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This opinion of the Editorial Board of WSJ says it is not clear why Taiwan has been excluded from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that includes most of South East Asia including Indonesia, and India, South Korea, Japan, Australia. The Biden administration plans to deepen economic ties with Taiwan. WSJ says this is a mistake and Taiwan should be included in the new Asian alliance led by the US. IPEF is a Asian alliance built around 4 pillars of digital economy, transparency and good governance, Asian security and rule of law, and rapid economic technological progress. Biden administration Commerce minister Raimondo says it will increase investment in the alliance countries for supply chain renewal and shift of investments away from China and into India, Vietnam. President Biden and Jake Sullivan see it as pulling in investment into the US for infrastructure and technology and into allies such as India who have the pool of manufacturing workers to compete with China in a new supply chain. Mr. Modi also sees it as he is focused on digital economy, good governance, and infrastructure with speed and scale at high levels to match rising aspirations for the economy in India. It is designed in a way that lets US, Japan South Korea and India to fill in the needs and strategies over the period to 2030 and 2040 so that US and Europe and the Free World in Asia and Latin America, Africa can preserve democratic values with matching technological and economic strength. ...

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Ed Finn, president of Barron's for 19 years from 1998 has observed the economy for decades and comes to the conclusion that the 2007-2008 banking crisis from Reagan style deregulation was the one principal factor the US economy and the people suffered from a lost decade that was extended to 15 years by the pandemic. This has ended under president Biden says Finn, with he says about 10% growth in S&P 500 every year since 2020 and expects growth at that rate for another 4 years under president Biden. What this says about ultra low interest rates is that it was bad for America and a result of the need for tackling the 2009 financial crisis. Interest rates need to be at the moderate level of about 4-5%, the level today, where savers are rewarded, retirees are rewarded, bondholders are rewarded, and excessive risk taking is penalized, says Finn. Moderate interest rates help mortgage holders and new companies start businesses. In short says Finn- this is the way a economy should be run. We were sold the idea of ultra low interest rates because no one wanted to talk about the bad effects of Reagan style deregulation that inevitably lead to lack of the financial oversight of regulatory authorites. Financial oversight by regulatory authorites needed for modern economies to run, whether this is the US, India, China, or any large European economy, it is an essential condition for stable long term growth that serves the needs of the people of every major economy in the world. The idea must be cast aside that economic policy must be determined by the swings in sentiment  every few decades in one direction to too little government from to too much government or reverse, and be determined by essential truths of how a sound and good economy is run. As the US enters 2024 what Powell a Republican, and Biden a Democrat, and the bipartisan group of Senators in the US Congress are saying is that we get it, and are with single minded determination making it happen. ...

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President Biden says he opposed reducing minimum sentences for crimes in Washington D.C. such as carjackings, as proposed by a new law in D.C. Biden says Republican efforts to block that legislation would bring that to his desk and he would not veto the Republican proposal blocking reducing sentences. Crime is up 40% in Washington D.C say police. In the New York election for Congress, and in the recent Chicago mayoral election crime was an issue for Republicans leading to losses for Democrats and for Lori Lightfoot in Chicago. Biden wants to focus on the major issues for workers and families in the country, on infrastructure, jobs, inflation, and the US economy, and not let his plan for America's renewal lose focus because Republicans are able to make crime an issue.

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Counting only people who voted in 2020 Biden is ahead 2 percentage points. 2024 Biden campaign is complicated by irregular and disengaged voters. Will disengaged mostly younger voters stay home or will they vote? What will happen with the churn- how many of the irregular voters from the last election will turn out and how many stay home. Many are Democrat leaning and as the election campaign progresses they may become more aware and vote but this is by no means certain. Many are younger voters or minority voters who are disengaged and do not follow what is happening. The economy not abortion or the border is important to these voters. President Biden has secured the vote of only 75% of these voters and has to find ways to reach them all. 

