President Joe Biden will travel on Friday to Allentown, a historic steel town in Pennsylvania, where he will meet with small business owners and promote his economic plan. This visit marks his second trip to Pennsylvania in just one week.
The timing of this trip is crucial, given that President Biden announced that U.S. and British armed forces conducted air strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Thursday night.
Allentown, Pennsylvania’s third-largest city, tends to vote Democratic; yet, it is located in the Lehigh Valley, a swing region essential to President Biden’s 2024 race. This will be his second trip to the region since he took office.
In Allentown, the president will highlight the positive effects of Bidenomics and his Investing in America agenda, such as increases in investments, job creation, and wages, according to the White House. He is also expected to tout a small business boom across America.
The White House celebrated on Jan. 11 the record-breaking number of new business applications—nearly 16 million—filed during the first three years of Biden’s presidency.
“This small business boom hasn’t been an accident—it’s a result of my administration’s strategy to support entrepreneurs, help small businesses access the resources they need to thrive, and promote competition to level the playing field,” President Biden said in a statement.
For a long time, the Lehigh Valley was the world’s leading producer of steel and other heavy industrial goods. Allentown, however, was hit hard by the pandemic. According to the White House, former President Donald Trump’s economic policies were primarily responsible for the city losing 23,000 manufacturing jobs during that period.
The president took credit for the city’s economic comeback and its “historic employment growth.”
Pennsylvania is a crucial battleground state, and a new poll found that President Biden and the former president who is the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, are running neck and neck in a hypothetical 2024 general election matchup.
In the 2016 general election, Trump narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton in the state by 0.72 percent margin. However, in 2020, Biden regained the state with a similarly tight margin of 1.17 percent.
According to the White House, President Biden will visit small businesses in Allentown, which are in underserved regions.
“Since the President took office, 32,000 jobs have been created in Allentown, and the unemployment rate has dropped from 6.4 percent to 3.9 percent,” National Economic Council director Lael Brainard said during a White House press briefing on Jan. 11.
“And in an especially strong sign of hope and confidence, 4,000 applications have been filed to open businesses in Allentown in just three years,” she added.
Last week, President Biden delivered a searing address near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, labeling the former president a threat to democracy.
During his speech on Jan. 5, President Biden drew a parallel between what he called his fight for the “preservation of American democracy” and George Washington’s “sacred cause” during the struggle for American independence nearly 250 years ago.
He gave a similar campaign speech on Jan. 8 at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, where he condemned “white supremacy” and the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
He said, “The truth is under assault in America. As a consequence, so is our freedom, our democracy, and our very country, because without the truth, there is no light. Without light, there’s no path from this darkness.”
The Trump campaign issued a memo in response last week, claiming that the current president is a greater threat to American democracy.
“Please make no mistake: Joe Biden and his allies are a real and compelling threat to our democracy,” the campaign officials said. “In fact, in a way never seen before in our history, they are waging a war against it.”
President Biden has encountered challenges in gaining public support for his economic agenda, often dubbed “Bidenomics.” His recent campaign speeches were seen as an effort to pivot the narrative and emphasize the “threat to democracy.”
Nevertheless, a majority of Americans continue to express concerns about his age and voice disapproval of his handling of inflation and the border crisis, as shown by various polls.
