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US elections: Trump or Harris? What awaits the winner of Tuesday's vote

Nearly two-thirds of voters believe the country has been heading in the wrong direction under Biden

Published: Tue 5 Nov 2024, 6:31 PM

Updated: Tue 5 Nov 2024, 6:36 PM

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  • Reuters

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

Americans vote for a new president on Tuesday in a mood of discontent and division, with opinion polls showing nearly two-thirds of voters believe the country has been heading in the wrong direction under President Joe Biden.

While the United States economy is the envy of the industrialized world, emerging from Covid shutdowns with strong job growth and wage increases, many Americans complain those gains were gobbled up by high grocery and housing prices.

Whoever triumphs in the election, whether former president Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, will inherit the legacy of a Biden administration that made good on some promises, saw others swept off-course by events, and others still only partially fulfilled. Here's how Biden fared on the defining issues of his presidency:

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Foreign policy

From wars in Ukraine and Gaza to civil bloodshed in Sudan, overseas conflicts have dominated Biden's foreign policy agenda.

Biden came to office promising to restore US global leadership in the world and determined to push back on an increasingly aggressive China.

In some ways, his administration has done just that. After the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, Biden rallied US allies the following year to oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has also revitalized alliances across Asia to pressure China's leadership.

But the US has struggled to bring the grinding conflicts to an end, and hasn't been able to prevent the deepening ties between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Now in its third year, the war of attrition in Ukraine continues despite billions of dollars in US military aid and massive losses on both sides. The conflict is increasingly international, with Western accusations that Moscow is receiving weapons and soldiers from North Korea, missiles and drones from Iran and technical and other support from China.

The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which started when Hamas fighters staged a deadly attack into Israel, has widened into a vconflict between Israel and Lebanese militants Hezbollah and sparked reprisal attacks between Israel and Iran.

Biden's staunch support for Israel has divided his party and undercut the United States' ability to criticize others on human rights and violations of international law.

A conflict in Sudan has triggered ethnic violence and famine conditions in Sudan's Darfur region, where violence about 20 years ago led to the International Criminal Court charging former Sudanese leaders with genocide and crimes against humanity. The United States has been trying to help broker an end to the 18-month-long conflict.

Economy and abortion

The biggest upheaval on abortion access in decades occurred during Biden's presidency - but because of a decision by the Supreme Court.

In June 2022, the conservative majority formed by Trump's judicial appointments to the court eliminated the nearly 50-year-old federal right to abortion under Roe v. Wade.

The decision ushered in a period in which individual states set their own laws on abortion access. More than a dozen states banned abortion in all or most cases.

Biden condemned the Supreme Court ruling, and his administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services and the Justice Department, laid out guidelines to ensure access to emergency abortion care under federal law and defended the use of the abortion pill before the Supreme Court.

The administration also pushed for expanded access to reproductive health services like contraception through the Affordable Care Act.

The administration won its biggest victory in June when the Supreme Court rejected a case brought by anti-abortion advocates seeking to roll back the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, one of two medications used in the abortion pill regimen.

But the court dismissed on procedural grounds the administration's case arguing that Idaho's severe abortion ban conflicted with a federal law requiring medical providers to offer stabilizing emergency care, including abortions. In October, the court declined to hear a similar administration case about Texas' strict abortion ban.

While devoutly Catholic Biden was openly uncomfortable about abortion from early in his political career, mitigating the impacts of the dissolution of Roe v. Wade has become a pillar of his presidency.

Democrats more broadly made abortion rights central to their platform in the 2022 midterm elections. In March, Harris became the first sitting vice president or president to visit an abortion clinic.

On the economy front, Biden may go down in history as overseeing the best economy that everyone hated.

Since 2021, as the country emerged from a global pandemic that briefly created historic job losses and brought the economy to a near-standstill, employers have added nearly 16.5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate has averaged just 4.2%, including the longest run at 4% or below since the 1960s.

Gross domestic product growth has averaged 3.2% per quarter, well above what most economists view as the US economy's long-term potential. Incomes and wages have grown above trend. Collective US household net worth has climbed to a record $163.8 trillion, thanks to a booming stock market and rising home values.

But survey after survey over most of Biden's term has shown little of that registering with average Americans. Why? Because all of that occurred against the backdrop of the worst inflation breakout in a generation.

As the economy reopened, a mix of tangled supply chains, worker shortages and hot consumer demand, supported by roughly $5 trillion of government stimulus from Biden's and Trump's administrations, sent prices climbing - fast.

By the summer of 2022, the Consumer Price Index was rising by 9.1% year-over-year and the widely followed gauge of household satisfaction with the economy, the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index, tumbled to a record low.

While inflation has receded and sentiment has begun to recover, surveys show Americans still feel the sting of lingering high prices, and they blame Biden and Democrats for it.

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