President Joe Biden traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Aug. 15, determined to continue advocating for his economic strategy, known as Bidenomics, despite low voter enthusiasm for his economic agenda and distractions from his predecessor’s legal issues.
“I came to office determined to move away from trickle-down economics, and focus on the middle class. Because I said when the middle class does well, everybody does well,” President Biden said at the start of his speech.
The president’s trip to Wisconsin comes only one day after former President Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time.
The White House has been silent over the indictment.
“Certainly not going to comment on that. Would refer you to local authorities,” White House deputy principal press secretary Olivia Dalton told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way to Wisconsin.
Ms. Dalton said that the president will remain focused on his job when asked if Americans would listen to his economic speech when there is so much distraction from the former president’s legal issues.
“You all will make your editorial decisions, but this president will stay focused on delivering for the American people. That is his job; that is his priority,” she said. “That’s what he'll continue to talk about. We certainly can’t speak to what others are spending their time on.”
President Biden’s trip to Milwaukee coincided with the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that he signed into law last year.
During his visit, the president toured Ingeteam, a manufacturer of onshore wind turbine generators in Milwaukee. The company recently announced that it would begin manufacturing electric vehicle charging stations, creating 100 new jobs.
Siemens, a German company, also plans to begin manufacturing solar inverters in Wisconsin, owing to tax breaks provided by the IRA law.
President Biden reiterated that his policies are creating a “boom of manufacturing” across the United States.
While the president continues to tout his policies, a new poll revealed that the majority of voters are still unfamiliar with or skeptical of his economic program.
About 71 percent of respondents to a poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland stated that they had heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the IRA. The majority of Americans (57 percent) also disapprove of the president’s climate policies.
Many other surveys have also found voters giving President Biden bad grades on the economy.
According to a recent CNN poll, his approval rating is 37 percent when it comes to the handling of the economy, and it drops even lower to 30 percent when it comes to managing inflation.
“While unemployment is down—in case you haven’t noticed—inflation is down too, and it’s going lower,” President Biden said during his speech in Wisconsin, criticizing economists who have argued that low wages and high unemployment are necessary to bring inflation under control.
“One reason we’ve seen inflation fall by two-thirds without losing jobs is that we’re seeing corporate profits come back down to earth,” the president claimed. “It’s in stark contrast to the conservative Republican view, the so-called MAGA view, which is focused on corporate profits.”
During his speech, the president also took aim at Republican Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, claiming that he is focused on maximizing corporate profits and supporting the export of American jobs to other countries.
Between the years 2000 and 2021, the president noted, Wisconsin saw a loss of more than 136,000 manufacturing jobs.
Taking office in 2011, however, Mr. Johnson wasn’t in the Senate during the 2000 vote for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Labor economists widely attribute the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China’s accession to the WTO.
Wisconsin is a key swing state that will play an important role in the upcoming election. President Biden won the state by fewer than 21,000 votes in 2020, while President Trump won the state by slightly more than 27,000 votes in 2016.