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Mortgage and other loans taken out at lower interest rates, before the US central bank the Fed started raising rates  in March 2022, is a big part of US household debt. This fact is helping to soften the impact of the Fed's increase of rates by 5% over 16 months. The increase in rates helps savers and retirees earn more on savings kept in CD's. The cut in inflation from 9% in 2022 to 3% in July 2022 helps increase the purchasing power of money. It also helps keep the US economy stronger than other world economies, with the Biden economic plan of increased business investment underpinning strong economic growth of 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023. Wars are not a distraction or cost burden for the economy, with Biden shutting down 2 wars in the Middle East and South Asia. Lessons were learned and Biden has been resolute about this, also giving a singular focus to his plan for rebuilding and renewing America on multiple fronts, infrastructure, fighting climate change, inflation, business investment, and fair taxation so that the fruits of labor are shared equally by all of America's people. Doing this required a clear vision, resolute purpose, and a path to action for each step. Biden has done that in ways that only a few presidents have done in the past. In doing this he has shown that America stands for hope and a better future, a land as he never fails to repeat, a land of possibilities. ...

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Just as Democrats and Mr Biden learned from the experience of earlier lockdowns in the US and opened up the US economy in 2021 and 2022, China is now taking its own steps to move away from its earlier policies that affected the economy with frequent lockdowns and tight restrictions. There are some risks but in the long run this could get China to a better place after the people's fatigue with lockdowns that is similar to what happened in the US getting the US to where it is today.

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Jennifer Harris, heads the Economy and Society Initiative of the William and Flora Foundation. Andy Grove of Intel and Bill Hewlett of Hewlett Packard are the original founders of what is called Silicon Valley in California. It was Andy Grove who offered the first protest of American policy that shifted jobs and manufacturing overseas, saying he did not want to live in a country where the people and the communities we live are being ignored under some policy that shifts everything and with it hopes and aspirations of the American people overseas to Asia. Farah Stockman of the NYT shows how Jennifer Harris and Jake Sullivan are shaping the new ideas on economic policy at the Biden administration. Jake Sullivan addressed the Brookings Foundation on Biden's economic policy saying Biden wanted different backgrounds to understand the needs of people in the US, that domestic needs for jobs and manufacturing, for infrastructure, would now drive foreign relations. That this was a key aspect of the Biden economic policy. Harris and Sullivan have worked together. ...

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A second term Trump-Vance will face uphill risks and a mess in economics from a Trumpian Republican party and Congress, says WSJ. WSJ Editorial Board says a second Trump term is not without risks. Tariffs cost 1.1% in annual growth in the Trump first term says WSJ, and it did have an impact on inflation. It would have had greater impact on inflation with the supply chain crisis of Biden's first term, had this supply chain crisis happened in Trump's first term. A second term Trump-Vance support tariffs as high as 60% on Chinese imports which would have a bigger effect on inflation and economic growth than of the first term. The key difference is that with tax cuts a basic rule for Republican policies Trump-Vance second term would not invest in infrastructure the way Mr. Biden has done and Biden will do so in a second term. As a result the economic growth is likely to be greater and inflation smaller under a Biden administration. Trillions of dollars in investment in the economy and infrastructure under Biden in a second term will be missing in a Trump-Vance tax cuts administration policy. And with it hundreds of thousand of jobs created each quarter will be missing in Trump-Vance second term. Add to this the level of clarity of stable economic policy under a Biden second term and contrast it with some of the chaos in economic policy of a Trump-Vance second term. The basic contradiction between tax cuts policy and the nation's need for infrastructure spending/rebuilding under a Republican under Trump administration will not go away, present a huge stumbling block. Chaotic policy could come from Project 2025 that says consider abolishing the US central bank Federal Reserve. This kind of erratic and unwise policy proposals are clearly not happening under Biden and Yellen. Another key difference is the cost to the economy of delays of several years in doing nothing for climate in Trump-Vance 2024-2028. Severe effects on climate if nothing is done could cause acceleration of climate negative costs which a future economy under Democrats would face, in reality the Nation would face. America's Business has taken a short term approach to climate change, when the time comes to pay the costs of short term thinking it assumes it is somebody else's problem- this happened with supply chain concentration in China the burden falling on the middle and lower classes, it would happen again with missing climate change action under Trump-Vance second term. ...

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NYT's Jeanna Smialek says there are lower inflation expectations with the Fed in the fight. This will help the economy in 2024, and help president Biden in managing the economy. Slower rent increases, and declining demand for housing, cars, with higher interest rates sharply increasing mortgage payments and car leases, is helping to slow inflation. Lower inflation expectations help because buyers are less willing to pay higher prices and falling demand acts to slow price increases by retailers and manufacturers. The Fed's fight against inflation without letting up, and China's slowing economy have reduced demand to where inflation expectations are set to be much lower by 2024.

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Greg Ip says in WSJ that Biden's $2 trillion Families and Workers Plan (Build Back Better) should be moved forward or restrained, not on the basis of its trivial or secondary effect on inflation, but on its main goal of expanding a torn social safety net.That one vote in the Senate in 50-50 US Senate, that of Mr. Manchin is holding it back, should be set out in the clearest terms- that Mr. Manchin is not comfortable with repairing a torn social safety net to the level Mr. Biden is.  Greg Ip points out that Moody's and other experts see the same effects on inflation with or without the plan which is over ten years. He says besides the supply chain bottlenecks that would ease at some point, inflation would be kept close to 2% target by Powell at the US central bank, the Fed. It is all about how the US plans renewal of its economy from this pandemic and from the crises past, knowing that it has learned the lessons along the way, so that the economy works for all the people and builds America's strength in the world- pointing to a brighter future for all and a strong America. ...

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This BBC report looks at the hundreds of thousands of jobs being created by Biden through clean energy investments and manufacturing across the US,  including in Republican held states. This is changing the economy in places like Dalton, Georgia offering new hope for the future after decades of neglect under Republican and Democratic administrations of Bush, Obama and Trump. It is only president Biden who has turned things around on infrastructure and manufacturing in America, and done something about it. With trillions of dollars in investment in infrastructure, clean energy and manufacturing this will change the face of America. Biden said this in the debate, yet most media people don't get it, and have their heads stuck in the past unable to see the great changes that are happening in America for the first time, changes that will shape the decades ahead.

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The exceptional role played by US president Biden in ensuring the recovery of the US economy, reaching both low unemployment and bringing down inflation was made possible by the president's conviction that the bargaining power of labor and its share in the productive wealth of the economy needed to be restored. The chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers Jared Bernstein points this out in his speech at the Petersen Institute of International Economics. Bernstein points out that the Philips Curve which shows the tradeoff between reducing unemployment and increasing inflation is essentially flat and the president was right to push for full employment at between 3.5-4%. In the post Reagan era America was reduced to trickle down economics as president Biden has said at every State of the Union leading to a situation where workers had lost their bargaining power. See this as a resilience factor R in the economy which if it falls below a certain point leads to the economy operating well below its potential with high unemployment and worker incomes depressed. This strong conviction of the president and the efforts of the Fed chairman Powell have helped America recover from the pandemic faster than Europe, China and other countries, and is opening a path to meet the challenges of the future including infrastructure development and overcoming climate change, and meeting needs in healthcare and education, ease of living. ...

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Kamala Harris is expected to announce more details about her Economic Plan as she sees the opportunity for Harris-Walz building on the achievements of Biden-Harris to make a stronger statement on the economy. Now that she gains more confidence of voters in her Economic Plan for the Way Forward for America compared to the former president.

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Both sides have taken a pause in negotiations yet they are getting closer. There is also the conversation that we are not aware of that is taking place between McCarthy/McConnell and Biden about G7 leaders asking Biden on the debt talks. McCarthy will not want to affect the Ukraine counter offensive with all the talk about a debt default impacting the credibility of the US. McCarthy also could pass an agreement through the House with Democrats support with a small faction of Republicans not supporting him if push comes to shove and matters reach a critical point. By negotiating in good faith Biden is surely doing the right thing. The important thing is to let moderate Republicans have an opportunity to support him in the task of Renewal of America. The bigger task is 2024 which Biden has his eyes on, because this is how America will be made or unmade with the right choices and the right priorities. And Biden needs independents and Republicans who might consider supporting him to get things done for America's Renewal. House Speaker McCarthy's Republicans now support keeping spending at $1.65 trillion the 2023 levels. The Biden administration would consider a program of small cuts- no deep cuts. And only for 2 years. On work requirements for government aid to the poor and vulnerable Biden says he supported work requirements when he was a Senator in the US Congress. He outright excludes any work requirements for health benefits. Biden understands that in an economy with jobs going unfilled in construction and hospitality industries, and in child care and teaching, nursing, with higher minimum wages, people looking for work could find work to make a decent or tolerable living.   ...

