Americans went to the polls yesterday in an atmosphere of discontent and division, and public opinion polls show that almost two-thirds of voters believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction under President Joe Biden.
While the United States' economy is the envy of the industrialized world, given the recovery from Covid with strong employment growth and rising wages, many Americans complain that high food and housing prices have negated those gains.
Biden's promise to restore a more humane immigration regime compared to the one under the former president, Republican Donald Trump, soon collided with the reality of the increase in the number of illegal border crossings.
The Supreme Court changed the legal framework around abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade, fueling one of the most polarizing issues in American politics.
Despite Biden's promise that America will serve as a stabilizing force in the world, his mandate is overshadowed by international conflicts.
Whoever wins the election - Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris - will inherit the legacy of the Biden administration, which fulfilled some promises, some were derailed by the force of opportunity, and some were only partially fulfilled.
Reuters looked at Biden's performance in key areas of his mandate.
Immigration
Biden, a Democrat, began his term by reversing many of Trump's restrictive immigration policies. He halted construction of Trump's border wall, reversed bans targeting people from certain Muslim-majority countries and other countries, and ended the "remain in Mexico" program, which forced non-Mexico asylum seekers to wait in the country while their cases were processed. in the USA.
But just months into his term, illegal crossings have soared, particularly among unaccompanied minors from Central America, overwhelming US processing centers and drawing criticism from Republicans.
Illegal crossings reached record levels in 2022 and 2023, as more migrants arrived from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and other countries outside the Western Hemisphere.
In response to the influx of migrants, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending newly arrived busloads of migrants north in 2022 to Democratic-governed cities, including New York and Chicago, that have struggled to house them.
In January, Biden supported bipartisan legislation aimed at strengthening border security. After the bill failed in the US Senate due to Trump's opposition, Biden in June banned asylum for most migrants who cross the border illegally.
The number of migrants caught at illegal crossings has fallen dramatically, challenging Trump's claims that Harris and Democrats support "open borders," Reuters points out.
Despite political pressures on migration, Biden created new legal pathways for hundreds of thousands of migrants and oversaw the rebuilding of the U.S. refugee program, which admitted more than 100.000 refugees in fiscal year 2024, the most in 30 years.
Abortion
The biggest reversal when it comes to abortion in the last few decades happened during Biden's term - but because of the decision of the Supreme Court.
In June 2022, the court's conservative majority, made up of Trump-appointed justices, struck down the nearly 50-year-old federal right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade.
With that decision, we entered the period in which individual federal states pass their own laws on access to abortion. More than ten states have introduced bans on abortion in all or most cases.
Biden condemned the Supreme Court decision, and his administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice, established 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, such as contraception, through the Affordable Care Act.
The administration's biggest victory came in June when the Supreme Court threw out a case brought by abortion opponents that sought to revoke the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in the birth control pill regimen. abortion.
However, the court dismissed the administration's case on procedural grounds, which argued that Idaho's strict abortion ban is inconsistent with federal law that requires medical professionals to provide emergency stabilizing care, including abortion. In October, the court declined to hear a similar administration case regarding Texas' strict abortion ban.
Although Biden, as a devout Catholic, openly expressed discomfort with abortion from the beginning of his political career, mitigating the consequences of the repeal of Roe v. Wade became one of the foundations of his mandate, the British agency recalls.
Democrats have broadly made abortion rights the backbone of their platform in the 2022 congressional elections. In March, Harris became the first female vice president to visit an abortion clinic.
Economy
Joe Biden, according to Reuters, could go down in history as the president who oversaw the best economy that everyone hated.
Since 2021, as the country has recovered from a global pandemic that briefly caused historic job losses and nearly brought the economy to a standstill, employers have added nearly 16,5 million new jobs. The unemployment rate averaged just 4,2%, including the longest stretch of 4% or lower since the 1960s.
While the United States' economy is the envy of the industrialized world, given the recovery from Covid with strong employment growth and rising wages, many Americans complain that high food and housing prices have negated those gains
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 3,2% per quarter, which is well above the long-term potential of the US economy according to most economists. Incomes and wages grew above trend. US household net worth hit a record $163,8 trillion, thanks to strong gains in the stock market and real estate values.
However, surveys throughout much of Biden's tenure show that average Americans have barely noticed these economic results. Reuters emphasizes the fact that all this happened in the context of the worst wave of inflation in a generation.
