Presidential Election of 2024

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    in Economy

    Biden’s Stimulus Juiced the Economy, but Its Political Effects Are Muddled

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    Some voters blame the American Rescue Plan for fueling price increases. But the growth it unleashed may be helping the president stay more popular than counterparts in Europe.The $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package that President Biden signed shortly after taking office has become both an anchor and a buoy for his re-election campaign.The American Rescue Plan, which the Biden administration created and Democrats passed in March 2021, has fueled discontent among voters, in sometimes paradoxical ways. Some Americans blame the law, which included direct checks to individuals, for helping to fuel rapid inflation.Others appear upset that its relief to people, businesses and school districts was short-lived. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported recently that several business contacts in its district “expressed concern about the winding down of American Rescue Plan Act dollars and whether nonprofits and K-12 schools will be able to sustain certain programs without that funding.”Polls show that Americans continue to favor Mr. Biden’s opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on economic issues. Often, they indicate that only relatively small slices of the electorate believe Mr. Biden’s policies have helped them or their family financially.At the same time, though, the stimulus may be lifting Mr. Biden’s chances for November in ways that pollsters rarely ask about.Economists say the relief package, along with stimulus measures Mr. Trump signed into law in 2020, has helped accelerate America’s recovery from the pandemic recession. The United States has grown and added jobs in a way that no other wealthy nation has experienced after the pandemic.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What Trump 2.0 Could Mean for the Federal Reserve

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    A second Trump administration could shake up personnel and financial regulation at America’s central bank, people close to his campaign said.Former President Donald J. Trump relentlessly criticized the Federal Reserve and Jerome H. Powell, its chair, during his time in office. As he competes with President Biden for a second presidential term, that history has many on Wall Street wondering: What would a Trump victory mean for America’s central bank?The Trump campaign does not have detailed plans for the Fed yet, several people in its orbit said, but outside advisers have been more focused on the central bank and have been making suggestions — some minor, others extreme.While some in Mr. Trump’s circles have floated the idea of trying to limit the Fed’s ability to set interest rates independent of the White House, others have pushed back hard on that idea, and people close to the campaign said they thought such a drastic effort was unlikely. Curbing the central bank’s ability to set interest rates without direct White House influence would be legally and politically tricky, and tinkering with the Fed so overtly could roil the very stock markets that Mr. Trump has frequently used as a yardstick for his success.But other aspects of Fed policy could end up squarely in Mr. Trump’s sights, both former administration officials and conservative policy thinkers have indicated.Mr. Trump is poised to once again use public criticism to try to pressure the Fed. If elected, he would also have a chance to appoint a new Fed chair in 2026, and he has already made it clear in public comments that he plans to replace Mr. Powell, whom he elevated to the job before President Biden reappointed him.“There will be a lot of rhetorical devices thrown at the Fed,” predicted Joseph A. LaVorgna, the chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities America, an informal adviser to the Trump campaign and the chief economist of the National Economic Council during Mr. Trump’s administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Loss at Mercedes-Benz Slows U.A.W.’s Southern Campaign

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    After Mercedes workers voted against joining the United Automobile Workers, the union will have less momentum as it campaigns to organize Southern factories.After suffering a setback at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama on Friday, the United Automobile Workers union’s efforts to organize other auto factories in the South is likely to slow and could struggle to make headway.About 56 percent of the Mercedes workers who voted rejected the U.A.W. in an election after the union chalked up two major wins this year. In April, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted to join the union, the first large nonunion auto plant in the South to do so. Weeks later, the union negotiated a new contract bringing significant pay and benefit improvements for its members at several North Carolina factories owned by Daimler Truck.“Losing at Mercedes is not death for the union,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “It just means they’ll have less confidence going to the next plant. The U.A.W. is in it for the long run. I don’t think they’re going to stop just because they lost here.”Since its founding in 1935, the U.A.W. has almost exclusively represented workers employed by the three Michigan-based automakers: General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis. And it has long struggled to make headway at plants owned by foreign manufacturers, especially in Southern states where anti-union sentiment runs deep.Workers at the Volkswagen plant had voted against being represented by the U.A.W. twice by narrow margins before the recent union win there. An effort a decade ago to organize one of the Mercedes plants failed to build enough support for an election.Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that broad union organizing efforts seldom proceeded smoothly. In the 1930s, the U.A.W. won recognition at G.M. and Chrysler but struggled at Ford, which continued employing nonunion workers for a few years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden to Announce A.I. Center in Wisconsin as Part of Economic Agenda

