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How Biden’s presidency will be remembered
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US Politics this week: One question that's going to be debated for a long time in the coming years is what is President Biden's legacy? I think there are a couple of things that he's going to be remembered for.
The first is the extraordinarily chaotic global environment over which he presided. Republicans will tie this back to the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan that President Biden presided over. But following that, you had the Russian invasion in Ukraine and the events of October 7th in the Middle East that led to the ongoing war there that is just now starting to look like it's settling down. But this is clearly going to be one of the background themes of any assessments of President Biden's legacy.
Biden's now one of four one-term presidents in the last 50 years, and one of the reasons that he lost was of course inflation. And inflation, you could argue was fueled by the pandemic or you could argue it was fueled by early actions taken by the Biden administration to spend a lot of money, perhaps more money than was necessary. But either way, the inflationary story of 2021 and 2022 is going to be remembered as one of his key legacies and one of the reasons that he lost reelection. Now that loss to Donald Trump, allowing probably one of the more controversial presidents in certainly recent American history, to come back into office and mount an unprecedented political comeback is also going to be part of Biden's legacy. Because of the fact that he decided that he was able to run even at his advanced age, that blocked out the Democrats from having an opportunity to hold a primary and then forced the Democrats to change horses midstream and move over to Kamala Harris in the middle of the election cycle, who of course lost to Trump. That is also going to be part of his legacy.
And it's unclear. Biden thinks, says it publicly, he could have won election if he just stayed in. He's 82 years old. He'd be the oldest president ever if he did, and there's obvious decline in his faculties over the course of the year. But more importantly, the American people really started to lose confidence in Biden as time went on this year. So not at all clear that he would've won that election or that any other Democrat could have won that election if there were a primary process. But his sticking around and the White House staff and other Democratic operatives that covered for the age-related decline that he was experiencing is also going to be a part of President Biden's election.
Probably one of the more consequential things I think he's going to end up having done over the longer term is increasing the US confrontation with China, particularly over technology policy. The world is at a critical juncture when it comes to the advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence. And the wall that the Biden administration has been trying to erect around Chinese access to US advanced technologies is going to have ripple effects and repercussions for years to come. The Trump administration's likely to continue a lot of that, and this could potentially be an inflection point in 10 years time as we look back and look at the two different tech ecosystems that are being built out. A lot of that legacy is going to trace back to the Biden administration.
So that's a pretty complex, mixed legacy. The US doesn't have lot of one-term presidents in recent history. Most one-term presidents aren't remembered that fondly. Presidents like George H.W. Bush look a lot better in the long distance of history, whereas President Jimmy Carter who recently passed away still has a bit of a mixed legacy. And that's probably where Biden's going to end up.
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Will Trumponomics cause a slowdown for the US economy?
Donald Trump’s economic agenda blends deregulation, anti-immigration policies, higher tariffs, and loose fiscal policy—an approach that "cuts in multiple different directions," says Jon Lieber during a GZERO livestream to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report. Lieber says deregulation could boost productivity, while measures like deportations and trade barriers risk straining industries reliant on foreign labor and open markets. With markets pricing in optimism but key sectors facing uncertainty, the impact of Trumponomics will hinge on how far the administration goes in implementing its campaign promises in 2025 and beyond.
Take a deep dive with the panel in our full discussion, livestreamed on Jan. 6 here.
Podcast: The Top Geopolitical Risks of 2025, a live conversation with Ian Bremmer and global experts
Listen: It's officially the new year, and 2025 will bring a whole new set of challenges as governments react to the shifting policies of the incoming Trump administration, instability in the Middle East, China’s economic weakness, and a world where the global order feels increasingly tenuous. 2025 will be a year of heightened geopolitical risks and global disorder, with the world no longer aligned with the balance of power. So what should we be paying attention to, and what’s the world’s #1 concern for the year ahead? Each year, The Eurasia Group, GZERO’s parent company, forecasts the top political risks most likely to play out over the year. On this special edition of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer analyzes the Eurasia Group's Top Risks of 2025 report with Cliff Kupchan, Eurasia Group’s chairman and a leader of the firm’s global macro coverage; Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker; and Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group’s head of research and managing director, United States. The conversation is moderated by Evan Solomon, GZERO Media’s publisher.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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Unpacking the biggest global threats of 2025
With political instability plaguing US allies, from Canada and South Korea to Japan and Germany, 2025 promises plenty of geopolitical storms. To get you up to speed, GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon sat down with Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer, Cliff Kupchan, and Jon Lieber, as well as the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, to discuss the 2025 Top Risks report.
