President Joe Biden’s signature economic policy, dubbed “Bidenomics,” is being pushed onto other countries this weekend as the president heads to the G20 summit in India.
Biden traveled to New Delhi, India, on Thursday, where he is attending the G20 summit — a gathering of 19 major countries and the European Union — to discuss issues related to global cooperation, according to statements made in a briefing Tuesday from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Sullivan emphasized that Biden would be championing his economic policy at the summit, pushing other countries, particularly developing nations, to adopt the same approach. (RELATED: As More Countries Link Arms With China, Is US Dollar Dominance Truly At Risk?)
“Here at home, President Biden has worked to rebuild the American economy, as you’ve all heard him say, from the bottom up and the middle out by making smart investments in the industries of the future while tackling climate change and empowering workers,” Sullivan said at a press briefing. “We think countries around the world, too, can benefit from a similar type of approach and that we can help them as well by mobilizing investment to support them in tackling the challenges that they face.”
Biden signed the American Rescue Plan in March 2021 as a part of his economic policy, which was designed to deliver $1.9 trillion in economic relief from the COVID-19 pandemic. The bill included stimulus checks for individuals, debt bailouts for state and local governments, funding for vaccines and health care-related costs and more.
“The essence of Bidenomics is a highly expansionary budget policy that former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has described as the most irresponsible budget policy in the last 40 years,” Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This policy contributed importantly to a surge in inflation to a multi-decade high. That in turn has forced the Federal Reserve to slam on the monetary policy brakes which could be setting us up for a recession next year.”
Under Biden’s watch, inflation skyrocketed to a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 following high spending, which slowly retreated to 3.0% in June, ticking up to 3.2% in July, still above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%. To combat inflation, the Fed has raised its federal funds rate 11 times since March 2022, bringing the current rate into a range of 5.25% and 5.50%.
Hello, Delhi!
It’s great to be in India for this year’s G20. pic.twitter.com/JBJUAuAYYb
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 8, 2023
“Bidenomics is hardly worthy of copying,” Lachman told the DCNF. “We must hope that the other G-20 countries resist the siren calls for excessive budget spending. If not, the world economy will be in big trouble.”
Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, a key component of Bidenomics, in August 2022, approving around $750 billion in new spending, with nearly $370 billion of that directed toward fighting climate change through green initiatives.
“I think subsidies to produce green products within a particular country are a bad idea. It will lead to a subsidy war,” Clark Packard, a research fellow in the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF. “When Congress and the Biden administration enacted the Inflation Reduction Act, it included subsidies for domestically produced electric vehicles.”
“That naturally angered our trading partners who argued, correctly, that such subsidies are incompatible with basic [World Trade Organization] trade rules prohibiting discrimination against imports,” Packard continued. “But the U.S. opened the door with massive domestic subsidies and our exporters will lose out if other countries adopt this approach.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
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