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Does Joe Biden’s re-election campaign have a Gaza problem?

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IT IS NEVER nice for a campaign when a steadfast constituency turns irate and threatens to withhold their votes; it is the stuff of nightmares when they happen to reside in a swing state that may decide the next presidential election. Incensed over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza—which is fast approaching 30,000 Palestinian deaths—Muslim-American and Arab-American voters staged a campaign to withhold their votes for President Joe Biden in Michigan’s Democratic primary. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent Palestinian-American congresswoman representing the heavily Muslim western suburbs of Detroit, encouraged her fellow Democrats to vote “uncommitted”, as did most prominent Muslim officials in the state. Over 100,000 Michiganders voted “uncommitted”, representing 13.3% of the total vote.

The threat to Mr Biden is not veiled. “There is not really a path that does not go through Michigan. And there is not really a path that goes through Michigan without the Muslim community,” says Hira Khan of Emgage, a Muslim-voter mobilisation group. Michigan has had a recent spate of tight elections. In 2016 Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a margin of 10,704 votes (or 0.22% of those cast); in 2020 Mr Biden won by 154,188 (or 2.78%). The state also has one of the highest concentrations of voters with Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds. In 2020 there were an estimated 206,000 Muslims in the electorate—roughly 2.8% of the total—and most of them probably voted for Democrats. If the anti-Gaza backlash persisted through November (including among the three-quarters of young voters who disapprove of Mr Biden’s handling of it), the effect would be marginal. But in a state like Michigan, marginal effects can matter quite a lot.

That is why the Biden campaign seemed particularly concerned. Weeks ago, it sent Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign manager, to the state to meet Muslim leaders. The meeting was cancelled when all of them refused to attend. Reportedly, a suggested meeting with Vice-President Kamala Harris in Washington was also nixed. The White House dispatched senior policymakers, including Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser. A recording of the conversation, published by the New York Times, shows Mr Finer being unusually self-critical: “We have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict,” he said.

The listening sessions are only going so far. “I think they’re hearing the concerns. The problem is that they’re not acting on them yet,” says Alabas Farhat, a Democratic state representative who has been campaigning for the uncommitted vote.

Despite the display of discontent in the primary, it remains unclear how seriously the grumbling will jeopardise the president’s prospects in the general election. In 2012, when Barack Obama was running for re-election, 10.7% of Democratic primary voters in Michigan voted “uncommitted”, even though there was no concerted campaign to do so. Graded against that baseline, the 13.3% showing mustered by this campaign looks less impressive.

Back in 2012 the discontent was diffuse. This year it was concentrated. In some precincts of Dearborn, a heavily Arab-American city near Detroit, three-quarters of voters were “uncommitted”. If 100,000 Democratic voters were really willing to spoil their ballots in November in order to nix Mr Biden’s chances of winning, he would be in serious trouble. Yet the president would also face an electoral backlash were he seen to abandon Israel. In The Economist’s YouGov poll 36% of those questioned say their sympathies in the conflict are more with Israelis, while just 15% are more sympathetic to Palestinians.

Some Muslims say they are ready to abandon Biden and that his inability to restrain Israel is cause enough to make him a one-term president. Given Mr Trump’s evident antipathy to Muslim-Americans, his favour towards Israel and his general lack of concern for most things that sound like human rights, this might seem paradoxical. Ahead of the primary vote Gretchen Whitmer, the popular governor of Michigan, argued that “any vote that is not cast for Joe Biden supports a second Trump term.” Many Muslims concede that outcomes under Mr Trump would not have been better, but that there would be no offensive pretence of caring about human rights. “I prefer to be stabbed from the front than from the back,” says one.

Others say that Mr Biden can win back their support if he were to call for a permanent ceasefire, if he stops sending weapons to the Israelis and resumes funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (which was cut off after the Israelis said that several of its employees had taken part in Hamas’s attack on October 7th that murdered 1,200). Asked what happens in the next nine months, Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, says: “That’s a question for President Biden.”

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Economics

Trump will ‘buckle under pressure’ if Europe bands together over tariffs: German economy minister

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BERLIN, GERMANY – FEBRUARY 24: Robert Habeck, chancellor candidate of the German Greens Party, speaks to the media the day after German parliamentary elections on February 24, 2025 in Berlin, Germany. The Greens came in fourth place with 11.6% of the vote, down 2.9% from the previous election. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images

U.S. President Donald Trump will “buckle under pressure” and alter his tariff policies if Europe bands together, acting German economy minister Robert Habeck said Thursday.

