A agenda transformadora económica de Biden, em dois anos de governo

Resumo

Two years ago, when President Biden was just beginning his term of office, I wrote an article in Lusiada Economia & Empresa1 defending the thesis that the Biden Presidency was truly transformative, representing a fundamental change in the economic philosophy and management of the US, that it marked the death knell of the last forty years of neo-liberal philosophy guiding the government’s management of the US economy that began with President Reagan’s famous January 1981 statement that “government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem”. The Trump Administration had already rejected much of traditional Republican orthodoxy by launching a massive COVID Relief package (the CARES Act), by attacking free trade and the benefits of globalization, and by increasing the federal debt by more than $7 trillion in four years. Certain of Trump’s policies were clearly a precursor to the actions of Biden, but it was for the Biden Administration to transform some of Trump’s initiatives on the economy into practical reality, and to go much further than Trump in increasing the role of government.