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Biden Successes

 The Economist magazine reported on the successes of the Biden administration during the last year and the moderation of American voters in the 2022 election.  The article said:

It mustered a bipartisan majority to pass the chips and Science Act, a $280bn effort to shore up America’s microchips industry, thanks to growing wariness of China. After unsuccessfully pushing a grand economic redesign of America, the administration eventually compromised enough to overcome the resistance of Joe Manchin of West Virginia, often the swing Democrat in a 50-50 Senate, to pass a more modest, inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act, promising spending of $369bn over a decade. Its climate spending will be the most substantial in American history (in a year when disasters from drought in the West to Hurricane Ian in the East, to a nationwide winter storm at Christmas, served as a reminder of climate perils). Together with an infrastructure package passed in November 2021, the trio of bills will make for annual spending of nearly $100bn on industrial policy, by one reckoning. America could end up spending more, as a share of gdp, on industrial policy than unabashed champions of the practice such as France, Germany and Japan. They and other allies are already starting to fret about the protectionism that Bidenomics could bring about.

Crucially, too, America maintained a bipartisan consensus in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the build-up to Mr Putin’s attack the administration made bold and unusually public use of intelligence to flag his plans, deploying the truth against Russian disinformation. Republicans quickly returned to their senses on Russia, shunning the right’s Putin fandom. Despite some misgivings, and ongoing warnings that with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives there will be no “blank cheque”, Congress has approved large dollops–roughly $100bn so far–of aid for Ukraine.

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