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    The president’s visit will highlight the investment by Microsoft and point to a failed Foxconn project negotiated by Donald J. Trump.President Biden will travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday to announce the creation of an artificial intelligence data center, highlighting one of his administration’s biggest economic accomplishments in a crucial battleground state — and pointing up a significant failure by his immediate predecessor and 2024 challenger.At a technical college in Racine, Mr. Biden will announce that Microsoft will invest $3.3 billion to build the center, which the tech giant estimates will create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs, according to the White House. The project is part of Mr. Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, which has focused on bringing billions of private-sector dollars into manufacturing and industries such as clean energy and artificial intelligence.In his fourth trip to Wisconsin this year, Mr. Biden will continue an aggressive campaign to paint a contrast between him and former President Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, who is in the fourth week of his criminal trial in connection with payments to a pornographic film star. While in Wisconsin, Mr. Biden will also attend a campaign event, where he will speak to Black voters about the stakes in the election.In a fact sheet released by the White House, the administration said that Mr. Biden’s visit to Racine would showcase “a community at the heart of his commitment to invest in places that have been historically overlooked or failed by the last administration’s policies.”The Microsoft data center will be built on grounds where Mr. Trump, as president, announced in 2017 that Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, would build a $10 billion factory for making LCD panels. The Foxconn factory was supposed to be one of Mr. Trump’s marquee domestic manufacturing victories: the first major factory run by the electronics supplier in Wisconsin, with a promised 13,000 jobs.Instead, the ill-fated project never materialized as promised, even after receiving millions in subsidies and bulldozing homes and farms to build the factory. The company abandoned its plans and produced only a small fraction of the promised jobs, dealing a major blow to Mr. Trump’s pledge to revitalize American manufacturing as well as to Racine, which lost about 1,000 manufacturing jobs during his four years in office. The information issued by the White House ahead of Mr. Biden’s visit said the new data center would add to the more than 4,000 jobs created in Racine since the president took office.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Fed Tries to Steer Clear of Politics, but Election Year Is Making It Tough

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    Economists are wondering whether political developments could play into both the Fed’s near-term decisions and its long-term independence.Federal Reserve officials are fiercely protective of their separation from politics, but the presidential election is putting the institution on a crash course with partisan wrangling.Fed officials set policy independently of the White House, meaning that while presidents can push for lower interest rates, they cannot force central bankers to cut borrowing costs. Congress oversees the Fed, but it, too, lacks power to directly influence rate decisions.There’s a reason for that separation. Incumbent politicians generally want low interest rates, which help to stoke economic growth by making borrowing cheap. But the Fed uses higher interest rates to keep inflation slow and steady — and if politicians forced to keep rates low and goose the economy all the time, it could allow those price increases to rocket out of control.In light of the Fed’s independence, presidents have largely avoided talking about central bank policy at all ever since the early 1990s. Pressuring officials for lower rates was unlikely to help, administrations reasoned, and could actually backfire by prodding policymakers to keep rates higher for longer to prove that they were independent from the White House.But Donald J. Trump upended that norm when he was president. He called Fed officials “boneheads” and implied that Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, was an “enemy” of America for keeping rates too high. And he has already talked about the Fed in political terms as he campaigns as the presumptive Republican nominee, suggesting that cutting interest rates before November would be a ploy to help President Biden win a second term.Some of Mr. Trump’s allies outside his campaign have proposed that the Fed’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review. Mr. Trump has also said that he intends to bring all “independent agencies” under White House control, although he and his campaign have not specifically addressed directing the Fed’s decisions on interest rates.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Federal Money Is All Over Milwaukee. Biden Hopes Voters Will Notice.

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    White House officials have barnstormed Wisconsin to make the connection between big changes and their signature laws.Across Milwaukee, residents can see evidence of federal money from laws passed under the Biden administration, if they know where to look.It shows up in a growing array of solar panels near the airport. Ramshackle houses rehabilitated and sold to first-time buyers. The removal of lead paint and pipes. The demolition of a derelict mall. A crime lab and emergency management center. A clinic and food pantry for people with H.I.V. Funding to help dozens of nonprofits provide services like violence prevention efforts and after-school programs.But of the more than $1 billion for Milwaukee County in the American Rescue Plan Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act — legislation that President Biden counts among his greatest accomplishments — much is harder to see, like funds to prevent drastic cuts to public safety during the pandemic. Some money has yet to be spent, like $3.5 million to rebuild the penguin exhibit at the local zoo and $5.1 million to repair the roof of Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.That presents both an opportunity and a challenge to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign as it seeks to show Americans how federal investments have improved their lives. Doing so is difficult because the laws delegated many spending decisions to state and local officials, obscuring the money’s source.“The link between the resources themselves and anything that happens on the ground that’s visible to people is very opaque,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin. “You need to find some way to communicate this idea that there’s concrete progress within people’s communities that improves quality of life — and that there’s more coming.”Vivent Health, a newly constructed facility in Milwaukee that offers services to people with H.I.V.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesSolar panels installed atop the Milwaukee Central Library, which includes a green roof.Sara Stathas for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why Better Times (and Big Raises) Haven’t Cured the Inflation Hangover

