US President Joe Biden speaks about the creation of new manufacturing jobs at the Washington Hilton in Washington, DC, April 25, 2023. – Biden announced Tuesday his bid “to finish the job” with re-election in 2024.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
President Joe Biden honed in on his economic achievements Tuesday in his first speech since he announced he will seek a second term in the White House.
“Folks, it’s time to finish the job,” Biden said after listing his first term economic accomplishments. The line was followed by chants of “four more years!” from the union-member crowd.
Biden launched his reelection campaign with a video Tuesday morning, four years to the day after he announced he was running for president in the 2020 cycle. Much has changed in the country since his last bid, as former President Donald Trump is no longer in the Oval Office, the world emerged from the worst of the coronavirus pandemic and Biden as an incumbent no longer faces nearly two dozen Democratic opponents.
Still, Biden’s pitch remains largely the same: he argues that a time of uncertainty and division, the country needs an experienced leader at the helm. The president’s launch video Tuesday showed clips of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and he said fighting for U.S. democracy and personal freedoms has “been the work of my first term.” Last time around, he made a similar argument about uniting the country while leaning into the white supremacy rally in Charlottesville.
But Biden also plans to make the economy central to his pitch, starting with his speech to the North America’s Building Trades Unions labor federation Tuesday at the Washington, D.C. Hilton hotel. As voters often judge incumbent presidents on economic conditions, Biden outlined what he considers the economic wins of his first term, like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“Under my predecessor, infrastructure became a punchline,” Biden said. “On my watch, infrastructure’s become a decade headline.”
Even before the coronavirus pandemic sent markets spiraling and put millions of Americans out of work, Biden had campaigned on building a more equitable system centered on a robust middle class. The U.S. economy has added millions of jobs during Biden’s first term, but overall it offers mixed indicators for the president.
Unemployment earlier this year was at a nearly 54-year low, but elevated inflation is still burdening consumers with high costs even as it starts to ease.
“There are a lot of folks who look at the economy through the eyes of Wall Street, I’m not one of them,” Biden said.
“I’m not saying any of them are bad guys, that’s not how I look at the world,” he continued. “I look at the world through the eyes of Scranton and Claymont, Del., where I grew up, not a joke. Through the eyes of the working people I grew up with, this nation, through the eyes of my dad. Through the eyes of people like you who have been able to make it because you’re in a union. The speaker, the former president, the MAGA extremists are cut from a different cloth.”
Biden oversaw the passage of several massive economic bills, including a 2021 pandemic relief package and bipartisan infrastructure law. He also signed a bipartisan semiconductor manufacturing plan and a social safety net expansion passed by Democrats in 2022.
Through the plans, Biden aimed to boost U.S. manufacturing, cut costs for consumers and bolster the care economy for workers. But none of the legislation went as far as Biden’s initial vision when he took office.
