With wins in Congress, Biden’s imprint on U.S. economy emerges

The recent wins, in particular, have sharpened the Biden administration’s imprint on the U.S. economy. His presidency combines some traditional features of Democratic policymaking — such as pursuing higher taxes and expanded access to health care — with a new focus on reviving domestic industry through targeted investment, supporting American labor, and cracking down on monopolistic firms through a heavier emphasis on antitrust enforcement.

The outset of Biden’s term has been defined by pitched battles over short-term economic circumstances: The president has defended his 2021 rescue plan as leading to the biggest single-year jobs boom in American history, while critics have assailed that same policy for exacerbating the fastest price increases in four decades. The latest string of legislative victories, however, turn the battle over “Bidenomics” into one over the long-term trajectory of the nation’s tax code, energy sector and other structural parts of the nation’s economy, although the menace of inflation continues to dominate even these debates.

“There’s a much greater comfort with industrial policy, ‘Buy America’ over engaging internationally, pro-union policy and pro-competition policy,” said Jason Furman, who served as a senior economist in the Obama administration. “A number of those things were in Obama, but there’s more of it and it’s more central to Biden.”

West Virginia coal country will test power of Democrats’ climate bill

White House officials say the new legislation aimed at expanding America’s production capacity — with hundreds of billions of dollars invested in sectors like infrastructure, semiconductors and renewable energy — will ensure that the broader economy continues to grow for years to come. Those economic gains will then be translated to workers, tey say, through their efforts to run a tight labor market spurred by the rescue plan, which means workers have the bargaining power to ensure that the benefits are broadly felt.

“When it comes to establishing a lasting legacy in terms of existentially necessary economic transformation, history may well put President Biden in the same sentence as FDR and LBJ,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, in an interview, referring to Democratic presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, who ushered in major changes to the American economy such as Social Security and Medicare. “And…