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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House

The writer is vice-chair of S&P Global and author of ‘The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’

The coming US presidential election is one in which prices matter a lot. The inflation rate has dropped dramatically in these past two years of the Biden administration; yet it and the economy still rank as the top issues for voters. And the price that now matters the most is that political perennial — the one at the petrol pump. It is where presidential politics collides with the global oil market.

Just two months ago, in mid-April, the prospect of direct conflict between Israel and Iran led to world oil prices spiking to over $90 a barrel, with fears of worse to come. But the geopolitical premium quickly receded, and there was no major disruption of supply. The market adapted to the remapping of Russian oil trade under western sanctions resulting from the war in Ukraine, as well as the rerouting of tankers owing to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Meanwhile demand has not been as strong as anticipated, and high interest rates have been weighing on consumption. On the supply side, the surge of oil from the western hemisphere — led by 13.2mn barrels per day of US production — continues to flow into the market.

By the beginning of this month, oil exporters were looking at Brent prices that had started to fall into the high $70s, with the prospect of going lower. In response, on June 2 OPEC+ decided to roll over its almost 6mn barrels per day of agreed and “voluntary” cuts, with a gradual increase slated to begin in October. 

In the weeks since, oil prices have rebounded, to the mid-$80s. And they could certainly go higher with the summer increase in demand, as motorists take to the road, and the risk grows of an Israel-Hizbollah war that could draw in Iran. On top of that, the onset of hurricane season adds the danger of a major storm disrupting the huge oil complex in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Gulf coast. 

Political incumbents get blamed for higher petrol prices, even if their influence is limited; and they try to do something about it. In September 2000, with vice-president Al Gore and Texas governor George W Bush locked in a close race and oil prices at a ten-year high, the Clinton administration released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. During the 2012 election year, when prices at the pump hit $4 a gallon, President Barack Obama travelled to Oklahoma where he, in effect, dedicated the southern part of the Keystone pipeline system, making sure to add: “My administration has approved dozens of new oil and gas pipelines.”

But the Biden White House has made far more use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve than any previous administration. It began releasing oil in November 2021, three months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when prices were rising quickly with the post-Covid rebound in demand. The purpose, said the president, was to help solve what he called the “problem of high gas prices”. The administration subsequently released much more when the war in Ukraine created an upheaval in global oil markets. Altogether it has drawn down over 40 per cent of the total supply that was held in the reserve when the administration began. It has, however, recently been gradually adding back some supply.

What tools does the administration have to respond to rising prices in the global oil market? The most obvious is further releases from the SPR. Another option is to reach out to Saudi Arabia to put more oil back into the market sooner rather than later. Riyadh may want to avoid undermining the OPEC+ framework that it has built. But it has also emphasised being responsive to changing market conditions, and it is clearly keen to advance the potential US-Saudi strategic partnership that is under discussion.

A further option would be to allow more flexibility in the production and distribution of the different summer grades of petrol. Some in Congress will inevitably urge banning petrol exports, as they have before, but that would be deeply damaging to the credibility of the US as a reliable energy supplier.

The most recent national petrol price is around $3.45 a gallon, which a top Biden adviser recently called “too high for many Americans”. It is when prices begin to approach $4 a gallon that the political heat really begins to rise. And they could well get there over the summer and into early autumn if crude oil prices go up. Any president running for election would be striving to damp down the cost of petrol in an election year. But at a time when prices in general are at the top of voter concerns, it will certainly be a key priority for the Biden administration to prevent prices at the pump from flowing into the ballot box.

CNN
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Presidential debates crystalize a quadrennial dilemma for a country contemplating a new political direction. But they’re usually defined more by trivial personality quirks, zeitgeist moments and gaffes than high-level ideological argument.

Al Gore’s melodramatic sighs, George H.W. Bush’s unwise glance at his watch, a day’s growth on Richard Nixon’s chin and Donald Trump’s bulk looming over Hillary Clinton remain iconic years after the policy clashes in those debates have been forgotten.

And while Thursday night’s debate hosted by CNN between President Joe Biden and ex-President Trump could also turn on a theatrical flurry between two men who openly despise one another, the policy meat of a presidential debate has rarely been so important as in this neck-and-neck White House race.

The country is confronting a perilous moment, internally estranged over politics and culture and as multiple foreign policy crises deepen. America faces a choice in November that will lead, like in Robert Frost’s poem, down one of two divergent roads from which there may be no coming back.

Trump’s attempt to regain the White House, less than four years after he attempted to steal the last election, poses a potentially existential question for the democratic system. The former president’s conservative backers are, meanwhile, proposing an evisceration of the bureaucracy and the politicization of judicial and intelligence leadership posts to reconcile the goals of a GOP candidate sporting one criminal conviction, three other indictments and a thirst for revenge.

At the same time, and despite a roaring jobs market, millions of Americans are worn down by high prices and the cost of borrowing. The legacy of a once-in-a-generation pandemic robbed the country of a sense of economic security that Biden promised to restore four years ago but that remains elusive for many. The Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion two years ago has opened an ideological and religious schism over reproductive rights that Biden plans to exploit to hurt Trump. But the president is equally vulnerable over an immigration crisis on the southern border that has swamped asylum laws unfit to handle a new generation of migrants fleeing gangs, economic blight and climate disasters.

