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President Biden and Russian president Putin held a two hour virtual meeting on December 7, to discuss Ukraine. Biden stated that the US would take action to support defense arrangements in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and other Eastern European countries, if Russia invaded Ukraine. He urged Russia to return to diplomatic talks to settle differences over Ukraine. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the virtual meeting in this way- "There was a lot of give and take. No finger wagging. But the president was crystal clear about where the United States stands on all of these issues." 

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US president Biden visits a semiconductor manufacturer in North Carolina, Wolfspeed, that will invest $5 billion for semiconductor manufacturing. It will supply the materials to General Motors. Mr. Biden said the CHIPS and Science Act made this possible and is designed to give the US leadership in semiconductor manufacturing.

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Peter Baker accompanied president Clinton for the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998. US president Biden now visits Northern Ireland and parts of Ireland where his ancestors lived.

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German companies investing in the US with incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act of president Biden.

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For the approaching US midterm elections president Biden seeks to draw a sharp contrast with Republican Senator Rick Scott's Plan which he says would worsen inflation and increase taxes on working class families. Mr. Scott's plan is for sunset on all federal legislation and president Biden says this would include Medicare and Social Security. Mr. Scott also wants all Americans to pay some income tax to have skin in the game. At this time about half of all Americans pay no taxes says Mr. Scott. Former US president Trump continues to lead the Republican party in 2022  yet he faces a very different Democratic party under president Biden. Mr. Biden's focus is on his $2 trillion plan for Workers and Families, rebuilding American manufacturing and renewing supply chains, unlike Hillary Clinton whose lacked such a focus. Leading to Mr. Trump's appeal with working class families and disdain for traditional Republican policies that secured him the presidency in 2018 by defeating Hillary Clinton. The changes with president Biden's focus on workers and families are happening also in the European Union. Scholz and the Greens in Germany, Macron in France with potentially Melenchon as prime minister, and similar changes in Denmark and other EU countries suggest that there is a renewed focus on infrastructure, rebuilding manufacturing and supply chain renewal, rebuilding incomes and lives of workers and families, in Europe and the US. ...

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This video in The Indian Express shows how president Biden invoking US defense act provisions to ensure supplies of vaccine ingredients to US companies prevents exports to countries that badly need it. India has surpassed 300,000 daily cases of coronavirus on April 22, and India's largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India says vaccine manufacturing in India is restricted because of president Biden invoking that law. 

India's vaccination drive is stalling because of not enough vaccine supplies.

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US president Biden signs legislation that gives rail workers in the US paid sick leave and 24% higher pay, $5000 bonuses in series of annual payments, and 7 days paid sick leave. The death of a rail worker because of paid sick leave and the stagnant wages of rail workers led Congress to act. Workers now feel they are being heard in the Biden presidency with Democrats control of the Senate and close contest for the House of Representatives. A rail strike would have hurt other working families said president Biden, and Congress acted in a timely manner to prevent losses to the economy of an estimated $2 billion a day from a rail strike.

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The end of the Covid Emergency is set for May 11, 2023 by president Biden for the US.

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President Biden gets his $1.9 trillion aid package through the U.S. Congress with 220 votes for and 211 against. All Democrats except one voted in favor and all Republicans voted against. Earlier the $15 minimum wage was dropped from the bill to get it through the Senate. Also kept were income criteria to prevent the $1400 check to individuals in households going to the most affluent income earners. The Senate vote was close - 50 to 49 in a party line vote. The Biden aid package comes on top of earlier aid under president Trump in 2020. This aid is likely to provide enough stimulus to the US economy to restore growth to levels that were there before the pandemic hit.

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US president Biden says about vaccination misinformation- "they're killing people." He said "the only pandemic we are having is among the unvaccinated." Biden cited the risks of the social media companies not doing enough to tackle misinformation on vaccination.

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US president Biden links the fight on the beaches of Normandy to the defense of Ukraine with the war nearing Kharkiv in June 2024. Biden puts flowers at the place where 9388 Americans are buried, who died in the initial assault on Omaha beach, Normandy.

