On the same day that President Joe Biden called out Russia and and issued harsh sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, his only other public appearance was an event focused on the need to unkink the supply chain for minerals used in batteries, electronics and other technologies.
The back-to-back events on Tuesday highlighted the competing claims for Biden's attention entering the spring of a midterm election year: the prospect of a calamitous European land war that will only add to inflation and other problems at home while also managing a vexing set of domestic challenges and must-do tasks.
For Biden, the convergence of such urgent foreign and domestic issues puts to a test the often cavalier assertions of previous administrations that a president has to be able to “walk and chew gum” at the same time.
President Joe Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022, in Washington. (AP PhotoAlex Brandon)
Biden acknowledged the troubling overlap in remarks Tuesday as oil and gasoline prices have climbed on the grim headlines from Ukraine. He announced sanctions against Russian financial institutions, oligarchs and banks as well as Russia's sovereign debt, effectively cutting the country off from U.S. and European financial systems.
Yet Biden also said he wants to limit the “pain” to Americans because sanctions aimed at pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin could also limit Russia's exports of oil and natural gas and cause global energy prices to soar.
“I want to take robust action to make sure the pain of our sanctions is targeted at a Russian economy, not ours,” the president said at the White House. “We’re closely monitoring energy supplies for any disruption. We’re executing a planned coordination with major oil producing consumers and producers toward a collective investment to secure stability and global energy supplies.”
His White House this week is also vetting nominees for a coming opening on the Supreme Court. Add that 40-year high inflation, a stalled domestic agenda, a slew of executive orders to enforce, infrastructure dollars to spend and sagging approval ratings that could make implementation all the more difficult. And the impact of the COVID pandemic, while seeming to fade, is still being felt.
Biden used the minerals event to stress the importance of investing in U.S. production and avoiding reliance on China. California Gov. Gavin Newsom greeted Biden at the minerals event Tuesday afternoon by expressing surprise that the virtual event hadn't been rescheduled because of Ukraine.
“I had an over-under that you were going do this today,” Newsom joked. “Thank you for not canceling on us.”
The start of a Russia invasion into Ukraine has spillover effects for Biden's previous plans. It takes time to barnstorm the country and rally support for Democrats as he said he would do to try to maintain control of Congress in the midterm elections and it gets tougher to defuse inflation as the U.S. and its European allies escalate sanctions against Russia.
The invasion also puts Biden in a holding pattern, as he plans to amplify sanctions only to counter any additional aggression from Putin.
“The fact that Putin is in control of when and how and to what degree he invades, really places Biden in a very difficult position," said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “Putin looks like he is completely in charge.”
All of this takes away from the problem that Americans had previously said Biden must prioritize: inflation. A December poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 68% of Americans deemed the economy to be a top priority, while 24% said the cost of living should be a top priority.
But just how the unfolding crisis in Ukraine plays out and what it means for Biden's agenda is difficult to divine. The higher energy and commodity prices could be short-lived, or they could reflect the beginning of a prolonged disruption as the sanctions to exclude Russia from the global economy wage a toll on oil, natural gas, aluminum and nickel supplies.
“We're chasing a moving target,” said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.
Biden could easily blame higher prices on Putin. But voters might be skeptical because the inflationary run-up predates the current tensions in Europe. U.S. gas prices have increased about 6% over the past month, but they're up about 33% from a year ago, according to AAA.
“We have had close to a year of soaring inflation rates and higher gas prices that cannot be attributed to foreign policy,” Galston said. “And in these in these circumstances, it’s not clear to me that an all out effort to shift the inflation focus to the Russian actions would be credible."
Republican lawmakers have argued that Biden's spending plans have been the real trigger for inflation. Yet they're also encouraging Biden to immediately deploy sanctions against Russia in hopes of deterring Putin, a move that could drive prices even higher.
“This should begin, but not end, with devastating sanctions against the Kremlin and its enablers,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. “The president should waste no time in using his extensive existing authorities to impose these costs.”
Beyond oil, the markets for natural gas, corn, wheat, aluminum and nickel — all commodities at risk from the invasion — have turned volatile and hypersensitive to each move by the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and NATO allies.
