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Joe Biden comes out fighting against Donald Trump

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When President Joe Biden approaches a lectern, the challenge he confronts is not high expectations. It is instead high anxiety within his own party about his capacity, at 81, to lead, and even to make a compelling case for his presidency. On March 7th he took a step towards dispelling such doubts with a forceful state-of-the-union address in which he extolled his achievements, demanded action from congressional Republicans to secure the border and make taxation fairer, and repeatedly attacked Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, whom he referred to never by name but as “my predecessor”.

It was a campaign-style speech out of keeping with the tradition of the annual address to both chambers of Congress. Mr Biden not only attacked his opponent but goaded Republicans in the chamber and scolded the justices of the Supreme Court, who sat before him, for their decision to overturn Roe v Wade. Coming from this president, an institutionalist who reveres such traditions, that in itself was a signal that he recognises Mr Trump has shifted American politics onto new terrain, and that Mr Biden intends to take the fight to him there.

Mr Biden directly tackled concerns about his age as he drew to a close after more than an hour. He noted that when he was first elected to the Senate in 1972 he was sometimes barred from Senate lifts because he was thought to be too young to be serving. Now, he continued, “I’ve been told I’m too old.” He smiled the confident smile familiar from his many campaigns, though less seen lately, then said the important question was not the age of the candidates but of their ideas. “Hate, anger, revenge and retribution are the oldest of ideas,” Mr Biden said, referring to qualities Mr Trump has embraced. “But you can’t lead America with old ideas.”

A survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal late last month found that 73% of Americans thought Mr Biden was too old to run for re-election, while 52% felt that way about Mr Trump, who is 77. (For Mr Biden that number was the same last August, but for Mr Trump it has ticked up by five points.) Though both candidates are unpopular, Mr Biden is leading the unpopularity contest. He trails Mr Trump narrowly in national polls, according to The Economist’s poll tracker, but Mr Trump has opened leads in key swing states and, more dangerously, has the confidence of more Americans when it comes to issues they consider critical, such as handling the economy and securing the border.

Mr Biden squinted at the teleprompter as he read his speech, and he swallowed some syllables and occasionally whole words. But he showed himself to be in command of his material and the chamber by baiting Republicans into jeering, then, like a boy relishing a playground scuffle, grinning and punching back. “Yeah, yeah,” he sneered, as Republicans booed his description of the bipartisan Senate border-security bill that the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has refused to bring to a vote. “Look at the facts. I know you know how to read.”

As Mr Biden rattled off the enforcement provisions of the bill, James Lankford, the conservative Republican senator who helped negotiate it for months only to see his party desert it, nodded his head and appeared to mouth, “That’s true.” Mr Biden accused Mr Trump of blocking the bill to help his electoral prospects, then challenged him: “Join me in telling Congress to pass it. We can do it together.”

Mr Biden opened his speech by saying his ambition was to “wake up the Congress” and alert the American people to threats facing the country. In a hopeful sign for aid to Ukraine that is now stalled in Congress, Mr Johnson, seated over Mr Biden’s left shoulder, nodded somberly as the president warned of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin: “If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop with Ukraine, I assure you he will not.” Mr Biden invoked Ronald Reagan’s demand that the leader of the Soviet Union tear down the Berlin Wall, adroitly drawing applause from Republicans even as he pivoted to his first, sudden strike at Mr Trump: “Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want!”

Mr Biden connected the threat to democracy in Europe to the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021, and said “my predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth” about the day. “Here’s the simple truth,” Mr Biden continued. “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

Mr Biden later turned to what he called the “gut-wrenching” violence in the Middle East. He insisted that Israel had the right to pursue Hamas, but also that it had a “fundamental responsibility” to protect civilian lives, and he gave a harrowing account of the suffering of Gazans. He said America would erect a temporary pier on Gaza’s shore and begin supplying aid by sea, and that Israel had also committed to opening a crossing into the Gaza Strip from the north.

These efforts might not mollify Democratic progressives angry at Mr Biden for his support of Israel. But Democrats in the chamber were thrilled with the pugilistic, populist tenor and substance of his speech. For the most part he avoided high-flown oratory in favour of simpler formulations as he demanded that Congress act to lower drug prices and housing costs. “Folks at home,” he shouted at one point, “does anyone really think the tax code is fair?” “No!” shouted the Democrats in the chamber, and Mr Biden promised to “keep fighting like hell to make it fair”.

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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