One name came up over and over again: Donald Trump. The incoming US president promises tariffs that could upend the global economy, crash relations with China, and worsen the chaos in ungoverned spaces. With Russia still running rogue, Iran badly bruised on the world stage, and AI changing geopolitics — not necessarily for the better — Kupchan characterized the current situation as the riskiest since World War II.
Bremmer said that all of the above, from Washington to Ouagadougou, is merely a symptom of the biggest risk facing the planet: that the G-Zero world, one in which no power can bring order to the international system, is on the rise.
Take a deep dive with the panel in our full discussion, livestreamed on Jan. 6.
What Trump’s cabinet picks reveal so far
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US politics this week: It's Trump's transition, of course. Lots of activity happening over the course of the week with some unexpected developments, including a lot of very unusual cabinet appointees. Sean Duffy at Department of Transportation, former "Real World" star and congressman, who has very little experience with transportation other than presumably driving a car, and of course, competing on the "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" is going to be in charge of the transportation department.
Other picks like Pete Hegseth have been a little more controversial. The former Army National Guard member and Fox News host has been accused of sexual assault. Not a great look for the incoming Secretary of Defense. But he's nowhere near as controversial as the recently withdrawn pick, Matt Gaetz, the firebrand Congressman from Florida who resigned his seat in order to become Trump's attorney general, and then found out that no Republican wanted him in that job.
Gaetz's withdrawal will allow some of the more controversial attention to be focused on people like RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, somebody with a long career in the nonprofit management space, but no experience in public administration and who's been extremely critical of the US's Public Health Administration, including on toxins in foods, additives in foods, vaccines, and the approval process for them. And he's tapped into a strain of anger among Republicans at the public health apparatus that they say failed to protect the public during the COVID-19 epidemic, pointing to inconsistent and sometimes unnecessary masking guidelines. Things like social distancing, keeping the schools closed, and of course the vaccine recommendations that a lot of Republicans rejected during that pandemic. RFK's confirmation odds, however, look pretty good if you look at the relatively warm reception that he's been received with by most Republicans.
One area that's still totally in doubt for the most part is Trump's economic team. It's been two weeks since the election, there's no treasury of the secretary, there's no USTR. There is a commerce secretary pick, another Trump ally who has no experience in public administration, Howard Lutnick, a lot like Wilbur Ross in the first administration, but potentially leaving Trump's trade czar, Robert Lighthizer, without any clear role. So there's a lot more clarity on the national security side than there is on the economic side for now. That may change over the weekend. And of course, the one thing with President Trump is you could always expect the unexpected.
US election: GOP could win a Trump-led sweep
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
It's election night in America. And a slightly unexpected result tonight, with the election returns coming back very strong for President Donald Trump. He may actually end up winning the national popular vote, which was not, I think, on anyone's bingo card, really.
Big surprise for Trump has been a surge in rural support where the Trump coalition showed up to vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris has somewhat underperformed in urban areas, and while she did have a pretty good showing with women voters, it wasn't enough to keep her ahead of Trump, at least in the results as we know them tonight.
Harris has been underperforming down-ballot Democrats generally, which has kept the Democrats competitive in the House, which could lead to an unusual situation where all three of the main political bodies in the United States, the White House, the House, and the Senate, flip in the same election. The Senate is in the bag for Republicans. They're going to have somewhere between 52 and 55 seats, it looks like. And Trump is probably the favorite to win in the Electoral College.
The House outcome we may not know in the next 24 hours. Some of the House seats that really matter in determining the majority, which is very close, are slow to count. But right now, it does look like Democrats have some momentum with a couple of Republicans losing key seats.
So stay tuned for more of what we're watching this week in US politics.
