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Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election?
How much does foreign policy matter in a US presidential election? This year, more than usual.
When pollsters started asking Americans in 1948 what they viewed as the “most important problem” facing the country, foreign policy and international security dominated.
Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, Biden has managed to turn a Covid-ravaged economy around, with growth pegged at about three percent per quarter. Wages are going up, unemployment is at an all-time low and the stock market is coming on strongly. By every economic indicator, Biden should be surging. And yet, by every political indicator, he’s floundering.
Biden’s fate in November may hinge on whether he can convince a skeptical electorate that the economy is doing as well as it is...actually doing. But Americans’ views on the Ukraine war have shifted, with a plurality now saying the US is doing too much to help Ukraine. And half of US adults polled in February said that Israel has gone too far on its war with Gaza. Could Biden’s handling of these key foreign policy issues cost him the election in November?
It’s already clear that foreign policy will play an outsize role in this year’s election. So will immigration, which topped Gallup’s “most important problem” list in February and which is both a foreign policy issue and an economic one.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Is the global economy finally on the right track?
How’s the global economy doing… really? When it comes to the world’s post-COVID recovery, it’s a tale of two economies: the United States and everyone else. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with economist and author Dambisa Moyo for a hard look at the health of the world’s finances and the impact of geopolitical crises in Europe and the Middle East on trade flows and inflation.
Right now, US indicators are strong, but Germany and the UK are slipping into mild recessions, and China’s collapsing real estate sector, local government debt, and exodus of foreign investment is dragging the world’s second-largest economy into stagnation. Not to mention, Global South countries are holding record amounts of debt. So what does it all mean moving forward? Is the global economy still shaking off its post-Covid hangover or are some of these problems more entrenched?
“We need to be growing at 3% per year in order to double per capita incomes in a generation which is 25 years,” Moyo says, “Most of the global south is growing below that number, materially.”
Ian Bremmer and Dambisa Moyo unpack the confusing state of the global economy, China’s economic woes, and where they see the biggest potential for growth in developing economies during the next decade.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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- Ian Explains: Why China’s era of high growth is over ›
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- Dambisa Moyo: Europe's energy transition needs more than a "band-aid solution" ›
- The unintended effect of US-China economic breakup ›
- What saved the global economy from another Great Depression? ›
- Global economy headed to a recession ›
- What geopolitics stories could still blow up the global economy? ›
The global economy: good news and bad news from economist Dambisa Moyo
Listen: In the latest episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with economist, author, and member of the UK parliament’s House of Lords Dambisa Moyo for a hard look at the health of the world’s finances, the impact of geopolitical crises in Europe and the Middle East on trade flows and inflation, and how China’s economic woes are impacting everyone else.
Right now, US indicators are strong, but Germany and the UK are slipping into mild recessions, and China’s collapsing real estate sector, local government debt, and exodus of foreign investment is dragging the world’s second-largest economy into stagnation. Not to mention, Global South countries hold record amounts of debt. So what does it all mean moving forward? Is the global economy still shaking off its post-Covid hangover or are some of these problems more entrenched?
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Ian Explains: Is the US economy good or bad?
What’s going on with the US economy? On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the confusing state of America’s financial health.
Trying to make sense of economic indicators right now can be an exercise in illogic: unemployment is down, but inflation is still stubbornly sticky. Interest rates are higher than they’ve been in two decades, but stock indexes are closing at record highs. Adding to confusion, the upcoming US presidential election means that the economy is front and center, but Democrats and Republicans have a partisan interest in making things seem worse or better than they actually are. So what’s really going on?
When you look at the world’s post-Covid recovery, America is an outlier. US GDP grew faster than any other advanced economy last year. Wages are rising faster than they have in years, inflation, while sticky, is nowhere near its 2022 highs, and unemployment has been under 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s. So why do only 28% of US voters have a positive view of the economy right now? Some economists are calling this moment “vibe-cession,” warning the negative “vibes” could have a major impact on the presidential election in November.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
3 themes to watch as US election season begins
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
With the Iowa caucuses coming up, what are the big themes to watch in American politics this year?
Monday of next week is the first day the official kickoff of the US presidential campaign season, even though it feels like it's already been going on for six years. It really only starts on next Monday with the Iowa caucuses begin. Donald Trump has a big lead in the Republican primary. Nobody's challenging President Biden on the Democratic side. And so here are three themes to watch throughout this election year.
The first is, can anyone beat Trump in the Republican primary? Right now, it's down to basically Trump, the top of a field of contenders. And then you have a distant second, former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And in third place, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with some also rans like Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who don't really have a chance. Of that bunch, Haley is probably best positioned to make a deep run into the primaries because of her ability to consolidate the fundraising apparatus behind her in the last several months. DeSantis could still come on strong with a strong showing in Iowa, but it's really going to take a lot of money to last through the March Super Tuesday caucuses. And right now, Haley looks like the best bet. But to get there, she's going to need to win a state. Right now, she's behind in Iowa. She's close, but still behind in New Hampshire. And she’s still behind in her home state of South Carolina. So the thing to watch for is field consolidation in late January, maybe early February, And if Haley can actually get some momentum to beat Trump.