The higher prices could push U.S. inflation above its current annual rate of 7.5% at a time when Biden has struggled to get sufficient support for an expanded child tax credit, child care subsidies, universal pre-kindergarten and other programs that could free up cash in family budgets. West Virginia Sen. Manchin, the key Democratic vote in the split Senate, is wary of additional spending.
Yet families will likely need some form of relief and that creates even greater urgency for Biden's domestic agenda, said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM, who estimates that the economic shock from war in Ukraine could send inflation above 10%.
Brusuelas said that the best fix might be renewing the recently expired increase to the child tax credit. The credit would get additional funds to families on a monthly basis to insulate them against price increases, an immediate source of funds that would contrast to proposed changes in federal regulation and new infrastructure spending to reduce price pressures in the long term.
“We have a readymade program that could be quickly revived to provide direct cash to stressed households and cushion the adjustment caused by Vladimir Putin’s external adventures,” Brusuelas said. “It is the American middle and working classes that will bear the burden of adjustment caused by another European war.”
Associated Press writer Cal Woodward contributed to this report.
ATLANTA (AP) — As Donald Trump campaigns for a return to the White House, he often reaches back more than 40 years and seven administrations to belittle President Joe Biden by comparing him to 99-year-old Jimmy Carter.
Most recently, Trump used his first campaign stop after the start of his criminal hush money trial in New York to needle the 46th president by saying the 39th president, a recently widowed hospice patient who left office in 1981, was selfishly pleased with Biden's record.
“Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, worse than Jimmy Carter by a long shot,” Trump said in a variation of a quip he has used throughout the 2024 campaign, including as former first lady Rosalynn Carter was on her deathbed. “Jimmy Carter is happy,” Trump continued about the two Democrats, “because he had a brilliant presidency compared to Biden.”
It was once common for Republicans like Trump to lampoon Carter. Many Democrats, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, kept their distance for years, too, after a roiled economy, energy shortages and an extended American hostage crisis led to Carter’s landslide defeat in 1980. The negative vibes waned, though, with the passage of time and reconsideration of Carter’s legacy as a political leader, Nobel laureate and global humanitarian.
That leaves some observers, Democrats especially, questioning Trump’s attempts to saddle Biden with the decades-old baggage of a frail man who closed his public life last November by silently leading the mourning for his wife of 77 years.
“It’s just a very dated reference,” said pollster Zac McCrary, whose Alabama-based firm has worked for Biden. “It’s akin to a Democrat launching an attack on Gerald Ford or Herbert Hoover or William McKinley. It doesn’t signify anything to voters except Trump taking a cheap shot at a figure that most Americans at this point believe has given a lot to his country and to the world.”
Trump loyalists insist that even a near-centenarian is fair game in the rough-and-tumble reality of presidential politics.
“I was saying it probably before President Trump: Joe Biden’s worse than Jimmy Carter,” said Georgia resident Debbie Dooley, an early national tea party organizer during Obama’s first term and a Trump supporter since early in his 2016 campaign. Dooley said inflation under Biden justifies the parallel: “I’m old enough to remember the gas lines under President Carter.”
Any comparison, of course, involves selective interpretation, and Trump’s decision to bring a third president into the campaign carries complications for all three –- and perhaps some irony for Trump, who, like Carter, was rejected by voters after one term.
Trump's campaign did not respond to a request for comment about his comparisons; Biden's campaign was dismissive of them.
“Donald Trump is flailing and struggling to land coherent attacks on President Biden,” spokesman Seth Schuster said.
Carter remains at home in Plains, Georgia, where those close to him say he has kept up with the campaign. Biden is unquestionably the closest friend Carter has had in the White House since he left it. Biden was a first-term lawmaker from Delaware when he became the first U.S. senator to endorse Carter’s underdog campaign. After he won the White House, Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters in Plains. They saw a grieving Carter privately before Rosalynn Carter’s funeral in Atlanta last year.
Like Carter, Biden is seeking reelection at a time when Americans are worried about inflation. But today’s economy is not the same as the one Carter faced.
The post-pandemic rebound, fueled by stimulus spending from the U.S. and other governments, has been blamed for global inflation. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in response.