2024 US election: What to look out for
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching this week in US politics. It is, at long last, election week. The US has one of the longest most exhausting presidential election cycles in the world. That basically begins two years before general Election Day. And Tuesday of this week, it all comes to a conclusion. It's unlikely that we will know the results of the election on Tuesday night, although if Harris is significantly ahead in the early counting states, like North Carolina, that's going to be a strong signal that she's probably winning the overall electoral college. Seven key swing states to watch. Trump looks like he has the advantage in Arizona and Nevada. And the election, like it did in 2016, could potentially come down to the three so-called Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. On election night, Wisconsin and Michigan are likely to be known, but possibly not till late in the night. They were called for Biden late in the night on 2020.
Pennsylvania is the real outlier when it comes to counting votes, and this is because Pennsylvania does not count its early ballots until the day of the election, which means that the people who vote in person in Pennsylvania, who tend to be Republicans, we'll know where they are when the polls close in the evening, East Coast time, on Tuesday night. But then overnight, you expect to see what's been called the 'blue shift,' which is as those early and absentee ballots get counted, which are primarily democratic, you will see Harris's vote share start to climb. So if the outcome of the race is not known because the outcome in North Carolina is ambiguous or Trump is leading, and there's no clear winner in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that night, or it looks like a close race, officially calling this race could drag on until much later in the week, just exactly what happened in 2020. Now, President Trump tried to exploit that gap in 2020 by saying he clearly had won in Pennsylvania, and all these late-breaking votes were all just fraudulent, which isn't true, but that's what he claimed. And that could happen again this cycle.
The only situation in which we would get a genuinely ambiguous outcome, where we wouldn't know the outcome for weeks at a time, is if, one, there's evidence of widespread massive election fraud, which has not been the case at any time in recent US history and is a very low probability event. Or if it's such a close race in one of the key swing states, like Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Georgia, where we don't actually know the winner because the margins are within several hundred votes. There is precedent for state-wide elections being overturned in recent US history, but typically, those elections come down to about 500 votes. There's been 31 recounts from the year 2000 before the 2020 presidential election, three were overturned because the margin was so incredibly close. And so, this is a very, very rare event, and it's unlikely to play out in this election cycle, but it could. You never know.
The polls are suggesting this is a very close race. So stay tuned for more watching this election week, and hope you find a nice, comfortable place to watch the election results because it could take a long time to count these ballots.
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Defining Kamala Harris at DNC 2024
From Chicago's United Center on the final night of the Democratic National Convention, Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, recaps the key takeaways from the DNC.
We're here in Chicago wrapping up the Democratic National Convention for 2024. You can see the balloons are falling behind us, and the benediction is going on as folks are starting to file out of the convention hall into what I think are going to be long lines to get home.
So a couple of key themes that jumped out over the four days of the convention. One was, of course, to introduce and define Kamala Harris, and what they sort of did was embrace her record as a prosecutor, giving her this persona as a loving family member, but a tough, no-nonsense person that you don't want to mess with. And that was a theme that was repeated over and over again in testimonials from her family and friends, and also a message pretty directly given by her.
Second, of course, they wanted to create a contrast with Trump, and the way they did that was to attack his character over and over again, talking about how, “They wouldn't trust him to move their furniture,” a really great line by Senator Elizabeth Warren, and making a contrast about the schemes and frauds and criminal convictions that are in his background versus, again, Kamala Harris's record as a prosecutor, standing up for a little guy.
And then, of course, another big theme, especially one that came out on day four tonight, was to define the Democratic Party as the party of freedom and the future of the USA. A lot of flags waving in the audience. There was an extended section speaking about the military and military strength, right in prime time. Clearly, Democrats trying to set themselves out to be the party that can defend America.
I would say three groups were really targeted over the course of the convention. The first is union members. There was a lot of shout-outs to organized labor, who are, of course, a key Democratic constituent. Black voters who are going to be absolutely critical to Kamala Harris' ability to win, particularly if they want to compete in Georgia and North Carolina. And then, Republicans, gettable on the fence Republican-leaning independents who don't like Trump all that much and want to feel comfortable voting for Kamala Harris. Very clear themes directed to those three groups throughout the week.
Overall, probably a pretty successful convention. Certainly played well here in the convention hall, but of course, it's how it plays on TV and social media that really matters.
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