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Can Biden's foreign policy really deliver for the middle class? - POLITICO

Can Biden's foreign policy really deliver for the middle class? - POLITICO

Can Biden's foreign policy really deliver for the middle class? - POLITICO
Jun 18, 2021 1 min, 58 secs

Joe Biden’s promise of a foreign policy that works for America’s middle class boils down to this: making the global economy fairer for American workers.

Joe Biden’s promise of a foreign policy that works for America’s middle class boils down to this: making the global economy fairer for American workers.

White House and Biden administration officials say the president’s first foreign trip was about establishing credibility with partners: laying the groundwork for plans on everything from trade to tax rates that will eventually deliver for America’s middle class and its counterparts in other democracies.

It’s a set of hopes that rest on handshake diplomacy and international agreements with disparate foreign governments, which are supposed to eventually deliver gains to the middle class.

“The intentions are clearer at this moment than the outcome,” said Ashley Tellis, co-author of a 2020 paper with Jake Sullivan — now Biden’s national security advisor — on how to apply foreign and trade policy for the benefit of the U.S.

Perhaps the most tangible policy outcome from Biden’s first venture overseas as president was the G-7 agreement on a 15 percent global corporate minimum tax.

While labor unions welcomed the 15 percent tax rate announcement, Cathy Feingold, who runs the AFL-CIO’s international department, said it was too low to fund the programs needed to overcome Covid-induced inequalities.

“A 15 percent rate could raise $150 billion globally each year.

But with a 20 percent rate you raise $300 billion annually, and with a 25 percent rate it’s $580 billion,” she said.

But even if the administration meets their goal of mobilizing “hundreds of billions of dollars” for these projects, that’s only a fraction of expected domestic infrastructure spending, and not all of those jobs will go to Americans: the benefit for domestic workers will be marginal.

The steel tariffs are popular in swing states and among affected workers, though there’s scant evidence that they’ve majorly impacted domestic production and sales.

One area where Biden’s foreign policy could have a more direct impact on the U.S.

Boeing supports around 10,000 American businesses in its supply chain, and directly employs over 140,000 American workers

“Europe is the most promising place to test run a foreign policy for the middle class,” said former Ambassador Dan Baer, the Obama administration’s envoy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Security in Europe

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