As the economy reopened, a combination of tangled supply chains, labor shortages and strong consumer demand, fueled by roughly $5 trillion in government stimulus from the Biden and Trump administrations, quickly pushed up prices.
Through the summer of 2022, the consumer price index (CPI) rose 9,1% annually, while a relevant indicator of household satisfaction with the economic situation - the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index - fell to a record low.
Although inflation has receded and confidence has begun to recover, polls show that Americans are still feeling the effects of high prices, and they blame Biden and the Democrats for that.
Rasna Pravda
On his first day in the White House, Biden signed an executive order aimed at addressing issues of racism, police brutality, poverty and inequality affecting blacks and other communities of different races.
However, reforms are progressing slowly, the British agency points out and adds that the Justice for George Floyd law, introduced in 2021 with the aim of stopping aggressive police tactics and racial bias, is stuck in Congress.
In 2022, Biden issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to create a national database of federal law enforcement officers' misconduct and requiring federal agencies to investigate cases of use of deadly force and deaths in custody. It also limited the use of chokeholds and "no-knock raids" by members of federal agencies.
Although Biden's Justice Department has revived investigations into civil rights violations that had largely been suspended under Trump, it has yet to secure any binding agreements in the 12 investigations into possible civil rights violations by police since Biden took office.
On the economic front, black unemployment fell to a historic low last year. This year alone, the administration directed $1,5 billion in loans to black-owned businesses. It also invested more than $16 billion in predominantly black colleges and universities and distributed $2,2 billion to more than 43.000 black and other farm workers who had experienced discrimination. Last year, the Biden administration allocated $470 million to improve maternal health.
Foreign policy
From the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to the civil bloodshed in Sudan, international conflicts have dominated Biden's foreign policy agenda.
Biden took office promising to restore the United States' global leadership and determined to stand up to an increasingly aggressive China.
In some respects, his administration has achieved this. After the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan in 2021, Biden rallied allies the following year to counter Russia's invasion of Ukraine and strengthened alliances across Asia to pressure China's leadership.
However, the US faces difficulties in ending these long-standing conflicts and has failed to prevent deepening relations between Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
The war of attrition in Ukraine is now entering its third year, despite billions of dollars in US military aid and massive losses on both sides. The conflict is becoming increasingly international, with Western accusations that Moscow receives weapons and soldiers from North Korea, missiles and drones from Iran, as well as technical and other support from China.
The war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, which began with a deadly attack by Hamas fighters on Israel, has spilled over into a conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah militants and sparked retaliation between Israel and Iran.
Biden's staunch support for Israel has divided his party and weakened the United States' ability to criticize other countries on human rights issues and violations of international law.
The conflict in Sudan has sparked ethnic violence and famine in the Darfur region of Sudan, where violence about 20 years ago led to charges of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court against former Sudanese leaders. The United States is trying to help mediate an end to the 18-month-old conflict.
Energy transition
Biden entered the White House with big ambitions to fight climate change by transitioning the US economy from fossil fuels to cleaner, renewable sources — all while creating new green, unionized jobs and restoring American manufacturing. Among his goals are: ending federal oil and gas licensing, increasing the use of solar and wind power to decarbonize the power grid, electrifying the nation's vehicle fleet and, ultimately, putting the economy on a path to becoming carbon neutral by 2050.
On the positive side, Biden signed three bills that led to massive investment in the clean energy economy: the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the Chip Act, which aims to establish a domestic semiconductor supply chain that could protect the domestic energy sector from supply shocks.
Under the Inflationary Reduction Act (IRA), companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in new solar and wind energy projects, electric vehicles and infrastructure, battery storage and other environmentally efficient projects, which has accelerated the energy transition and created jobs - mostly in Republican to states whose legislators did not support this legislation.
The administration has awarded $90 billion in grants for climate, clean energy and other projects under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), accounting for about 70% of climate-focused grant funding, according to officials.
The Biden administration also expanded federal licenses for renewable energy projects and enacted new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and oil and gas operations.
On the negative side, the Biden administration's attempts to end federal oil and gas licenses have failed in court, and his policies have failed to prevent a massive surge in U.S. oil and gas production - mostly on private lands in Texas and New Mexico - which has made the US the largest oil producer in the world.
And perhaps the best indicator of Biden's climate action is the Rhodium Group's projections showing that US greenhouse gas emissions will decline by 32-43% by 2030 under current policies, below Biden's 50-52% goal.
Bonus video:
