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Biden’s $7.3 Trillion Budget Proposal Highlights Divide With Trump and GOP

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President Biden proposed a $7.3 trillion budget on Monday packed with tax increases on corporations and high earners, new spending on social programs and a wide range of efforts to combat high consumer costs like housing and college tuition.

The proposal includes only relatively small changes from the budget plan Mr. Biden submitted last year, which went nowhere in Congress, though it reiterates his call for lawmakers to spend about $100 billion to strengthen border security and deliver aid to Israel and Ukraine.

Most of the new spending and tax increases included in the fiscal year 2025 budget again stand almost no chance of becoming law this year, given that Republicans control the House and roundly oppose Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget proposal outlining their priorities, which are far afield from what Democrats have called for.

Instead, the document will serve as a draft of Mr. Biden’s policy platform as he seeks re-election in November, along with a series of contrasts intended to draw a distinction with his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Biden has sought to reclaim strength on economic issues with voters who have given him low marks amid elevated inflation. This budget aims to portray him as a champion of increased government aid for workers, parents, manufacturers, retirees and students, as well as the fight against climate change.

Speaking in New Hampshire on Monday, Mr. Biden heralded the budget as a way to raise revenue to pay for his priorities by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and big corporations.

“I’m not anti-corporation,” he said. “I’m a capitalist, man. Make all the money you want. Just begin to pay your fair share in taxes.”

The budget proposes about $5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and the wealthy over a decade. Administration officials said Monday that those increases would be split equally between corporations and the nation’s highest earners, and that Americans earning less than $400,000 a year would enjoy tax cuts totaling $750 billion under their plans.

“We can do all of our investments by asking those in the top 1 and 2 percent to pay more into the system,” Shalanda Young, the director of the White House budget office, told reporters.

The president has already begun trying to portray Mr. Trump as the opposite: a supporter of further tax cuts for the well-off. “Do you really think the wealthy and big corporations need another $2 trillion tax break?” Mr. Biden asked in New Hampshire, referencing Mr. Trump — but not by name. “Because that’s what he wants to do.”

Speaker Mike Johnson and other members of House Republican leadership criticized Mr. Biden in a statement released Monday afternoon. “The price tag of President Biden’s proposed budget is yet another glaring reminder of this administration’s insatiable appetite for reckless spending and the Democrats’ disregard for fiscal responsibility,” they said.

Polls have found that Americans are dissatisfied with Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy and favor Mr. Trump’s approach to economic issues. But the president has been unwavering in his core economic policy strategy, and the budget shows that he is not deviating from that plan.

Mr. Biden’s budget proposes about $3 trillion in new measures to reduce the federal deficit over the next decade. That is in line with his budget proposal last year, which narrowed deficits by raising taxes on businesses and the rich and by allowing the government to bargain more aggressively with pharmaceutical companies to reduce spending on prescription drugs.

The budget again calls for raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, the level Mr. Trump set in the tax bill he signed in late 2017. It increases a new minimum tax on large corporations and quadruples a tax on stock buybacks, among other efforts to raise more revenue from companies and individuals who make more than $400,000 a year.

Those savings would build on discretionary spending limits that Mr. Biden and congressional Republicans agreed on last year to resolve a standoff over raising the nation’s borrowing limit. They still would leave the nation with historically high budget deficits: about $1.6 trillion a year on average over the next decade, by administration forecasts. As a share of the economy, deficits would decline in that time — but total government debt as a share of the economy would tick upward.

House Republicans released a budget last week that seeks to reduce deficits much faster — balancing the budget by the end of the decade. Their savings relied on economic growth forecasts that are well above mainstream forecasters’ expectations, along with steep and often unspecified spending cuts.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget called the Republican plan “unrealistic in its assumptions and outcomes.” On Monday, the group called Mr. Biden’s proposed deficit reduction “a welcome start, but a too timid one.”

