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Striking United Auto Workers members picket outside the Stellantis Jeep Plant in Toledo, Ohio.
Autoworkers’ strike highlights Biden’s union problem ahead of 2024 vote
Bad news for US President Joe Biden: as the United Auto Workers’ strike enters its fifth day, labor and climate priorities are colliding in a crucial election year.
While Biden calls himself the most “pro-union president in American history,” a wave of major private sector strikes is the last thing he wants as he heads into 2024. What’s more, in addition to their grievances with Big Auto, the UAW sees a threat in another of Biden’s priorities: his green agenda. Most plants that produce electric vehicles are not unionized, and many of the batteries they require are made in China. This is catnip for leading GOP candidate Donald Trump, who called on workers to “stand strong against Biden’s vicious attack on American labor,” as well as fellow Republicans who blame Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and electrification push for workers’ troubles.
Democrats traditionally depend on a coalition of labor and progressive voters; any erosion of that support weakens their re-election prospects in what could be a tight race in 2024. Biden also needs to hold the state of Michigan, where the UAW is a strong player: in 2020, Biden just barely won the state’s 16 electoral votes.
A prolonged autoworkers’ strike would seriously damage the American economy, imperiling Biden’s re-election bid. And yet Union Joe has to walk a fine line. Last Friday he attempted to shore up his union bona fides, stating that “record corporate profits… should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.”
But that, in turn, only raised the ire of business interests. US Chamber of Commerce president Suzanne P. Clark accused Biden of “promoting unionization at all cost.” Biden can’t catch a break – and it’ll only get tougher as election day approaches.
3 key Supreme Court decisions expected in June 2023
As the 2023-2023 Supreme Court session comes to a close, a flurry of major decisions are expected by the end of the month on the EPA, affirmative action, and student loan forgiveness. Emily Bazelon, Yale Law School Senior Research Fellow and host of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast, stopped by GZERO World with Ian Bremmer to discuss some of the big cases argued before the court this term.
SCOTUS already issued a ruling in Sackett v. EPA, limiting the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect US wetlands and waterways. It’s the second ruling in a year where the justices significantly rolled back the federal government’s authority to regulate the environment.
“Millions of acres that have been regulated up till now won't be anymore,” Bazelon says, “And when you think about the record of the Clean Water Act for preserving and cleaning Americans’ waterways and rivers, now the EPA has a lot less reach to do that.
There are also two important cases in higher education––affirmative action and President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Bazelon thinks that SCOTUS is ready to end race-based affirmative action in the US based on justices’ questioning in oral arguments. How the court will rule in the student loans case, however, is trickier to predict because loan forgiveness is somewhat tied to national emergency declaration for COVID, which ended in May.
For more on the Supreme Court and what to expect from anticipated rulings this year, tune into GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. Check local listings.
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Biden shifting to center ahead of 2024 reelection bid
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
How are President Biden's reelection plans affecting his policies?
The 2024 presidential election is already heating up, with the Republican field growing more crowded by the week, and President Joe Biden angling for a reelection campaign, despite speculation about his advanced age. So far, Biden has only drawn one potential primary challenger, 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson, who he can likely ignore. And as of today, it looks very likely that he'll be the Democratic nominee, with an announcement of his campaign coming sometime this spring, perhaps as soon as April. After two years promoting progressive policies like student loan forgiveness and a massive climate and healthcare bill, Biden is now attacking to the center, with pivots to the center in three critical areas: crime, immigration, and spending.
On crime, the President recently announced his support for a Republican effort to block a local District of Columbia Bill, which will mark the first time in over 30 years that Congress overrode a local bill in the capital city. This has angered many of Biden's allies on the left who support independent statehood for DC, but a huge vote in the Senate will demonstrate the fear that Democrats have of being seen as soft on crime.
On immigration, though Biden started off his presidency with the slew of progressive immigration actions that drew praise from Democrats, after two years of rising encounters on the Southern border, and verbal criticism and legal challenges from the Republican Party, the Biden administration is trying to take a more centrist approach to immigration, combining new opportunities for immigration with increased border enforcement, including most controversially reimplementing the practice of detaining asylum seekers, asylum-seeking families, which has led to some outcry from Biden's allies on the left.
Finally, on the budget, Biden is pivoting from arguing that the US needs to be investing in infrastructure and social spending to a plan to control deficits through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. This effort is mostly designed to make Republican proposals for balancing the budget look unreasonable, but also will allow Biden to stake out centrist territory as a fiscal hawk after spending a lot of money in his first two years.
