It has been impossible to avoid hearing of Biden’s administration in recent news. Since his inauguration, Biden has been determined to spend most of his first 100 days in office overturning policies from the Trump administration. His implementation of the “Build Back Better” policy saw to repair the economic damage left unmitigated during the last year of Trump’s presidency — or at least, that’s what he claims. 

In the American Rescue Plan, the first of three agendas within this policy, the Biden administration set out groundwork for a national vaccination program and COVID-19 containment, immediate economic relief for the middle class, and protection of vulnerable communities. A key part of this was providing every citizen a 1,400 USD check, and investing a total of 290 billion USD into COVID-related medical costs and working towards safely reopening schools. 

Next in line is the American Jobs Plan. This is where two trillion USD will be invested . It aims to revitalize US infrastructure, focusing on transport networks, resource distribution, and job creation. Biden made a call to Congress to pledge 180 billion USD to improving STEM R&D. As he mentioned in his first address to Congress, he wants to maintain America’s “economic edge” in the world market, which he claims can only be done through technological development in the right fields including climate science, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen power, quantum computing, and electric vehicles. 

Looking at his policies broadly, it seems that he is doing everything in his power to end the neoliberalist ideals that have run the world’s economy since the 1960s. He is directly involving the government in the market and providing massive investments to jump-start the economy after it ground to a halt during the pandemic. He claims he wants the government to have a bigger role in the economy and in the lives of Americans, but what is his end goal? 

The level of investment in Biden’s policies has not been seen since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to pull America out of the Great Depression. FDR was able to restore Americans’ faith in government policy and action, starting investment projects that created millions of labor jobs, which turned America into a manufacturing superpower. These results are echoed in the goals of Biden’s “Build Back Better” policy. Biden isn’t pushing for a post-neoliberal society — he is trying to play the modern-day hero by reverting the US economy into pre-neoliberal times. He has mirrored nationalization, high tax, and welfare policies from the post-war era, and taken government intervention policies from Keynesianism.

Keynesianism is an ideology originating in the 1930s in the context of the Great Depression. The general theory was that demand for goods and services would not be guaranteed in a free-market economy during times of market recession. John Keynes, whom this ideology is named after, believed that it was the government’s role and responsibility to provide this demand through government spending. The crux of this theory was that a lack of investment in the goods and services provided by the economy would result in the market decreasing in value and growth rate, hence, the necessity of government investment. Where can we see this in Biden’s policies? It’s hard to miss — in his two trillion USD investment into US infrastructure, focusing on modern day R&D. 

What did Biden take from the post-war consensus? This was largely a movement in the UK in a post-WWII context, looking to invest into social welfare including health, education, higher taxes, and nationalization of certain industries. He has adopted this revitalization of social welfare programs in the second and third agendas of his “Build Back Better” policy: the American Jobs Plan, which includes creating unionized jobs; and the American Families Plan, which although yet to be implemented, includes affordable education and economic security for families. 

Historically, the pattern suggests that these policies will indeed restart the economy and create the millions of jobs required to cut down the unemployment rate. His attempt at playing the “big government” role will most likely have an impact on a global scale through changes in the American economic model. This will lead to a change in market investment and the spending of the general population. However, there is one key drawback. Every policy he is establishing seemingly reverts the US economy back to a historical form of big government, which in itself actually ended up being replaced by neoliberalism within a few decades. The role of the government in revitalizing the economy led to a false sense of security in a fast-growing free market. The result was a government with little to no ability to provide a social safety net for its people. Biden playing the hero role with government intervention and investment is all well and good, but without any planned changes to maintain that responsibility during times of market stagnation, the world may yet again fall into the high-risk, high-reward world of neoliberalism another 30 years down the line.