up Biden’s problem in selling a good economic message.
“Overall, Biden deserves more credit for the good economic recovery. But he and his staff failed to truly address the agony of increasing pricing (or demonstrate that they were doing much about it in 2022 and 2023),” Long wrote in a post on X.
“This is a key economic lesson going forward: Americans really hate inflation.”