The second thing to pay attention to are Trump's criminal trials. And a major question for 2024 is how much do these things hurt him on the campaign trail? Certainly being prosecuted by the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan and Biden's DOJ has helped Trump consolidate his position on top of the Republican field. But it seems like the conventional wisdom is that it probably hurts Trump in the general election. Now, this may or may not be true. Voters already have been accustomed to the fact that Trump's been accused of various crimes. Trump himself is running on delegitimizing the system that's put him on trial, and that's going to be a continued theme throughout 2024. And the question for the general election is right now, Trump is beating Biden in head to head polling matchups, which are not very reliable this far out. Does that advantage start to erode as Trump's criminal trial stay in the news throughout the summer? And what happens if he's eventually convicted of a crime? And the one to watch is probably the DC election interference case that the federal government has brought in the District of Columbia.
Final thing to watch for in 2024, what happens to the state of the economy? Biden's approval ratings are relatively low for an incumbent seeking reelection in the high thirties. That's a pretty bad sign. The economy's been fairly resilient so far with low unemployment and decent wage growth. But Americans are still saying they're very unhappy about the state of things. Inflation has been a huge part of that. High grocery prices, expensive services are all things that Americans are dealing with on a day to day basis. Does the economy flatline or tank in the first half of 2024, which would be a real disaster for the incumbent President Biden? Or does it continue to muddle along and potentially improve as inflation fades in the rearview mirror, which would be a tailwind for the incumbent? And you'd expect to see that in rising approval ratings throughout the spring and summer.
Thanks for watching. This has been US Politics in (a little over) 60 Seconds.
US government spending drives growth as Canada flatlines
The US economy is growing much faster than Canada’s – while north-of-the-border GDP has been flat for months, the Americans posted a 4.9% growth rate in the third quarter.
What accounts for the difference? Experts point to higher US spending – both public and private – as well as lower debt loads. Canadians carry the heaviest household debt in the G7. The country is also, of course, suffering from a brutal housing crisis that is showing no signs of abating.
US growth is expected to slow by next year, while Canadian growth is expected to eventually pick up. But any growth right now carries concerns that it will drive up inflation as central banks in both countries – who’ve recently held interest rates steady – struggle to hit their 2% inflation benchmark.
Both President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are struggling in the polls and will be watching the numbers closely ahead of elections in which pocketbook issues will, as always, be important for voters.
Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities and strengths
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week on a Monday here in New York City. And yeah, everyone, everyone talking about those polls, New York Times and Siena showing that Biden is behind Trump, not just in overall popularity, but also specifically in how voters in key swing states will vote. And, of course, that's the Electoral College. That's how you actually get elected president of United States. So, yeah, Biden supporters very concerned about that. But we are a year away, so it is early.
Having said that, a few things that I think are worth paying attention to. Number one, 71% of Americans say Biden, 80-year-old Biden is too old to run for president. Look, very few people actually work regularly with an 80-year-old. So I get it. And in a year's time, I'm fairly confident he's going to be a year older. So this is not something that Biden can do much of anything about. And there is material downside. Having said that, Biden is more obviously aging physically where intellectually, you know, one one-on-one in small meetings, he's still actually able to hold down meetings reasonably well.
Trump, on the other hand, at least if you've watched him recently and I've seen a couple of his rallies, is very physically robust, intellectually seems to be losing a lot more of the zip on his fastball. And I suspect that once he gets the nomination, which is virtually certain at this point, he's going to get a lot more real time coverage, more people are going to see that. So it plays definitely against Biden. But I don't think it's quite as dramatic a gap as we presently see.
Other issues out there I think are harder to address. Illegal immigration, for example, which is now not just about border red states, but it's about blue sanctuary cities that were happy being sanctuary cities when they have many illegal immigrants coming in. But you suddenly bring them in. They say, wait a second, we were fine with sanctuary city in theory, but in practice, this isn't going to work. And you see this happening in New York. You see it happening in San Francisco, in Chicago, in a bunch of cities around the country, and also hard to address because you had very limited immigration. While the pandemic was on, people weren't moving. Two and a half years of pent up demand. Now they are. And the willingness of Biden to play hardball, specifically with the Mexican government and the southern Mexican border, which is where the people are coming up through so far, has not been what it needs to be. Hard to imagine that issue gets much better.
