CNN FAREED's Global Briefing - July 12, 2024 - The Age of Biden

 

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good   Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here.   July 12, 2024

The Age of Biden President Joe Biden’s press conference last night was fine, but it will not allay ongoing Democratic fears about his ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in November, writes Wall Street Journal senior political correspondent Molly Ball. It was sad to watch the truth unfold that Biden probably will not relinquish his position as the party’s candidate, David Frum writes for The Atlantic.  At The New Yorker, Susan Glasser sums up the viewpoint of some Biden supporters: “[I]t was hard to imagine what the President could say that would satisfy nervous Democrats who are wondering whether he needs to pull the plug on his reelection campaign: I’m sorry? I’m going to do better? I quit? … [Biden] clearly still knows what he’s talking about … He did not seem confused. Or dangerous. He digressed. He offered mini-lectures on investing in China, on the need for a new industrial policy in the West, and on the evils of trickle-down economics. But it is not what America needed to hear from him.” Well before the disastrous debate performance, polling had already indicated many Americans thought Biden was too old to serve another four years, Glasser notes. “In other words, Biden and his party do not have a debate problem; they have a Biden problem, which the debate finally forced his party to confront.” The contrast between Biden’s knowledgeable substance and digressive style was sharp, Glasser writes. On the substance of Biden’s presidency, a London Review of Books essay by Christian Lorentzen reprises three books about it: Franklin Foer’s “The Last Politician,” Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life,” and Alexander Ward’s “The Internationalists.” The portrait Lorentzen draws is largely positive: Aside from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan—a “lonely” policy position Biden had supported during the Obama presidency—Biden’s Covid-19 rescue plan was “generous”; his infrastructure spending ambitiously incorporated ideas from the Democratic Party’s left wing; and Ukraine’s early, Western-backed defense against Russia was a success. “Whereas accounts of the Trump White House varied from clown show to cesspool, with backstabbing among hacks, mercenaries and scumbags, the histories of the Biden administration present a succession of earnest and credentialled professionals lining up to help the president better the country and the world,” Lorentzen writes. The books don’t really delve into Biden’s age, Lorentzen writes, but he offers an original insight: “In retrospect Biden’s advanced age was a political asset in 2020. By contrast with the sneering and erratic Trump, given to mocking the disabled and insulting anyone unlucky enough to be in his vicinity, here was a kindly and familiar old man who had suffered terrible personal tragedies … Broadcasting a socially distanced campaign from his Delaware basement, he appeared gentle and forgiving … just the man to heal the country after the devastation of the pandemic and the four-year reign of the American berserk.” Judging by the new skepticism of Democrats and liberal commentators, Lorentzen hints, the advantage has reversed.

France’s Real Winner? Who won France’s recent snap legislative election? President Emmanuel Macron claims no one did, Le Monde’s Claire Gatinois and Nathalie Segaunes report dubiously, after a leftist coalition came in first, Macron’s own centrist coalition in second, and the far-right Nationally Rally (RN) in third, none of them securing a majority. Macron’s claim exacerbates France’s political crisis over the muddled results and the resultant prospect of deadlock, Gatinois and Segaunes write. After the election, the dominant reaction appeared to be surprise and relief that the far right didn’t surge ahead as predicted. In that way, one might say the winner was everyone but Marine Le Pen’s RN, and in a Foreign Policy op-ed, Emile Chabal writes that the most important part of France’s election was the apparent revival of the “front républicain,” the term for disparate parts of the political spectrum uniting to block the far right. That was seen most notably in 2002, when voters rallied against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen and converged on right-leaning candidate Jacques Chirac, but Chabal notes that the “anti-fascist” force in French politics had seem to erode. With French voters having rejected the far right in multiple elections this century, Chabal writes, the latest proves the front républicain is back. After the RN succeeded in mobilizing some young people in its support, Chabal writes: “The struggle to contain the far-right in France is not an intergenerational clash between youthful liberals and reactionary boomers. If anything, old people are the least likely to vote for Marine Le Pen and her acolytes. In fact, young people are fighting for the political soul of their own generation.”

EV Showdown China is making electric vehicles cheaply, prompting fears in the West that those cars will flood markets. In a New York Times guest opinion essay in May, Gernot Wagner and Conor Walsh argued against steep new US tariffs on them, as “wealthy Americans are the only ones who can afford the electric vehicles currently on the market. … Low-cost Chinese models that lower- and middle-income Americans could afford—like BYD’s Seagull, which runs for less than $10,000—aren’t currently sold here largely because of tariffs over 25 percent. The new tariffs of 100 percent will make it even harder for these cars to compete in the U.S. market.” Nikkei Asia’s CK Tan reports that Chinese EV exports slid in June after the EU enacted new tariffs of up to 37.6%, and The Economist writes that the EV trade war “has begun. … On July 10th, days after the symbolic swipe of opening an anti-dumping probe into European brandy, China’s ministry of commerce signalled it will not take the assault lying down. It says it will study whether the EU’s tariffs create barriers to free trade. Western car companies with large Chinese businesses fear getting caught in the crossfire.” Tesla faces the biggest risk, but so far it has been spared, The Economist writes—and that points to a conundrum facing China’s leadership in Beijing: “On the one hand, it must appear tough on hostile foreign powers accusing Chinese companies of flooding markets with subsidised products. On the other, as China’s economy slows, it is trying to signal that it remains open to foreign investment. In this context, a crackdown on one of the most prominent outside investors would send the wrong message.”