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Theory or Theater: What's the Difference Between Bidenomics and Trumponomics?

© AFP 2023 / BRENDAN SMIALOWSKIThis combination of pictures shows US President Joe Biden (L) and Former US President Donald Trump.
This combination of pictures shows US President Joe Biden (L) and Former US President Donald Trump. - Sputnik International, 1920, 28.09.2023
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US President Joe Biden looks likely to face off against his predecessor Donald Trump for a second time in the 2024 presidential election. Despite the hostile rhetoric between the two figures, Marxist economics professor Richard Wolff argues that both are peddling the same economic policy.
Both Trump and Biden have lent their support to the striking United Auto Workers (UAW) union that has shut down the big three US-based carmakers Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, each claiming to be more pro-labor than the other.
Economist Richard Wolff told Sputnik their show of support was just another "political theatric that we've become used to."
"Donald Trump has never been on the side of labor. No one who has followed his career over the years would have any illusion on that subject," he stressed. "The single most important economic action taken in the four years from 2016 to 2020 that Trump was president was an enormous tax cut passed in December of 2017, that gave most of the tax relief to the biggest corporations and the richest individuals in the United States."
"But the same applies to Joe Biden. I mean, no one who has followed his career from the beginning should have any illusions that this is a man whose politics is pro-labor," Wolf continued. "That's why a number even of mainstream media have noted it's the first time any American president has been photographed on a picket line, clearly on the side of the workers instead of intoning the usual civics texts that go with this."
"If neither of them have any history of real pro-labor anything, then why are they there?" Wolff posited. "We all know they're there to get votes. Now, that might explain Trump, because he did a little of that back in the campaign, running up to 2016 and then surprised [then-2016 contender and former US State Secretary] Hillary Clinton by snatching enough votes from four or five states to defeat her in that election. He is trying to do that again."
With the presidential election coming up next year, Biden is anxious about losing the union vote that has lent towards the Democrats since the 1990s.
"Recent polls indicate that the race between Biden and Trump is very close and much closer than the Democrats had hoped it would be by this time. And so they are nervous," Wolff said. "So we have Mr. Biden, who used to say how pro-labor he is, but words are kind of cheap. It's easy to say."
President Joe Biden joins striking United Auto Workers on the picket line, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023, in Van Buren Township, Mich. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain listens at left. - Sputnik International, 1920, 28.09.2023
Americas
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He explained that economic strategy was planned out over decades, not the course of four-year presidential terms.

"I'm a professional economist. I've been working at that for 50 years, and I can assure you that anything happening today and this is true about the United States and about everybody else in the world is the product of many forces acting over a long period of time" Wolff argued. "What happens today is at least as much the result of decisions made by Donald Trump or for that matter, [former US President] Barack Obama, or for that matter, the Bush father and son, etc., etc., as it is of Mr. Biden. Nothing goes that fast."

The professor said the real challenge facing the US economically was the rise of the BRICS association of emerging economies, including China, India and Russia, and the end of US hegemony in a unipolar world.
"But mostly they are running away from these topics," Wolff observed. "They're looking for other things that can take a stand on and get people's attention because they don't want to be associated with looking at the real problem because that's scary, and they don't want to be associated with something people are afraid to look at or inclined to pretend it isn't there."
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