Thread by @paologerbaudo

A must-listen interview with Brian Deese, director of Biden’s National Economic Council on Bidenomics. It highlights profound shift in discourse and policy. Here are some points: thread. nytimes.com/2021/04/09/opi…

Deese argues that the massive stimulus and other economic measures taken by Biden are not simply response to the pandemic. They aim at radically redirecting economic system in the long term.

He identifies two major threats: economic inequality and climate change. But his concern is also geopolitical. He fears US is in increasingly bad position vis-a-vis ascending China

The word that recurs the most is vulnerability: vulnerability of American industry, of supply chains, infrastructure, environment vis a vis climate change

This vulnerability has been ushered by economic policies that have abandoned industrial policy, and adopted a minimal view of what the state should do, leading to lack of strategic capacity

He refers to semiconductor shortage as example of the fact that the old free market logic and long supply chains are making the system unreliable

He says that the US cannot ignore that its major competitor China is a state capitalism system. This forces the US to achieve similar degree of industrial policy coordination

Interestingly he also says that inequality can only be addressed by reinforcing trade unions and “workers’ power” (he said he phrase twice, I was pretty struck by that)

He also has something interesting to say about the “caring economy”: failure of care in the broad sense (childcare, patient care, senior citizens etc) is a major economic ill as it forces family carers (typically women) out of the workforce

All in all a very inspiring interview. Yes he was senior advisor under Obama, and worked for BlackRock on climate change. But the “ideology” (another term that stunningly recurs in the interview) is very different from that of a Larry Summers.

Other interesting point. He says that too long it has been overlooked that economic policy has not only economic but political risks. The impression is that new presidency wants to do all that is economically necessary to avoid a second coming of Trump or a Trump look-alike.

The jury is obviously still out on whether this plan will be implemented and whether it will really favour workers. But at least from ideological perspective the Biden presidency is attempting to forge a new centre-left consensus that is quite different from Clinton’s or Obama’s.