The one that can get better for Biden is the economy, where increasingly the US economy is significantly outperforming those of other advanced industrial democracies post-Pandemic. And while inflation is high, it is coming down, though from a high base. And rates, no one expects they're going to continue to be raised by the Fed. In fact, indeed, they may well come down a little bit next year and that soft landing will likely help soften Biden's numbers on that side. Having said all of that, foreign policy is now becoming a vulnerability for Biden in a way that it really hasn't been over the last year or so. And few Americans actually vote on foreign policy. But when you talk about a huge issue, like 100 billion US dollars going to support Ukraine for a war that increasingly looks like a stalemate, where the counter offensive talked about for many months looks like a failure, and where it was a bipartisan issue of support for Ukraine, it's now become a partisan issue of Democrats strongly supporting more money for the Ukrainians. Republicans saying that's been too much money for the Ukrainians. And when Trump gets the nomination, the Republican Party presently voting more with the Dems likely to shift away from that support. And so I can easily see an environment where Ukraine feels like it's getting partitioned, which no one will accept and therefore is an unacceptable reality when Biden is running for reelection. That's been a signature foreign policy of his and he will be vulnerable to the Republicans.
The other issue, of course, is the Middle East. Now, if you can contain the Middle East war to Gaza and Israel, probably won't have much impact come next November. But if it expands, the impact on oil prices as well as the likelihood that US forces in the region are directly involved in some of the fighting with Iranian Shia proxies across the region, Yemen and Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and maybe even with Iran itself. That's a vulnerability too. Not to mention the fact that right now Biden's getting only just above 20% support from Arab American voters in the United States who are really important in places like Michigan, where they're 5% of the voting population, or Pennsylvania, where they're over 2%, both of which are larger than Biden's actual victory in those states back in 2020 elections.
So he has vulnerabilities there. And increasingly, the Biden administration is worried that, you know, this is going to be a challenge and there's not a lot of things they can do to ensure outcomes that are better. So in an environment where domestic policy looks okay, but people aren't focused as much on it, they're not as happy as they want to be on a couple of core issues. And suddenly foreign policy is a vulnerability, that to me feels challenging. Now against all of that, you have the fact that Biden is the president and incumbent presidents always historically do better in the United States, even unpopular ones. They get a bump because they can drive the agenda and they can drive the media coverage. That continues to be true for Biden. It's one of the strongest arguments for him to actually run a second time.
Beyond that, you've got the abortion issue, which continues to play strongly for Biden, very badly for Republicans. It was a conservative Supreme Court with key Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump that rid the country of Roe versus Wade, which ended up which was a quite popular decision by the Supreme Court for the majority of red and blue voters across the country. And there's a backlash that you see there. It's also one of the reasons why Kamala Harris is no longer seen as much of a drag on the Biden administration. In fact, in many ways, Biden is seen as much of a drag as Kamala is, especially in this last vote. And that's because she's been given not just immigration, which is a loser issue, but she's also been given abortion, which has been a winner issue. And as she's talked around the country, she's done better on that front.
Final point, of course, is Trump's unfitness. And while this is all played in 91 indictments, some of which are very real cases, some of which are politicized, but this is going to become a bigger turnoff for independent votes as people spend more time focusing not on Democrat versus Republican, but Biden versus Trump once the nominations happen. That's a vulnerability, too. So a long electoral cycle that no one wants to deal with, with two candidates that most people are very unexcited about. I guess we're going to have to talk about it more. But that's where we stand right now.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Are Americans and Canadians in for a soft landing?
As hopes for dodging a recession grow amid continuing affordability struggles, central bankers in the United States and Canada may be settling into a familiar pattern of cautious optimism.
Annual inflation in Canada dropped to 3.8% in September, well above the 2% target. Yet, on Wednesday, the Bank of Canada released its decision to hold interest rates at 5%, citing “clearer signs that monetary policy is moderating spending and relieving price pressures.”
Despite warnings from bank chief Tiff Macklem that rates could rise in the future, market watchers speculate that Canadians have seen the last hike for the foreseeable future. The possible rate peak comes after 10 increases since 2022, which saw the target rate hit a two-decade high. The bank also decided to hold interest rates steady at its last meeting.
South of the border, meanwhile, the US consumer price index rose 0.4% in September — following the previous month’s 0.6% increase. The country also added over 330,000 jobs.
Still, the Fed determined that the rate of price increases trending down was enough to warrant a pause, and it held rates at the 5.25-5.5% range, boosting confidence in a soft landing in the US.
Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell admitted to uncertainties in the market but said evidence suggested monetary policy “is not too tight right now.” Still, he suggested rates could hold — although, like Macklem in Canada, he cautioned that future hikes are possible.
Geopolitical pressure, including the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war, is leaving plenty of questions around future economic outcomes. Meanwhile, an expected rise in COVID cases, a possible US government shutdown, extreme weather events — with experts predicting a powerful El Nino event later this year — are factors to watch. We’ll be watching to see what effect they have as hopes for a soft landing and break from the madness of the last several years persist.