Policy-wise, 2023 is going to be largely about setting the stage for 2024, as Congress remains gridlocked on most issues and Biden's strong signals that he will be a candidate for President next year, despite his advanced age, will continue to drive his attempts to appeal to the middle, confident that the progressive left will not abandon him because of their acute fear of the one thing that they want least of all; Republican rule.
State of the Union a Biden 2024 campaign preview
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
What are three takeaways from Joe Biden's State of the Union address?
The first takeaway is that Joe Biden is definitely going to run for reelection. There was some question about this prior to the midterm elections when Democrats did surprisingly well. But based on the content of last night's speech, which was more of a campaign rally than anything else, where he took a victory lap for his efforts on climate change, where he took digs at his political rivals, the Republicans, and where he really laid out a vision of what the next six years of a Biden presidency might look like, it seems very clear that this man is going to run.
Two, is that foreign policy's just not that important to that reelection effort. In a speech where Biden spoke for over an hour last night, he spent less than five minutes talking about the two major geopolitical issues that will mostly define his legacy. The first being the war in Ukraine, and the second being the geopolitical conflict with China, who just sent a spy balloon over the continental United States last week that Biden didn't address at all. Foreign policy, not on top of mind for American voters, not heavily featured in Biden's campaign speech.
And three is that, while I hate to say it, the State of the Union might be slightly outdated. It used to be that the State of the Union was an annual way for the president to get in front of Congress and one of his key ways of communicating to the American people. But now between social media and wall to wall cable news coverage, the president has so many outlets for getting these messages out that the State of the Union is kind of a dull event. It was a lot of rehashed policy ideas. Biden talked about things that have been on the political agenda for well over a decade, including immigration, healthcare, taxing millionaires and billionaires, and there wasn't that much new or imaginative in this speech, but it was a chance for him to show that he's got the energy, at least for an hour at a time, to run for reelection.
"Red wave" coming in US midterms
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. A Quick take to get you started on your week, and of course, we are looking forward, if that's the right term, to tomorrow's midterm elections in the United States. Increasingly a time of political dysfunction and tension and polarization and conflict, and tomorrow will certainly be no different.
First of all, in terms of outcomes, almost always in the United States, the party that is not in power, that doesn't occupy the presidency, picks up seats in the midterms. Tomorrow should be no different. Biden's approval ratings are not incredibly poor, but certainly low. View of the economy, which is the top indicator that most people say they are voting on, is quite negative, and expectations are negative going forward, even though the US isn't quite in a recession.
That means that the Republicans will easily win the House. I don't think that there's any need to question predictions around that front. It's more whether it's 15 seats or whether it's 30 seats, how much of a wave it actually looks like. Some believe that it's easier to govern if there's a 30-seat swing, because that will mean that the Republicans will be less beholden to relatively extreme members of their caucus.
But either way, the relevance of the MAGA right in going after Biden in launching investigations and making it much harder to go about the business of day-to-day governance for the Democratic president, I think, is certain from the new House. So that's the first point.
And on the Senate, I think it's a much, much, much closer race. We're talking about a few individual races that really matter: Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia. The Republicans should take the majority back, but then again, the Republicans should have had the majority in the last two years, and they didn't. And the reason they didn't, very oddly, is because former president Trump, angry that he had lost the election and promoting the idea that it was stolen, called all of his friends on the ground and said, "What are you doing to help me overturn my election?"
When that didn't happen, and there were special by-elections in Georgia that the Republicans should have won, Trump was much more focused on the fact that he had lost his election and he claimed it was stolen, and that meant that a lot of people that otherwise would have turned out in the by-elections for Republicans down ballot from Trump chose not to vote.
And the Democrats, and no one, no friends of mine in Senate thought the Democrats had a shot to win these elections, they ended up winning both of them. And so they ended up with a 50-50 seat majority. Biden owes that majority almost completely on the actions of former President Trump.
And here you have some of that happening yet again, where the Republicans would have a much easier time if Trump personally was not pushing and endorsing a number of candidates that are particularly weak, but they're very loyal to him. And we're talking about, of course, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania. Should be easy for someone to beat Fetterman, especially given the challenges that he has experienced in campaigning and then on the debate stage after his stroke. There's no question that that has hurt him significantly in how he is perceived in the upcoming election. But Dr. Oz is an unfit candidate to run, and so the Dems have a chance of actually winning that seat.
