Joe Biden campaigning at a shipyard promises the return of the "American dream"

July 20, 2023

Joe Biden visited a Philadelphia shipyard on Thursday to illustrate the country’s industrial boom through which the US president hopes to be re-elected, at a time when Americans seem unenthusiastic about leaving him at the helm for four more years.

His address in the big city of Pennsylvania, on the east coast, was intended to be direct and simple, praising its “Bidenomics”, the name he gives to his massive investment plans, which he says are “just another way of saying let’s restore the American dream”.

“It’s a new beginning,” he insisted.

The “Bidenomics”, on which the Democrat has decided to build his campaign, should make it possible to reindustrialize the country after decades of relocation and abandonment of historic industrial centers.

These reforms, which concern infrastructure as well as semi-conductors and green energy, aim to restore the country to an industrial power in sectors deemed to be crucial.

His visit to the Philadelphia shipyard, where offshore wind turbines are manufactured, is part of this, in a state which could still play a crucial role in the presidential election of 2024, where a new round between the outgoing president and his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, seems to be announced.

“When I think climate, I think jobs, I think protected jobs”, insisted the American president under the cheers of those present, “we are creating jobs in the United States and we are exporting American products”.

More broadly, Joe Biden is relying on a strong and solid economic recovery, after the slowdown caused by the pandemic.

So far, the US economy has not only defied recession predictions, but is seeing inflation, still very high in recent months, return to calmer waters, at 3% year on year in June, lower than in other advanced economies.

But polls show Americans remain pessimistic and only a minority credit the Democratic president for the current economic strength.

According to a Monmouth University poll released this week, only 34% of respondents approve of the Biden administration’s handling of inflation.

The employment front, with historically low unemployment at 3.6%, seems more positive for the American president: 47% of those polled approve of his policy in this area, but 48% still disapprove.

And despite efforts by the White House to show otherwise, 32% of respondents think the US economy is doing worse than other countries. Only 30% consider it to behave better.

“The president is touting his Bidenomics, but the needle of public opinion hasn’t really moved,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University polling institute. “The Americans give him little credit” in the matter.

American political polarization is also at work here: Joe Biden obtains good scores with Democratic voters, but particularly bad among Republicans.

So White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre pleads for patience, recalling the “historically low levels” of unemployment and the good inflation figures and repeating that the shape of the American economy is the envy of the international.

“Polls don’t tell the whole story,” she said.

At the end of his speech, the president went to distribute ice cream to the construction workers, showing himself confident and presenting his economic program as a historic chance to put the country back on the right track.

Projects like an offshore wind farm maintenance vessel, or factories sprouting up all over the United States, create a “sense of pride, hope and dignity that had been gradually lost,” he said.

“For a long time we’ve been told let’s give up manufacturing in the United States. How many times have you read or heard in the past 25 years that we can no longer be the major industrial powerhouse in the world? Well we can and we will be,” Biden insisted.