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With Chinese overproduction of  electric vehicles and solar energy panels China needs the EU and US market for its economy. Now that it is more dependent on manufacturing for jobs and the economy, as its construction industry is in decline. The Biden administration by not adding new tariffs yet investing in production at home provides China and the US with a win-win relationship, that China seeks to maintain. This overrides regional tensions for the vital interests of the US and China to compete on a level playing field.

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Biden efforts to reduce the level of escalation in relations with China include a visit by Secretary of State Blinken to Beijing in June 2023. The US says it seeks "to responsibly manage relations with China." The visit of Blinken to China was planned for February 2023 but postponed after the shooting down of a Chinese balloon craft in US airspace. China's support of Russia in the war with Ukraine has further strained relations. A similar effort is under way to reduce tensions with Iran by approving 2.5 billion euros payment by Iraq for Iranian oil deliveries. China sees Biden's efforts for stronger competition with China as affecting its economic interests. It seeks economic ties in the face of a slowing economy preserving its advantages in manufacturing developed over 2 decades. The Biden administration seeks with the EU a new supply chain that corrects the errors of overconcentration of manufacturing in China. This is what China means when it refers to the Biden administration stoking "competition" with China, as affecting China's sovereignty and national interests.  ...

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Trade is just one aspect of the Biden Economic plan. It covers US manufacturing and jobs, Climate Change Action and Renewable Energy, Cost of Living and Wages for workers, Interest rates and inflation, and Capital Allocation with government partnering with the private sector in key industries such as electric cars, solar panels. It has the overwhelming support of most Americans- seven out of 10 Americans favor it polls show. What is described here in the Washington Post as a change from decades of trade policy since Reagan/Bush, Clinton/Obama, is also a response to the loss of key midwestern states by Democrats to Trump in thepresidential election of 2016, and the upheavals for democracy that Biden calls the struggle for the soul of the nation on the White House website. Biden is simply saying that the old policies were a mistake, a huge mistake, and Biden is correcting the Trump response which was loud but lacked the substance that is in the Biden plan through capital allocation in size and government actions to back this up. In this move he now has the support of both Democrats and Republicans. As Greg Ip has pointed out in the WSj no one during the Clinton administration when it engaged China with the World Trade Organization on trade imagined China would replace America as the dominant nation in manufacturing, the size and th scale also affected the climate, the environment in China, and created huge inequalities in the US and China that both nations are trying to correct, Biden in the US and Xi in China. It could even be said these policies were a failure because the size and scale simply overwhelmed everything else with growth rates in China of 12-14%, and the fallout in the near collapse of the economy in the years ahead from hypergrowth.  ...

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Yoon Suk Yeol from visit to Biden at White House as South Korea's president to jail sentence for life for ordering arrests and deploying military troops on Dec 3 2024. It shows the unstable situation for democracy and politics in South Korea, with the country polarized. It is much more polarized than the US  or Europe. South Korea may have advanced rapidly with its economy using Japan as a model, yet the political situation in South Korea and the Korean peninsula remains highly unstable. By comparison India has a long history of elected assemblies in the states and regions dating back to the 1936-37 provincial assembly elections under the British- nearing a century of democratic self government by 2036, ten years from now. Even the shorter period of elected government in South Korea was interrupted by dictatorships and the military rule. The Indian Constitution modeled on the unwritten constitution of Britain and the written one in the US, has the allegiance of a population of 1.4 billion people, unprecedented in the history of mankind. There are as many languages in India as in Europe and the media is lively in every language, so that it is an encounter that is the one of the wonders of the world to know and grow up inside India in the second half of the twentieth and the first part of the 21st century. It is also the first modernization effort in the context of Britoish and American democratic forms of government for over 1.4 billion people, almost 2 billion people counting other regions such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, that use India as their role model. The economic dynamism of the region required integration of sorts with the European Union and the US for scientific and industrial cooperation at every level which is now happening. ...

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Speaking at the Brookings Institution Biden senior adviser Jake Sullivan laid out the "foreign policy of America's middle class." What he means by this is "President Biden's core commitment- indeed his daily direction to us- to more deeply integrate domestic policy with foreign policy." "After the Second War the United States led a fragmented world to create a new international economic order. It lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. It sustained thrilling technological revolutions. And it helped the United States and many other nations around the world achieve new levels of prosperity. But the last few decades revealed cracks in these foundations. A shifting global economy left many Americans and their communities behind. A financial crisis shook the middle class. A pandemic exposed the fragility of our supply chains. A changing climate threatened lives and livelihoods. Russia's invasion of Ukraine underscored the risks of overdependence. So this moment demands we forge a new consensus." "When president Biden took office the coutnry from our perspective faced four fundamental challenges. First America's industrial base had been hollowed out. Second economic integration with a large non-market economy did not work out. Third, an accelerating climate crisis, and the urgent need for a just and efficient energy transition. Finally we met the challenge of inequality and its damage to democracy."   ...

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Britain has fallen way behind under Conservatives Tories misrule. On just about all indicators of the economy the US is ahead of Britain, on cost of living, on investment in infrastructure, on chips and science, on unemployment and on economic growth. The US economic growth was 2% compared to 0.5% for Britain.  Britain under the Tories over the last ten years lost so much ground fighting for Brexit and hurting it's economy. The Tory party is itself torn apart again today by Farage's Reform party, much of it from poor leadership- Cameron, Boris Johnson, Sunak. The result today is that Labour's Starmer says he has a 22 billion pound gap in the Budget that the Tories Conservatives have left him, a hole he says that will lead to Labour cutting winter fuel payment for pensioners this winter.  The US with president Biden is so far ahead of Britain with $1 trillion in investments taking place under the Inflation Reduction Act and $53 billion under the CHIPS and Science Act. Harris plans to build 3 million homes and offer $100 billion to small business to spur growth. There is just no comparison and owes much to president Biden and Harris, and to senior Republicans who supported the administration on the economy. ...

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No man steps into the same river twice, says Jack Shafer in Politico. Mr. Trump is not the same person, and Twitter under Musk is not the same site. Much has changed since 2016. Many of the debates of 2016 are a thing of the past, as the nation has learned from that period and is moving ahead in a new direction under the Biden economic plan- for an economy that works for working people and families. This is critical for the task of building an America that reduces the huge disparities in America that have built up after decades of outshoring factories and jobs. The task that Mr. Biden has taken up with federal investment with business in key industries, cost of living actions, building a modern infrastructure for the US, and efforts to raise income and wages of workers and their families. 

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Unbelievable as it may sound David Sanger and Katie Rogers show in this report in the NYT that US China relations are being put on a stable level by Biden and Xi Jinping. The visit to San Francisco is being carefully planned to the last detail to make certain that Xi sees the right things about America and the trip goes well. The slowing economy in China, the rising youth unemployment, have changed th dynamic to the point where Xi will be meeting American industry leaders to attract and retain American investment. WSJ reports $110 billion withdrawn from bond markets in China. EU and AMerican companies withdrawing capital from China and putting some of it into investment in the US called reshoring that Biden supports.

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US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that she does not see an inflation problem as a result of Mr. Biden's increased spending in the trillions of dollars for the Families Plan. The Families Plan is to rebuild American infrastructure after decades of underinvestment, in addition to pandemic related spending. Yellen says the additional spending for the Families Plan is small relative to the size of the US economy. The $1.8 trillion Families Plan is for workers, students and American families. It addresses needs in education, health, and wellbeing and rebuilds the roads bridges and other infrastructure at every level in the economy.

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Fed vice chair Lael Brainard is president Biden's choice to replace Brian Deese as director National Economic Council. She would help Biden at a crucial period for the US economy with recession fears and inflation, and aggressive interest policy of the Fed's Jay Powell to slow inflation. Brainard is a daughter of a US diplomat who became interested in economics after living in Poland and Germany, and seeing how countries so close to each other divided by the Iron Curtain followed very different economic policies.

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The Biden administration is pushing ahead with a new supply chain at a virtual two day meeting of 17 countries. In addition to the US and the European Union trade and economy ministers of Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore, Indonesia, will attend. It is an effort to build an alternative to the existing supply chain because of its dangerous dependence on China and Russia.