“That is what I see, that Donald Trump will buckle under pressure, that he corrects his announcements under pressure, but the logical consequence is that he then also needs to feel the pressure,” he said during a press conference, according to a CNBC translation.

“And this pressure now needs to be unfolded, from Germany, from Europe in the alliance with other countries, and then we will see who is the stronger one in this arm wrestle,” Habeck said.

Elsewhere, outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he believed the latest tariff decisions by Trump were “fundamentally wrong,” according to a CNBC translation.

The measures are an attack on the global trade order and will result in suffering for the global economy, Scholz said.

On Wednesday, Trump imposed 20% levies on the European Union, including on the bloc’s foremost economy Germany, as he signed a sweeping and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy.

Germany is widely regarded as one of the countries likely to be most impacted by Trump’s tariffs, given its heavy economic reliance on trade.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.

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Economics

The Trump train slows

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THESE DAYS are dire and dour for Democrats. But April 1st brought a brief reprieve—and not because of jokes. That was the day that the most expensive judicial election in American history in the battleground state of Wisconsin ended in a decisive triumph for the left-leaning candidate. It had drawn $100m of spending, including an estimated $25m from Elon Musk who also, perhaps unhelpfully, personally campaigned in the state. The same day, two special elections in Florida for vacant congressional seats took place in safe Republican districts. Although they did not win, Democrats improved their margins by 17 and 20 percentage points compared with the general elections held just five months ago. Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey, staged a one-man protest on the floor of the Senate, excoriating President Donald Trump’s administration for 25 hours straight—a stunt, to be sure, but one that demonstrated proof of life in a party that supporters worried had gone limp.

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Economics

How did the U.S. arrive at its tariff figures?

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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Markets have turned their sights on how U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration arrived at the figures behind the sweeping tariffs on U.S. imports declared Wednesday, which sent global financial markets tumbling and sparked concerns worldwide.

Trump and the White House shared a series of charts on social media detailing the tariff rates they say other countries impose on the U.S. Those purported rates include the countries’ “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.”

An adjacent column shows the new U.S. tariff rates on each country, as well as the European Union.

Chart of reciprocal tariffs.

Courtesy: Donald Trump via Truth Social

Those rates are, in most cases, roughly half of what the Trump administration claims each country has “charged” the U.S. CNBC could not independently verify the U.S. administration’s data on these duties.

It didn’t take long for market observers to try and reverse engineer the formula — to confusing results. Many, including journalist and author James Surowiecki, said the U.S. appeared to have divided the trade deficit by imports from a given country to arrive at tariff rates for individual countries.

Such methodology doesn’t necessarily align with the conventional approach to calculate tariffs and would imply the U.S. would have only looked at the trade deficit in goods and ignored trade in services.

For instance, the U.S. claims that China charges a tariff of 67%. The U.S. ran a deficit of $295.4 billion with China in 2024, while imported goods were worth $438.9 billion, according to official data. When you divide $295.4 billion by $438.9 billion, the result is 67%! The same math checks out for Vietnam.

“The formula is about trade imbalances with the U.S. rather than reciprocal tariffs in the sense of tariff level or non-tariff level distortions. This makes it very difficult for Asian, particularly the poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand to reduce tariffs in the short-term as the benchmark is buying more American goods than they export to the U.S., ” according to Trinh Nguyen, senior economist of emerging Asia at Natixis.

“Given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs, such option is not optimal. Vietnam, for example, stands out in having the 4th largest trade surplus with the U.S., and has already lowered tariffs versus the U.S. ahead of tariff announcement without any reprieve,” Nguyen said.

The U.S. also appeared to have applied a 10% levy for regions where it is running a trade surplus.

"Absolutely nothing good coming out" of Trump tariff announcement, veteran economist Rosenberg says

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative laid out its approach on its website, which appeared somewhat similar to what cyber sleuths had already figured out, barring a few differences.

The U.S.T.R. also included estimates for the elasticity of imports to import prices—in other words, how sensitive demand for foreign goods is to prices—and the passthrough of higher tariffs into higher prices of imported goods.

“While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero. If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair,” the website reads.

This screenshot of the U.S.T.R. webpage shows the methodology and formula that was used in greater detail:

A screenshot from the website of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

Some analysts acknowledged that the U.S. government’s methodology could give it more wiggle room to reach an agreement.

“All I can say is that the opaqueness surrounding the tariff numbers may add some flexibility in making deals, but it could come at a cost to US credibility,” according to Rob Subbaraman, head of global macro research at Nomura.

 — CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this piece.

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