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Biden & McCarthy both win in debt ceiling showdown | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Biden & McCarthy both win in debt ceiling showdown

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.

Who won the debt ceiling showdown between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy?

And the answer is everyone's a winner. President Biden, first and foremost, avoided a default, which would have been a terrible consequence for Biden politically and the US and world economy. Very happy that didn't happen. Biden can now spin the modest spending reductions in the bill that increased the debt ceiling as a bipartisan victory, which should potentially help in his reelection campaign as he tries to campaign as a quasi-moderate, which is what brought him to office in 2020 and he put the debt ceiling issue behind us for another two years until at least January of 2025, which is going to be after the next presidential election. And the US is likely to revisit a lot of these fiscal issues once again, using the debt ceiling as a point of leverage to achieve further spending cuts and potentially an extension of the Trump tax cuts that expire in 2026.

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DeSantis' 2024 strategy: dominate the internet | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

DeSantis' 2024 strategy: dominate the internet

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.

Is Ron DeSantis too online?

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his 2024 presidential bid this week on a Twitter Spaces event hosted by its terminally online CEO Elon Musk. Amid dropping poll numbers and headline after headline criticizing his unfriendly nature, DeSantis’s decision to launch his campaign on Twitter raises an important question: is the Florida Governor too online?

Twitter has been an important hub for conservatives for years and has become more so since Musk bought the platform and became its CEO. DeSantis’s decision to launch his presidential campaign on Twitter instead of somewhere that caters to a more traditional media audience reflects the platform’s importance for conservatives and, perhaps more importantly, allows DeSantis to bypass the media and have more control over his announcement.

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Debt ceiling deal: long way to go in little time | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Debt ceiling deal: long way to go in little time

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.

Will President Biden get a budget deal with Republican lawmakers?

In what's become an almost annual exercise, the US needs to increase its debt limit once again. With over $31 trillion on the national debt, Congress has to authorize the ability for treasury to borrow any more, and the new Republican majority in the House sees this as an opportunity to try to force President Biden into achieving some long-term budget cuts. The house passed a bill last month that would cut spending by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years. President Biden has proposed a budget that would reduce the deficit by over $3 trillion over the next 10 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The Republicans have no interest whatsoever in those tax increases, however, so what they're negotiating towards is a package of spending cuts over 10 years that would probably cut budget deficits by somewhere between $1-2 trillion. However, President Biden up until about a week ago said that he was not open to negotiating on the debt limit, and instead wanted to keep the discussions focused around the government's annual appropriations process, which is supposed to take place around September 30th. With the debt limit deadline coming up on or around June 1st, the US could potentially default if lawmakers have not achieved a deal well in advance of that deadline, which we're about two weeks away from right now. Negotiations are just starting to heat up between Speaker Kevin McCarthy's staff and the White House staff. President Biden has canceled part of his trip to Asia in order to come back to the United States to finish these negotiations. And this very well could come down to the wire, which is making markets very nervous about the fact that the US may not be able to make payments to certain people starting sometime in early June.

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TITLE PLACEHOLDER | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

2024 elections: Another likely Biden v Trump extravaganza

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.

What's the outlook for President Biden's reelection campaign?

This week, President Biden announced his intention to run for reelection in 2024, on the same day that he made the announcement that he was going to run for president in 2020. Already the oldest president in American history, Biden would be 82 years old on inauguration day if he wins, and 86 on his last day in office, putting a lot of attention on his running mate, Kamala Harris, who has proven herself not exactly ready for primetime in the three years she served as vice president, but will be once again Biden's running mate in '24.

Biden's announcement video put a lot of emphasis on a key theme of the last three years of his presidential campaigning, which has been democracy in the United States designed to create a contrast with Republicans, and in particular former President Donald Trump, who's under investigation by the Department of Justice for inciting the January 6th riots to overturn the results of the last election. Biden's very unlikely to face any serious opposition within the Democratic Party who are largely united around beating Republicans. And despite his advanced age and approval ratings in the low forties, they don't want to do anything to jeopardize their chances of doing that.

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Subsidy game could hurt Canada-US relations | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Subsidy game could hurt Canada-US relations

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.

What is happening with US/Canada relations?

Well, I'm headed up to Toronto, Canada, just about a week after President Biden made his first trip to America's neighbor to the north, which is also the US' second largest trading partner. A very important, deeply ingrained relationship between these two North American economies. And a major source of tension right now between the US and Canada is over industrial policy. The US over the last several years has started to deeply subsidize infrastructure development, semiconductor manufacturing, and in the Inflation Reduction Act, green energy production, electric vehicles, and the components that go into this.

Now, the automobile industry is obviously a very major component of US/Canada trade and has been that way since the mid '90s when NAFTA was signed. The renegotiated USMCA has created a new set of playing rules for governing US/Canada trade, and there have been several long-standing disputes between the two countries that have not yet been worked out. And now with the introduction of the US' new subsidies, the Inflation Reduction Act is causing major concerns in Canada who are worried about losing green energy investments to the United States where there are tax preferences, loan programs, and other direct form of subsidies in order to get that manufacturing into the US.

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Trump's Indictment & its impact the 2024 presidential election | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Indictment boosts Trump GOP standing and strengthens Democrats

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:

Former President Trump has been indicted. Now what?

This week, a jury in Manhattan indicted for former President Trump for allegations related to hush money payments that he made during his presidential campaign to a woman that he allegedly had an affair with. And the question is: what's next? So there's probably two major political fallout implications from this action. The first is that every other Republican in the country, including those running against Donald Trump in the presidential primary, are going to likely take Trump's line, that this is a political persecution, and it's being done by a hostile progressive prosecutor in Manhattan who's against him. And there's no way that Trump can get a fair trial. This probably helps Trump standing inside the Republican Party and could be a major tailwind to push him over the finish line in the Republican nomination.

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Half of the US uses TikTok but Congress may ban it anyway | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

Hugely popular TikTok unlikely to be banned by US Congress

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:

Is Washington going to ban TikTok?

If you used the social media app TikTok over the past week, you've probably noticed that a lot of your favorite creators are starting to sound the alarm about a potential nationwide ban on the wildly popular application. Over half of US states and the federal government have already banned TikTok from some or all government-issued devices, and Congress is now mulling further actions, with Republicans and Democrats endorsing legislation that could directly or indirectly lead to a blanket ban on its operating in the United States.

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Lessons learned from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse | US Politics In :60 | GZERO Media

SVB political fallout ... not as dramatic as you think

Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:

Who does Washington blame for the Silicon Valley Bank collapse?

After the largest bank failure in the US since the 2008 Financial Crisis, fears of a wider financial system failure prompted the Federal Reserve and the FDIC to take dramatic measures to contain more potential bank runs last weekend. This will have broad implications of the future of bank oversight, including capital requirements and what to do about uninsured deposits that will not be fully understood for years.

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