In Georgia, Herschel Walker is just thoroughly incapable of acting as a Senator, should not be running for Congress and certainly shouldn't be the nominee, but because he is, the Democrats have a chance of holding that seat; Reverend Warnock in a very, very tight race against Herschel.
Even given all that, I still think the Republicans are likely to take the Senate, maybe pick up one or two seats. If they have a very strong day, they could even get to 54. It's possible.
But the fact that the Democrats are still in this race is really because of Trump. And it's so interesting. So you try not to generalize on politicians, but if you were going to generalize, one thing that I certainly always felt was true is that they want their party to win. And in this case, that's really not true. Trump cares about winning personally, but doesn't care all that much about his party winning if it's not about him. And as a consequence, the Republicans are less likely to pick up the Senate than they might otherwise be. And this, of course, is deeply frustrating to rank-and-file Republicans in the leadership of the GOP, but they're not going to say it publicly. Why? Because Trump is still by far the most popular character in the party.
Now, the Democrats are in trouble here, and Biden in particular, who has shifted his campaign message from overturning abortion to focusing more on the economy to then now the idea that this is about the end of democracy: if you don't vote for Democrats, it's the end of democracy. Whether or not you believe that's true, it's really not a great campaign strategy for a couple of reasons.
First is because the Democrats haven't acted that way at all. If you think about how the Democrats have actually run Congress over the last two years, it's not been as if democracy was under threat. It's been legislating as usual. And furthermore, the very fact that Democrat leadership has actually funded election deniers in Republican primaries, because if they win, they're more likely to lose the general election to a Democrat; that's certainly not consistent with the idea that democracy is in threat. It's consistent with the idea of, "No, this is politics as usual. You do everything you can to win these individual races."
So I think that Biden should not be using this argument. And furthermore, you should really only talk about democracy being an existential risk in an election where either, number one, you're pretty confident you're going to win, or number two, you're desperate. Well, the Democrats aren't desperate right now. They have two years still with the presidency under their belt, and we don't know what the Republican nomination process is going to look like or whether Trump is going to be the nominee.
So I don't think you need to do that, and furthermore, after Biden and the Democrats take up pretty significant to potentially a pretty catastrophic loss for them this week, it's going to be very hard for them to move away from the, "Wow, we said it was all about democracy and we lost." So what does that mean for your ability to govern going forward? What does that mean for the way you're perceived internationally going forward? So I think that was a mistake, and the way they took this on at the end.
Of course, the biggest problem that we all have is that right after the Congressional midterms, we are going to be dead into presidential elections, and Trump will almost certainly be announcing his candidacy in relatively short order, probably back on Twitter and on Facebook and all the rest, and the country is just going to feel politically so crisis-oriented. It's just going to feel like a disaster.
And for American allies around the world who want to count on the United States, that looks a lot weaker. It makes it feel like the two years of Biden were not a move back to normalcy, but actually a brief breather in the midst of a country that is becoming much more dysfunctional, much more divided, much more politically incompetent as a partner. And of course, for adversaries, it means more opportunity for them to act against American interests with impunity.
We'll see where it gets, but the level of division in the United States is certainly going to affect not just US domestic policy, but US foreign policy as well. Anyway, those are a few words of how I'm thinking about the midterms tomorrow. We'll all be watching very carefully, and I'll be talking to you real soon.
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Is US support for Ukraine waning?
Republicans and Democrats disagree on pretty much everything these days, yet they’ve shown remarkable unity to date on one issue: Ukraine.
But as midterm elections loom, the winds are changing in Washington, D.C., where an increasing number of legislators on both sides of the aisle – particularly Republicans – have warned that the days of unchecked handouts to Ukraine could soon be over.
That’s bad news for Ukraine, of course, but it’s also bad news for President Joe Biden, who has staked his dwindling reputation on being able to unite a Western alliance – including a politically divided US – against an aggressive Russia.
An awkward Democratic flip-flop. A group of 30 progressive Democrats on Monday sent a letter to the White House calling for dialogue with the Kremlin and for future aid to be contingent on a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. After a savage backlash from the Democratic Party, the group withdrew the statement, but the excuse they gave for the about-face was … unconvincing: They said it was an old letter drafted over the summer that was mistakenly released by staffers.
Amid mounting criticism, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, claimed that despite espousing a very similar view to some of her colleagues across the aisle, her crew’s take is different: “The proximity of these statements created the unfortunate appearance that Democrats … are somehow aligned with Republicans who seek to pull the plug on American support for President Zelensky and the Ukrainian forces,” she said.