But the effective federal funds rate is 5.33% right now, while the benchmark was above 17% for a key period before the 1980 election. Rates for a 30-year mortgage are about half what they were at the peak of Carter’s administration; unemployment is less than half the Carter peak. The average per-gallon gas price in the U.S., topping $3.60 this month, is higher than the $3 peak under Trump. It reached $4.50 (adjusted for inflation) during Carter’s last year in office.
Carter and Trump actually share common ground. They are the clearest Washington outsiders in modern history to win the presidency, each fueled by voter discontent with the establishment.
A little-known Georgia governor and peanut farmer, Carter leveraged fallout from Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Trump was the populist businessman and reality TV star who pledged to “Make America Great Again.” Both men defy ideological labels, standing out for their willingness to talk to dictators and isolated nations such as North Korea, even if they offered differing explanations for why.
Carter cautioned his party about underestimating Trump’s appeal, and the Carters attended Trump's 2017 inauguration. Jimmy Carter, however, openly criticized Trump’s penchant for lies. After Carter suggested Russian propaganda helped elect Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Trump began to insult Carter as a failure.
Unlike Carter, Trump never accepted defeat. He falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen, then promoted debunked theories about the election that were repeated by supporters in the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress convened to certify Biden's victory. Trump left Washington the morning Biden took office, becoming the first president since Andrew Johnson in 1869 to skip his successor’s inauguration.
Carter conceded to Republican Ronald Reagan, attended his inauguration, then returned to Georgia. There, he and Rosalynn Carter established The Carter Center in 1982. They spent decades advocating for democracy, mediating international conflict and advancing public health in the developing world. They built houses for low-income people with Habitat for Humanity. Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Many historians' judgment of Carter's presidency has softened.
He is credited with deregulating much of the transportation industry, making air travel far more accessible to Americans, and creating the Department of Energy to streamline and coordinate the nation's energy research. He negotiated the Camp David peace deal between Egypt and Israel. He diversified the federal judiciary and executive branch. He appointed the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, who, along with Reagan, would get credit for the economic growth of the 1980s. Carter was the first president to raise concerns about rising global temperatures. And it was Carter, along with his diplomatic team, who negotiated the release of American hostages in Tehran, though they were not freed until minutes after Carter's term expired.
Biographies, documentaries and news coverage across Carter's 10th decade have reassessed that record.
By 2015, a Quinnipiac University poll found 40% of registered voters viewed Carter as having done the best work since leaving office among presidents from Carter through George W. Bush. When Gallup asked voters last year to rate Carter’s handling of his presidency, 57% approved and 36% disapproved. (Trump measured 46% approval and 54% disapproval at the time, the first retroactive measure Gallup had conducted for him.)
“There has long been a general consensus of admiration for Carter as a person — that sentiment that he was a good and decent man,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor who studies collective public memory and has written extensively on Carter. The more recent conclusions about Carter as a president, she added, suggest “we should consider Carter's presidency as a lens to think about reevaluating about how we gauge the failure or success of any administration.”
How that plays into Biden's rematch with Trump, Roessner said, “remains to be seen.”
Regardless, the ties between the 39th and 46th presidents endure, whatever the 45th president might say. When the time comes for Carter's state funeral, Trump is expected to be invited alongside Carter's other living successors. But it will be Biden who delivers the eulogy.
In this photo released by The White House, former President Jimmy Carter, center left, and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, center right, pose for a photo with President Joe Biden, right, and first lady Jill Biden at the home of the Carter's in Plains Ga., April 30, 2021. Former President Donald Trump is running against Biden, but Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, keeps bringing up Carter. Trump likes to cite the 99-year-old former president as a measuring stick to belittle Biden. (Adam Schultz, The White House via AP)
FILE - President Jimmy Carter, left, and Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., greet Biden supporters at a reception in Wilmington, Del., Feb. 20, 1978. Former President Donald Trump is running against President Biden, but Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, keeps bringing up former President Carter. Trump likes to cite the 99-year-old former president as a measuring stick to belittle Biden. (AP Photo)
This combination of photos shows former President Donald Trump in New York, April 23, 2024, from left, President Joe Biden in Scranton, Pa., April 16, 2024, and former President Jimmy Carter, July 10, 2021, in Plains, Ga. Trump is running against Biden, but Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, keeps bringing up Carter. Trump likes to cite the 99-year-old former president as a measuring stick to belittle Biden. (AP Photo)
