President Trump’s major appeal to Black America has always been the economy; he consistently touted the low Black unemployment rate at the beginning of his term. Most experts, however, argue that this was due to former president Obama’s actions, and continued under Trump without his influence.
Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has shuttered the economy, and Black unemployment has shot back up far above that of any other racial group’s, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is making his own appeal to Black America: to actually make substantial economic gains for Black people if he wins, like he says Obama did.
Will he deliver?
President Obama - with Biden as Vice President - took office during an economic crisis overseen by his Republican predecessor and appeared to turn the economy around. Biden has suggested that he will be able to do the same, and has consistently evoked Obama’s legacy throughout his campaign.
In recently-released economic and climate change packages, he again appeals to Black voters - though he has also appeared to take a page out of Trump’s playbook.
“It’s time to reverse the priorities in this country. It’s time to help small businesses, middle-class folks, manage their way through the pandemic,” Biden argued during a campaign stop, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The funding sources for his policies make a sharp contrast to President Trump’s.
Trump’s key economic policy has been tax cuts, which primarily benefited the super-rich. Biden’s $700 billion economic plan would largely be paid for by higher taxes on rich people and major corporations: “Nobody making under $400,000 bucks would have their taxes raised. Period,” he’s claimed repeatedly.
But are his policies that different?
Biden’s “Made In America” plan aims to support domestic infrastructure and manufacturing, and sounds very similar to Trump’s “America First” rhetoric. He also wants to be “tough on China” like Trump, though he claims he’ll take a better approach.
Where Biden draws a sharp line between himself and Trump, however, is on climate change. He’s proposed a $2 trillion environmental justice initiative, reports The Hill, that would prioritize communities of color. “American industries have … inflict[ed] environmental harm on poor and vulnerable communities, so often Black and brown and Native American communities,” he argued.
He’s right: environmental racism is a public health crisis and is partly to blame for COVID-19’s devastating effect on Black Americans. Climate change has and will continue to harm people of color disproportionately.
Trump has taken the opposite approach.
By contrast, Trump has claimed climate change is a hoax, and consistently weakened environmental protections.
Black Americans in particular have not been well-served by sweeping government investment programs during a crisis - the New Deal famously excluded and even actively harmed Black Americans during the Great Depression.
On the other hand, an administration that denies systemic racism, dismantles health care protections during a global pandemic, and weakens environmental protections, might also be a tough choice during this election year.