United States: Has Joe Biden kept his campaign promises?

What many had already been expecting has now become reality: US President Joe Biden has announced he will be running for a second term in office. The octogenarian is throwing his hat in the ring for the Democratic Party for the November 2024 presidential election. As his reelection campaign takes off, we look back at what he's achieved so far: When he first ran for president in 2020, Joe Biden set his sights high — but what has he been able to deliver? What challenges has he had to overcome?

Unemployment: reduced

In 2020, the coronavirus crisis in particular led to a massive increase in unemployment, which peaked at more than 14%.

Today, Biden can pat himself on the back for being the president who cut the unemployment rate to 3.4%, the lowest level in 50 years. Many more jobs than expected were created in the US economy — in the non-agricultural sector alone, employers added 517,000 new jobs, according to the US Department of Labor.

US tech trends: boosted

In August 2022, Biden helped the domestic chip industry boost semiconductor production with $52 billion (€47 billion) in federal funding and the US CHIPS and Science Act.

Future technologies, including computer chips, batteries, electric cars, and even critical minerals are to be "made in the USA" again. Supply chains are to be secured with investment incentives and active industrial policies. The move is already proving successful: all major global chip and battery manufacturers have planned billion-dollar investment projects in the USA.

Inflation Reduction Act: introduced

Grants, tax credits, loans — over the next 10 years, the US will spend about $369 billion to combat the climate crisis as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) signed into law in August 2022. Renewable energies are to be expanded, energy efficiency in private households improved, and emissions from gas and coal-fired power plants reduced.

Customers buying electic vehicles receive a $4,000 tax cut if the car is used, and $7,500 if it is new. The US wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030.

Health care: strengthened

As part of the IRA, $64 billion are earmarked for the US healthcare system, to help citizens with the cost of their private health insurance and make prescription drugs more affordable. Personal contributions are also capped, with diabetic patients only having to pay $35 dollars a month for insulin.

Infrastructure: renewed

Worth about a trillion dollars, the infrastructure bill was passed with a bipartisan majority back in November 2021. Biden's modernization project foresees overhauling roads, bridges and railroad tracks, as well as ports and airports in across the country. The bill also forsees building more charging stations for electric cars and promoting electric busses. Finally, rural communities are set to receive broadband internet access.

Same-sex marriage: protected

Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law in December 2022. It stipulates that individual states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other US states. The act also overturned legislation already deemed unconstitutional that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. 

As he assumed office, Biden made history when he appointed an openly gay man to cabinet: Pete Buttigieg is Transportation Secretary.

Transatlantic relations: restored

While his predecessor Donald Trump relied on America going it alone, and even mused aloud about the US withdrawing from the western defense alliance NATO, Biden has steered the US back toward traditional US policy and international cooperation. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US took the lead in providing joint support for Ukraine alongside the European Union (EU). The US has since provided more than €70 billion in aid to Ukraine.

Gun laws: tightened (slightly)

When Biden signed gun safety legislation into law in June 2022, he called it a landmark stride toward protecting against gun violence, but also conceded that he had hoped for more. The bipartisan minimum compromise between Democrats and Republicans calls for greater controls for gun buyers under the age of 21. Financial incentives were meant to encourage individual states to temporarily remove firearms from potentially dangerous gun owners.

A billion-dollar package is aimed at making schools safer and providing better mental health care in the country. Biden's bid to ban assault rifles failed due to Republican opposition, however. After the deadly shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York that claimed the lives of 19 children and 12 adults in total, the law fell short of expectations.

Right to abortion: not enforced

Biden's record is marred by the fact that he was unable to follow through on many of the legislative plans he had initially announced. Thus, the expanded child tax credit has expired and not been renewed, the student loan program has been put on hold, and police reform is also stalling. And notably, Biden and the Democratic Party have failed to make possible a nationwide right to abortion. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in June 2022.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan: botched

The hasty withdrawal from Kabul was a low point in Biden's presidency. Pictures of Afghan citizens desperately clinging to US evacuation planes shocked the world.

The president wanted to end the war in Afghanistan as quietly as possible, but the troop withdrawal turned into a fiasco.

In particular, Biden's stubborn and public insistence on making the history books by ending operations before September 11, 2021 — precisely 20 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — was heavily criticized. Amidst evacuation efforts, another terrorist attack in front of the Kabul airport killed at least 170 Afghan citizens and 13 US soldiers. 

Immigration: unaddressed

Along the US-Mexico border, Biden said he wanted to implement a more humane immigration policy than his predecessor Donald Trump, and tapped his vice president Kamala Harris to head his administration's border response. But so far, their mission has failed. While children are no longer torn away from their parents at the border and locked in cage-like camps, families are still being separated.

Expedited deportations without judicial review are common practice. The number of people who advance to the border every day remains high — 8,000 in December 2022. Biden's new plan allows legal entry to up to 30,000 migrants per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti for two years if they pass a strict background check. In exchange, 30,000 immigrants deemed illegal from those countries will be deported.

This article was translated from German.