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    Frustrated by higher prices, many Pennsylvanians with fresh pay raises and solid finances report a sense of insecurity lingering from the pandemic.A disconnect between economic data and consumer sentiment is being felt by Pennsylvania residents, including, from left, Donald Woods, a retired firefighter in West Philadelphia; Darren Mattern, a nurse in Altoona; and Lindsay Danella, a server in Altoona.Left: Caroline Gutman for The New York Times. Center and right: Ross Mantle for The New York TimesIn western Pennsylvania, halfway through one of those classic hazy March days when the worst of winter has passed, but the bare trees tilting in the wind tell everyone spring is yet to come, Darren Mattern was putting in some extra work.Tucked at a corner table inside a Barnes & Noble cafe in Logan Town Centre, a sprawling exurban shopping complex in Blair County, he tapped away at two laptops. His work PC was open with notes on his clients: local seniors in need of at-home health care and living assistance, whom he serves as a registered nurse. On his sleeker, personal laptop he eyed some coursework for the master’s degree in nursing he’s finishing so he can work as a supervisor soon.Mr. Mattern, warm and steady in demeanor, says the “huge blessing” of things evident in his everyday life at 35 — financial security, a home purchase last year, a baby on the way — weren’t possible until recently.He had warehouse jobs for most of his 20s, making a few dollars above minimum wage (in a state where that’s still $7.25 an hour), until he took nursing classes in the late 2010s. Shortly after becoming certified, he pushed through long days in a hospital during the height of the Covid pandemic at a salary of $40,000. Today, he has what he calls “the best nursing job pay-wise I’ve ever had,” at $85,000.Mr. Mattern’s trajectory is one bright line in a broad upward trend that hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, and millions of other Americans, have experienced since the pandemic recession — a comeback in which unemployment has been below 4 percent for the longest stretch since the 1960s, small-business creation has flourished and the stock market has reached new heights.There’s a disconnect, however, between the raw data and a national mood that is somewhat improved but still sour. A surge in average weekly pay and full-time employment has helped offset the demoralizing effects of a two-year bout of heavy inflation as the global economy chaotically reopened. But it has not neutralized them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Soft Landing or No Landing? Fed’s Economic Picture Gets Complicated.

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    Stubborn inflation and strong growth could keep the Federal Reserve wary about interest rate cuts, eager to avoid adding vim to the economy.America seemed headed for an economic fairy-tale ending in late 2023. The painfully rapid inflation that had kicked off in 2021 appeared to be cooling in earnest, and economic growth had begun to gradually moderate after a series of Federal Reserve interest rate increases.But 2024 has brought a spate of surprises: The economy is expanding rapidly, job gains are unexpectedly strong and progress on inflation shows signs of stalling. That could add up to a very different conclusion.Instead of the “soft landing” that many economists thought was underway — a situation in which inflation slows as growth gently calms without a painful recession — analysts are increasingly wary that America’s economy is not landing at all. Rather than settling down, the economy appears to be booming as prices continue to climb more quickly than usual.A “no landing” outcome might feel pretty good to the typical American household. Inflation is nowhere near as high as it was at its peak in 2022, wages are climbing and jobs are plentiful. But it would cause problems for the Federal Reserve, which has been determined to wrestle price increases back to their 2 percent target, a slow and steady pace that the Fed thinks is consistent with price stability. Policymakers raised interest rates sharply in 2022 and 2023, pushing them to a two-decade high in an attempt to weigh on growth and inflation.If inflation gets stuck at an elevated level for months on end, it could prod Fed officials to hold rates high for longer in an effort to cool the economy and ensure that prices come fully under control.“Persistent buoyancy in inflation numbers” probably “does give Fed officials pause that maybe the economy is running too hot right now for rate cuts,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide. “Right now, we’re not even seeing a ‘soft landing’ — we’re seeing a ‘no landing.’”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More