The GOP game plan. Though this awkward flip-flop is the last thing Biden needs ahead of Nov. 8, schisms within the Democratic Party on Ukraine policy will be less consequential in a post-midterm world, in which Republicans are slated to take control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate. Indeed, all funding decisions are regulated by the House’s powerful Appropriations Committee (with support from Senate colleagues) – so whoever controls the lower chamber holds the power of the purse.
And there are signs that things will indeed be different under a GOP-led Congress. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy – who is all but assured to take over as House speaker in January and is likely trying to gain the support of his caucus – recently said that the days of giving a “blank check” to Ukraine are over.
Though McCarthy has himself been supportive of high levels of military and economic support for Ukraine in recent months, this approach is consistent with those espoused by the ragtag of election-denying and isolationist Republicans running for House seats next month. Tellingly, when asked about the prospects of sending more packages of similar value (Congress has so far greenlit a whopping $65 billion for Ukraine), McCarthy said “they [his GOP colleagues] just won’t do it.”
Will Biden front load? To date, the lion’s share of US support for Ukraine has been distributed through Congressional appropriations, just as the founding fathers intended. But if the GOP wins the House and/or Senate – and slashes the Ukraine budget – Biden still has options.
First, there are indications that the White House will try and secure a massive aid package – worth up to $50 billion – for Ukraine before the new Republican cohort takes office in January. This would be almost equal to the entire amount Washington has sent Kyiv over the past eight months. Importantly, there are reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican stalwart and pro-Ukraine crusader, has Biden’s back on this.
Moreover, Biden could also use a stopgap known as the Lend-Lease Act of 2022, a bill passed earlier this year that allows the White House to lease military hardware to Ukraine and Eastern Europe through the end of the 2023 fiscal year. This would allow Kyiv to continue accessing the equipment it needs to wage a powerful defense, while also sending a message to President Vladimir Putin that the US isn’t backing down in its support for Ukraine. (Irony alert: Lend-lease isn’t new. During World War II, the US armed the Soviet Union under this program, with the Soviets – and then the Russian Federation – continuing to pay back the loan well after the Cold War.)
For now, Americans across the aisle continue to support the government's efforts to arm Ukraine. But as gas and food prices remain sky-high throughout the winter, that could change. Everyone’s pain threshold has limits.
Don't miss: Eurasia Group's lead US politics analyst Jon Lieber weighs in on whether America's support for Ukraine is softening.
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Can Biden’s IRA work IRL?
US Democrats have long been gunning for a win, and they finally got one in recent days. After months of painstaking negotiations and internal party turmoil, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a key component of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
This paves the way for the $700 billion legislative package, which includes massive investments in climate change mitigation, healthcare, and tax reform, to be passed by the House of Representatives and signed into law. The House begins its deliberations on Friday.
The bill took many forms in recent months in efforts to win the support of fiscally hawkish Democrats. But despite ample rewrites, many climate-related provisions managed to pass the smell test. What’s in the bill, what’s not, and how might it impact everyday Americans?
What’s in it? Although the Dems had to ditch large parts of the progressive wish list they had in the Build Back Better Act (that would have cost $2 trillion), they still have plenty of victories to celebrate in this bill. The IRA includes provisions to slash medical costs for seniors enrolled in Medicare, capping their annual costs at $2,000. It also gives the US government greater leeway to negotiate with drug companies to reduce prices, a process that will start with 10 select drugs in hopes of further expansion.
Additionally, the bill gets rid of loopholes for large corporations (making at least $1 billion in profit) that avoid paying federal taxes by claiming a range of deductions, and it enforces a minimum tax for companies that buy back their own stock in order to boost prices.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Conceding to Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from coal-loving West Virginia, the bill also includes measures requiring the federal government to auction off federal lands for oil drilling. Some Democrats were peeved by the carve out, while others – like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has led the grueling negotiations – have said the bill will cut planet-heating emissions by 40% by 2030 from 2005 levels, which is ultimately a win.
🥕More carrots, fewer sticks. The bill also reflects a departure from mainstream climate change communication. Rather than maligning oil companies, large corporations, and individuals for ruining the planet, the bill incentivizes the public to ditch dirty energy because they have something to gain from it.
Consider some of the enticements. Under the bill, consumers will be entitled to up to $14,000 in rebates for installing energy efficient heating and cooling systems in their homes, as well as 30% rebates for installing solar panels.