Overseas, there’s a frightening sense of fracturing. The global system that has enshrined American power for 80 years is under extreme pressure from US foes seeking to destroy it, including Russia and the new superpower China. Biden has dedicated his term to expanding NATO to counter the Kremlin’s onslaught on Ukraine and threat to wider Europe. In one rare area of continuity with Trump, he’s intensified a military and diplomatic pivot to counter China, although the ex-president’s plan for a tariff war with Beijing would go far beyond Biden’s efforts to stop a new Cold War turning hot.

Israel’s war in Gaza, which incessantly threatens to boil over, is a painful vulnerability for a sitting president, as his rival warns that World War III may be about to spark. Trump’s main critique is that Biden is weak – a caricature that could resonate with some voters. But his own plans are as nebulous as his unlikely plan to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours and his unprovable claim that conflicts in Europe and the Middle East would “never have happened” if he’d been in office.

And Trump seems more at home with authoritarians like Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who dream of crushing US power, than democratic allies America liberated in the last cataclysmic global conflict. Some of the ex-president’s former White House officials warn he might try to pull the United States out of NATO, the cornerstone of Western security, if he returns to the White House. Voters must therefore pick between Biden’s traditional internationalist foreign policies and a doubling down by Trump of the populist isolationism that turned the United States from the bulwark of global stability into one of its most volatile sources of instability.

For the first time in American history, two presidents will stand side-by-side on a debate stage with their legacies exposed for everyone to judge. (The only other time a former and current president competed for a second term was in 1892, when candidates didn’t actively campaign, let alone debate one another.) The meeting of incumbents is one most voters would have preferred to avoid. And so far, their fears seem to be realized. The tied race means two candidates either side of 80 are struggling to show they’ve got the policies to fix the nation’s problems. And neither so far has shown the vision to conjure a road map to the future that millions of Americans will inhabit long after both are gone.

Trump’s first term and sparse legislative record showed that he sees the presidency more as a channel for his wild personal whims rather than a policy laboratory. But his campaign, as well as allied conservative groups, have drawn up plans that, if implemented, would transform American governance. And a second-term administration stripped of restraining influences that frustrated the 45th president means he’d have far more latitude to do what he wants.

One irony of Trump’s first term — and second term proposals — is that while he’s shifted the Republican Party away from its corporate heritage toward a more working-class orientation, he pursues policies that disproportionately help richer Americans like himself. In his first term, he enacted tax cuts that favored the better off and he wants to extend them if he gets back the White House. Still, earlier this month, in an apparent bid to court support from hospitality workers in the key state of Nevada, he pledged to eliminate federal taxes on tips. And while he’s proposing a draconian immigration policy, including mass deportations of undocumented migrants, Trump also says he wants more green cards for foreign graduates of US colleges — a step that may win favor among increasingly influential South Asian voters.

The former president has also signaled he’d dismiss Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in a move that would raise concerns of political interference in the central bank but that could please Americans who want interest rate cuts. And the former president is working hard to enhance nostalgia for the Trump economy that was thriving before the pandemic-induced economic crisis.

If he concentrates on economic messaging rather than histrionics on Thursday night, the former president may be able to renew a connection with viewers alienated by his extreme behavior but who pine for easier economic times. Still, Biden is likely to argue that some of Trump’s plans would be economically ruinous, including a proposed 10% tariff on foreign goods that some economists warn could reignite the inflation crisis and raise the cost of goods for US consumers.

Biden has a humming policy machine.

Several times a week, the president or Vice President Kamala Harris highlights a new aspect of the administration’s attempt to honor its vows to reshape the economy, to lift up working Americans, to cut health care costs, cap drugs prices, create jobs, fight climate change, preserve abortion rights, reduce student debt and lower energy costs.

But it is the curse of Biden’s term that his efforts rarely get much credit despite a legislative legacy that is as impressive as any Democrat since President Lyndon Johnson. Part of this may lie in the fact that measures like Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure plan may take years to fully come into force.

The president is still yet to figure out a way to claim credit for an economy that rebounded more strongly from the Covid-19 emergency than those of other developed countries while also acknowledging the pain many voters still feel. High grocery prices represent a literal and psychological barrier — even if the worst inflation crisis in 40 years has now moderated. It’s still hard for many Americans to afford a new car or a mortgage because of high interest rates introduced to lower the cost of living. This leaves Biden badly needing to use Thursday night’s debate to convince voters that he can make their lives better — and soon.

He’s tried it once already. During his State of the Union address in March, Biden praised citizens for authoring “the greatest comeback story.” But it didn’t do him any good politically.  In an ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted in late April, voters said they trusted Trump more than Biden on the economy and inflation, their top two issues, by margins of 46% to 32% and 44% to 30%.

Post-game coverage of Thursday’s debate is certain to zero in on the best verbal jabs, soundbites and the stamina and energy of the rival candidates. But the most meaningful impact of the clash between Trump and Biden will only begin to unfold after noon on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025.

The Nasdaq Composite notched its biggest one-day drop in almost two months, as Nvidia led a sell-off among several Big Tech names and countered gains for the broader US stock market.

The tech-heavy index closed 1.1 per cent lower on Monday, its biggest one-day drop since April 30. Shares in Nvidia dropped 6.7 per cent, continuing a recent slide, for their biggest daily fall since mid-April.

Owing to its heavy weighting, Nvidia’s share price moves have a large influence over the direction of stock market indices. Amazon and Microsoft, as well as chip groups Broadcom and AMD, closed lower.

The S&P 500 closed 0.3 per cent lower on Monday, even as about 70 per cent of the benchmark index’s constituents ended the session higher. Energy, up 2.7 per cent, was the gauge’s best-performing sector, while technology and consumer cyclicals were the only two groups nursing declines.