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US president Biden signs a broad executive order on July 9, that is directed at promoting competitive behaviour in the American economy, and taking action against companies that have anti competitive behaviours. It also aims to limit corporate dominance that then can lead to anti competitive behaviours. These types of behaviours puts consumers, workers and small compoanies at a disadvantage. The Biden plan stretches from the smaller items such as hearing aids and baggage fees, to the task of putting in place the first antitrust regulation on tech companies Apple, Google, Amazon and others. Industries Biden sees as needing help are agriculture, healthcare, shipping, transportation, technology, and labor practices that limit wages and mobility. In making the executive order the White House says it "will lower prices for families, increase wages for workers and promote innovation and even faster economic growth." As each step is taken by the Biden administration to help workers, families, women and children, the situation is a reminder of the actions taken by Franklin Delano Roosevelt at another period of crisis in the nation's history. The July 9 executive order will create a Competition Council as proposed by Tim Wu, special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy in the White House National Economic Council. The Compeititon Council task will be to get federal agencies to take action to promote competitive behaviours for the first time since the 1980's when Republican presidents Reagan, Bush, and Democratic presidents Clinton, Obama, allowed such behaviours in some industries to get entrenched. In Biden's own words "the rise of monopolies weaken labor." In each industry agencies will now have the task of pushing back against anti-competitive behaviours already put in place by companies. In agriculture it will help small farmers, in pharmaceutical sector it will help the American people deal with a problem that has no end in sight of high drug prices and practices that support this. In all areas of the economy the Biden plan is for a new coordinated effort across all the agencies of the government and under the leadership of the president, to restore the vibrant economy to what it was before the long deterioration through anti-competitive behaviours. ...

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In this address to Congress in April 2021 US president Biden offers his plan to invest in American families and people. He calls it "a blue collar blueprint to build America." It also comes from a blue collar family to which Biden belongs with generations of American workers in the Biden family in the last hundred years who built America in the past.

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Republicans in the U.S. are talking about impeachment more than Democrats in tweets, ads and messages they send out. The Democrats are talking about other issues and this is not what you would expect after Democrats voted together on party lines to pass two articles of impeachment of president Trump. Republicans may even use the issue of impeachment in favor of president Trump as the impeachment process moves to the Senate where Republicans are in a majority. Republicans believe president Trump did nothing wrong and may call Senator Biden and his son Hunter Biden to testify in the Senate about activities in Ukraine, say experts.

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Joes Biden, US president announces a 200 million vaccine doses target for the US for his first 100 days. The initial 100 million target was met in 58 days.

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 Biden's kickoff speech for president in 2024- "We've got a lot more work to do." Biden was able to get the US on track for huge investments in infrastructure, chips, climate change, renewable energy, cost of living help, of trillions of dollars. He told a union audience- "Under my predecessor (Mr. Trump), infrastructure week became a punchline. On my watch infrastructure has become a decade headline- a decade headline." (Not much was actually done for infrastructure by Trump.) What Baker in NYT says Biden was not able to do is where Republicans blocked his efforts- to cut student loan debt, for pre-school education assistance, for tuition free community college, for parental leave, and help to workers and families struggling with the cost of living. Biden also helped tackle the period of mass vaccination and exit from the pandemic, and bringing unemployment to below 4%.  Baker has covered 5 presidents for the Washington Post and the NYT. His book on Trump is- The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021.  ...

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By drawing a comparison of China's aggressive flights close to Taiwan to the invasion of Ukraine, president Biden brings clarity to the US position on Taiwan. He says in Tokyo during his Asian trip that China "was flirting with danger" through its aggressive posture on Taiwan. President Biden made his remarks during a press conference with prime minister Fumio Kishida of Japan in Tokyo. This is what the BBC says about his remarks-  The US president began the press conference by directly linking the China-Taiwan situation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that the Russian president was "attempting to eliminate the identity of Ukraine." If there was rapprochement eventually between Ukraine and Russia and sanctions were not sustained, "then what does this signal to China about the costs of attempting to take Taiwan by force?" "They are flirting with danger already by flying so close and all the manoeuvres they are undertaking," Biden said, referring to increasing reports of Chinese warplane incursions into Taiwanese airspace. This suggests that the Asian trip of president Biden is bringing with it America's new Asia policy of building strong economic and defense partnerships in Asia. The US president also looks beyond today's conflict in Ukraine to an eventual rapprochement and end of sanctions as a possible scenario in Europe, and sees Asia as the region for America to build new supply chains that strengthen America and its partners, with a new partnership being formed with India, Indonesia and Vietnam, and with other ASEAN nations. In a way Biden and Republicans see the challenge from emerging powers in Asia as similar to the one from Japan in the thirties and the eighties, to be met with the combined economic strength of the US and Europe.  ...

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The heart of the American idea is fair competition. US president Biden says "capitalism without competition is not capitalism, it is exploitation," in this transcript and video report in the WSJ. Biden has signed an executive order for government agencies to take action to increase competition in business,

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This WSJ editorial shows a 3.1% decline in purchasing power lost to inflation since president Biden took office, average hourly earnings declining from $11.39 to $11.03. Yet it is also true that inflation has been cut in half in May 2023 to 4% compared to a high of 9% in 2022. Inflation is much higher in the UK and Europe. President Biden also passed the Inflation Reduction Act, intervened in energy markets to lower oil prices with policies to reduce prices for Russian oil. Jerome Powell at the Federal Reserve is aggressively tackling inflation. Investments in manufacturing in the US and in infrastructure will increase jobs and strengthen the US economy in 2023-2025. This was given the name Bidenomics yet it is about president Biden and policymakers looking carefully at what works to increase jobs, increase wages, and support workers and families, and build American manufacturing and infrastructure for a strong economy.

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President Biden makes preparations for weeks with his aides for one of the biggest speeches of his presidency- the State of the Union Address to the US Congress on Tuesday, February 7. NYT looks at the preparation. Aides talk about a process in which the president spends weeks reading the drafts aloud, throwing out anything that is not readily understood. The president demands that the sentences be written clearly says the NYT, so that the whole country can grasp what he is saying. Mike Donilon, Bruce Reed, Anita Dunn, Steven Ricchetti, Vinay Reddy, are aides in this process. Reed guides policy related additions, and Donilon knows Biden's voice in returning to his humble roots. Reed ran Biden's office for 2 years to 2013, and Donilon shaped the message for the 2020 campaign- a fight for the soul of the nation. During crucial periods Washington, Lincoln and FDR's address to Congress shaped thinking in the US from the War of Independence, to the Civil War and the Great Depression, Biden's fight for the soul of the nation takes its place there. ...

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Debt ceiling negotiations between president Biden and Republicans in the US Congress that have dragged on night after night. The deadline is June 5.

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Israel informed the US 6 hours before military target strikes on Iran. This followed 180 ballistic missiles launched by Iran against Israel. This report says Israel has followed president Biden's advice not to strike oil targets. Biden said if I were the Israelis I would not strike oil targets. 

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The title says this but Biden has not blown it by conducting discussions on the debt ceiling with Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader in the House of Representatives. Krugman presents MAGA Republicans as controlling the House. The situation is a bit more complicated than that as the Republican margin is only 222-213 with moderates who could move in Biden's direction if a default is impending. Previous articles in the NYT and WSJ have shown how the president has his own set of options including  simply ignoring the ceiling or citing a part of the Constitution of the US that gives the president the authority to conduct the business of the country in such a situation. Mr. Biden is taking the situation as calmly as possible, as the midterms have also given the president a situation where he sees the country on his side with Democrats needing only a few moderates in the Republican party to support him. Mr. McCarthy has his own reasons to support Biden as he supports president Biden in the task of backing up NATO and Ukraine. Having discussions with McCarthy keeps the country together at a time when Ukraine has a planned counter offensive to defend the country. Biden was able to achieve legislative achievements that are comparable to FDR and Lyndon Johnson because of his calm and patient approach. ...

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Border crossings and encounters have fallen to 83,000 under president Biden with unilateral action by Biden in the absence of the Republican Lankford Biden legislation that would have shut the Border down. Border crossings of 83,000 are close to the border crossings that reached 74,000 under president Trump even with the building of a border wall. This was achieved with the support of the Mexican president and with Biden's action to effectively close the Border. The best action would have been to implement the legislation that Republican senator Lankford negotiated with Biden by February 2024 and which was allowed to languish in Congress by new Speaker Mike Johnson under the advice of the former president, which is incomprehensible as it is the first time in decades both parties came on to the same page to slow or diminish migrant entry into the US and remake the asylum laws. Many Republicans and Democrats protested this action of the new Speaker. It was a historic and missed opportunity to fix the Border once and for all, and took the courage of Senator Lankford and Biden. For this action Lankford goes down as a senator who belongs in Kennedy's Profiles of Courage, a book of Congressional leaders since 1800 whose courage and leadership have made America the leading democracy and industrialized nation that has won the respect of the world. ...

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On problems such as student aid and China tariffs US president Biden is deliberative so he can get to the right results. After decades in which the problems became serious or were sidestepped the president wants to reach the right decisions and get solutions.