Mr. Biden and his aides have repeatedly said they believed the projected deficits in his budgets would not hurt the economy. Ms. Young and Jared Bernstein, who leads the White House Council of Economic Advisers, repeated that position on Monday, even after acknowledging that the budget now forecasts higher government borrowing costs over the next decade than previous budgets have.

Instead of turning toward more aggressive deficit reduction, as prior Democratic presidents have done after losing control of a chamber of Congress, Mr. Biden has leaned into the need for new spending programs and targeted tax incentives to bolster growth and the middle class.

The new proposal continues that trend. It would create a national program of paid leave for workers. It would reinstate an expanded child tax credit that Mr. Biden created temporarily in his $1.9 trillion economic stimulus law in 2021. That credit helped reduce child poverty significantly over the span of a year before expiring. That reinstatement would last for only a year, but administration officials said Monday that they hope to make it permanent as part of a broader debate on taxes in 2025.

The budget also includes new efforts to help Americans struggling with high costs. That issue has dogged Mr. Biden with voters since inflation soared on his watch to its highest levels in four decades, even as price increases have cooled over the past year. Mr. Biden previewed many of those efforts in his State of the Union speech last week, including new tax credits for certain home buyers and expanded assistance for people to buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Biden also called for new efforts to improve the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. In the budget, he opposed benefit cuts for the programs and any additional contributions from workers earning less than $400,000 a year.

On Monday, Ms. Young implied that Mr. Biden would look to shore up Social Security in part by targeting a cap on income subject to the payroll taxes that feed the program — a move he has specifically endorsed for Medicare. She said Mr. Biden would improve its solvency “by asking high-income Americans to pay their fair share. If you make a million dollars in this country, you are done paying your Social Security taxes sometime in February.”

In another key area, Mr. Biden’s proposal punts on key details: what to do about the provisions of the 2017 Republican tax law, including tax cuts for individuals, that expire in 2025. The budget calls that expiration, which was written into the law in order to hold down its estimated cost, “fiscally reckless.” But it does not specify how Mr. Biden would handle the expirations if he wins a second term.

Instead, the budget says Mr. Biden would seek to extend tax breaks for people earning less than $400,000 a year, offset with “additional reforms to ensure that wealthy people and big corporations pay their fair share.”

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Economics

Job openings showed surprising increase to 7.4 million in April

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JOLTS beats estimates, posts best number since February

Employers increased job openings more than expected in April while hiring and layoffs also both rose, according to a report Tuesday that showed a relatively steady labor market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed available jobs totaled nearly 7.4 million, an increase of 191,000 from March and higher than the 7.1 million consensus forecast by economists surveyed by FactSet. On an annual basis, the level was off 228,000, or about 3%.

The ratio of available jobs to unemployed workers was down close to 1.03 to 1 for the month, close to the March level.

Hiring also increased for the month, rising by 169,000 to 5.6 million, while layoffs fell by 196,000 to 1.79 million.

Quits, an indicator of worker confidence in their ability to find another job, edged lower, falling by 150,000 to 3.2 million.

“The labor market is returning to more normal levels despite the uncertainty within the macro outlook,” wrote Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Research. “Underlying patterns in hirings and firings suggest the labor market is holding steady.”

In other economic news Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that new orders for manufactured goods fell more than expected in April. Orders fell 3.7% on the month, more than the 3.3% Dow Jones forecast and indicative of declining demand after swelling 3.4% in March as businesses sought to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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Economics

Euro zone inflation, May 2025

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Shoppers buy fresh vegetables, fruit, and herbs at an outdoor produce market under green-striped canopies in Regensburg, Upper Palatinate, Bavaria, Germany, on April 19, 2025.

Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Euro zone inflation fell below the European Central Bank’s 2% target in May, hitting a cooler-than-expected 1.9% as the services print eased sharply, flash data from statistics agency Eurostat showed Tuesday.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected the May reading to come in at 2%, compared to the previous month’s 2.2% figure.

The closely watched services inflation print cooled sharply, amounting to 3.2% last month, compared to the previous 4% reading. So-called core inflation, which excludes energy, food, tobacco and alcohol prices, also eased, falling from 2.7% in April to 2.3% in May.

“May’s steep decline in services inflation, to its lowest level in more than three years, confirms that the previous month’s jump was just an Easter-related blip and that the downward trend in services inflation remains on track,” Jack Allen-Reynolds, deputy chief euro zone economist at Capital Economics said in a note.

Inflation has been moving back towards the 2% mark throughout 2025 amid uncertainty for the euro zone economy.

The latest figures will be considered by the European Central Bank as it prepares to make its next interest rate decision later this week. Markets were last pricing in an around 95% chance of interest rates being cut by a further 25-basis-points on Thursday.

Back in April, the central bank took its key rate, the deposit facility rate, to 2.25% — nearly half of the high of 4% notched in the middle of 2023.

But the global economic outlook remains muddied. U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist tariff plans have been casting shadows over the global economic outlook, with his so-called “reciprocal” duties — which are also set to affect the European Union — widely seen as harmful to economic growth. Their immediate potential impact on inflation is less clear, with central bank policymakers and analysts noting that it could depend on any potential countermeasures.

Despite the transatlantic tumult, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its latest Economic Outlook report out on Tuesday said it was expecting the euro area to expand by 1% in 2025, unchanged from its previous forecast. Euro area inflation is meanwhile projected to come in at 2.2% this year, also in line with the March report.

Euro country bond yields were last lower after the fresh inflation data, with the German 10-year bond yield falling by over two basis points to 2.499%, while the yield on the French 10-year bond was last down by more than one basis point to 3.169%.

The euro was meanwhile last around 0.3% lower against the dollar.

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U.S. growth forecast cut further by OECD as Trump tariffs sour outlook

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Old Navy and Gap retail stores are seen as people walk through Times Square in New York City on April 9, 2025.

Angela Weiss | Afp | Getty Images

Economic growth forecasts for the U.S. and globally were cut further by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as President Donald Trump’s tariff turmoil weighs on expectations.

The U.S. growth outlook was downwardly revised to just 1.6% this year and 1.5% in 2026. In March, the OECD was still expecting a 2.2% expansion in 2025.

The fallout from Trump’s tariff policy, elevated economic policy uncertainty, a slowdown of net immigration and a smaller federal workforce were cited as reasons for the latest downgrade.

Global growth, meanwhile, is also expected to be lower than previously forecast, with the OECD saying that “the slowdown is concentrated in the United States, Canada and Mexico,” while other economies are projected to see smaller downward revisions.

“Global GDP growth is projected to slow from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% this year and in 2026 … on the technical assumption that tariff rates as of mid-May are sustained despite ongoing legal challenges,” the OECD said.

It had previously forecast global growth of 3.1% this year and 3% in 2026.

“The global outlook is becoming increasingly challenging,” the report said. “Substantial increases in barriers to trade, tighter financial conditions, weaker business and consumer confidence and heightened policy uncertainty will all have marked adverse effects on growth prospects if they persist.”

Frequent changes regarding tariffs have continued in recent weeks, leading to uncertainty in global markets and economies. Some of the most recent developments include Trump’s reciprocal, country-specific levies being struck down by the U.S. Court of International Trade, before then being reinstated by an appeals court, as well as Trump saying he would double steel duties to 50%.

The OECD adjusted its inflation forecast, saying “higher trade costs, especially in countries raising tariffs, will also push up inflation, although their impact will be offset partially by weaker commodity prices.”

The impact of tariffs on inflation has been hotly debated, with many central bank policymakers and global analysts suggesting it remains unclear how the levies will impact prices, and that much depends on factors like potential countermeasures.

The OECD’s inflation outlook shows a notable difference between the U.S. and some of the world’s other major economies. For instance, while G20 countries are now expected to record 3.6% inflation in 2025 — down from 3.8% in March’s estimate — the projection for the U.S. has risen to 3.2%, up from a previous 2.8%.

U.S. inflation could even be closing in on 4% toward the end of 2025, the OECD said.

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