Subsidies worth thousands of dollars will also be offered to homeowners that install other energy efficient equipment, such as electric cooktops. To be sure, while these sorts of refinements would reduce energy bills in the long run – by $1,800 a year on average, according to one climate group – families would still have to fork out a significant amount of cash to make these purchases in the first place.
What’s more, the bill includes a slate of credits to help tens of millions of Americans buy electric vehicles, including a tax break of $7,500 for new vehicles and $4,000 for used ones. The EV provision is a significant one: while governments often take a long time to provide rebates, this will be carried out at the point of sale. That’s a big deal for interested buyers, considering that Americans are now paying $54,000 on average for a new EV, compared to $44,000 for fuel-guzzling cars.
Still, analysts point out that most EVs fail to meet the bill’s requirement of having a battery made in North America and will be excluded from the program. This suggests the bill is really about boosting domestic manufacturing and mining of rare earth minerals to reduce US reliance on China.
Moreover, the bill offers a whopping $1.5 billion in incentives for oil and gas companies to slash their methane emissions. Indeed, methane emissions, one-quarter of which come from agriculture, are the biggest contributors to climate change after carbon dioxide.
What got cut? Social safety proposals, including free kindergarten and community college, as well as paid medical leave for all workers.
On the climate front, Democrats were forced to ditch the Clean Electricity Performance Program, a very expensive program that would have penalized utility companies for failing to meet clean energy targets, while giving grants to those that do.
Will the IRA actually reduce inflation? Most analyses, including from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, found that this package will have “a negligible effect on inflation” in the short term, noting that other factors – like how the US Federal Reserve responds – will have the greatest impact on inflationary pressures. The CBO does estimate, however, that the bill will reduce the national deficit by more than $100 billion through 2032, which was likely key to getting wavering Dems on board.
So how soon will Americans actually feel the impact of this bill? “Probably not too soon,” says Anna Mikulska, a Eurasia group consultant specializing in climate and energy. That's largely because “much of the inflation is external to the domestic US policies and is shared across the globe,” she says, adding that “fuel prices and post-pandemic recovery are common denominators,” neither of which can be addressed through domestic policies.
Meanwhile, Clayton Allen, a director of Eurasia Group's US desk, says that while most Americans will only see benefits from the drug pricing and perhaps some EV credits in the near-term, many of the bill’s provisions are about the long game. “They are designed to spur investment on the corporate end over a longer time period,” and will likely have little impact on the US economy for some time.
This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
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Wheat harvesting in Kyiv, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: A grain of truth & a win for Biden
No pain no grain
Russia and Ukraine are hardly beating their swords into plowshares, but at least the fruits of the harvest are once again on the move from Ukraine’s Black Sea port of Odesa. Earlier this week saw the departure of the first grain boat from there since the signing of a tenuous new export security deal between Ukraine, Turkey, the UN, and Russia. The return of Ukrainian grain to world markets is welcome news for countries that depend heavily on the country’s exports, as well as for broader food prices around the globe. But it will take months to get back to pre-war export levels, warns the Ukrainian government. The next few weeks will see only about half a dozen departures compared to the normal level of about 200 every August. A big question looms: the first boats to leave Odesa will be ones that were stuck there for months, but it’s unclear whether a large number of grain traders will be willing to take the immense financial and insurance risk of sending fresh boats to Odesa. GZERO reader Jonathan Grange, a grain trader at Sunstone Brokers in Switzerland, tells us that a fully laden grain boat is worth about $70 million — “who,” he asks, “wants to assume the risk of a Russian misfire on this value?”
Will Biden get a boost?
Republican and Democratic voters agree on very little these days, but there will be no love lost in America for Ayman al-Zawahri, the al-Qaida heavyweight and key plotter of the 9/11 attacks killed by a US drone strike in Kabul over the weekend. The killing of Osama bin Laden’s successor gave President Joe Biden a chance to present himself as an elder statesman Monday night, when he announced the counterterrorism coup during a rare primetime address. This comes after a few weeks of good PR for Biden, who has scored a number of legislative wins, including getting Congressional approval for a massive legislative package to bolster US competitiveness in semiconductors and other advanced tech. The White House is also very close to getting the country’s most ambitious ever climate legislation passed by Congress. But Biden is waiting on Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who sometimes bucks her party on key legislation, to come out in support of the bill. (Given the Dems’ razor-thin Senate majority, there can be no party holdouts.) Does this signal a change of fortune for Biden, whose approval rating has tanked amid a series of international and domestic crises? It’s too early to say, but if Congress passes his $369 billion climate bill, Democrats will certainly be in a stronger position heading into midterm elections this fall.