CHICAGO (AP) — President Joe Biden made his pitch Wednesday to a skeptical public that the U.S. economy is thriving under what he now touts as “Bidenomics” — even as a new poll showed that could be a hard sell as the foundation for his 2024 reelection campaign.

In a major economic speech in Chicago, Biden said his administration’s efforts were sparking recovery after Republican policies had crushed America’s middle class. But the poll said only one in three U.S. adults approve of his economic leadership.

That 34% figure is even lower than his overall approval rating of 41%, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Biden’s approval figures have barely moved for the past year and a half, a source of concern for a president pursuing a second term on his ability to govern and focus on workers. He wants voters to connect local roads and bridge projects, factory construction and the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy to the millions of dollars in initiatives he signed into law during the first two years of his administration.

“Bidenomics is about the future,” he declared in his Wednesday speech to cheering supporters. “Bidenomics is just another way of saying: Restore the American dream.”

At the same time, he sought to paint previous Republican tax cuts as deeply flawed, saying they helped the rich but failed the middle class for decades as the promised “trickle down” benefits never seemed to come to the less wealthy.

“The trickle down approach failed the middle class,” he said. “It failed America. It blew up the deficit. It increased inequity. And it weakened our infrastructure. It stripped the dignity, pride and hope out of communities, one after another.”

As he was departing Washington on Wednesday, Biden said he believes the U.S. will avoid the recession that many economic analysts have been expecting. Republican leaders such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said last year that the high inflation under Biden’s watch meant that “we are in a recession,” but that is not the case under economic definitions.

GOP officials say their tax cuts have encouraged business investments and profits that have improved pay for workers and bolstered the stock market, while greater government spending would cause prices to keep rising and waste money.

Indeed, the economy has steadily improved over the past year of Biden’s term in the White House.

The Conference Board said Tuesday that consumer confidence this month reached the highest level since January 2022. Unemployment stands near a historic low at 3.7%. The inflation that has plagued Biden’s presidency has fallen to 4% from a peak of 9.1% last June. But prices are still rising significantly faster than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%, a worry for voters and a line of attack for Republican lawmakers and other presidential candidates.

And smoke from Canadian wildfires, evident in Chicago on Wednesday, has added a new cloud for workers and shoppers in the U.S. The White House said it’s monitoring the air quality in Chicago but would not cancel the president’s scheduled events, which included a campaign reception in addition to the speech on the economy.

The new poll identifies a weakness within Biden’s own base. Many of the Democrats he needs to marshal in 2024 are comparatively unenthusiastic about his economic record. Seventy-two percent within his party say they approve of his handling of his job overall, but just 60% say they approve of his handling of the economy.

By comparison, during the depths of the pandemic as unemployment spiked, Republicans approved by overwhelming numbers of then-President Donald Trump’s economic leadership. Only about 1 in 10 Republicans now approve of Biden overall or on the economy, a testament to the polarization that defines modern U.S. politics.

Sarah Husted, 40, said she voted in 2020 for Biden, but “I wasn’t thrilled with either candidate.”

Living in Lincoln, Nebraska, Husted said that she feels as though inflation is getting worse, especially with regard to utilities and housing. But she largely believes the economic turmoil still reflects the disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“I don’t think that President Biden is helping the situation as much as he could, but I don’t think it’s all his fault,” she said.

That take was shared by other poll respondents interviewed by AP who voted for Biden in 2020. They generally saw him as a president grappling with partisan divisions, global competition and the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

“He’s doing the best he can, but he can’t do anything without Congress,” said Alice Banner, 86, a retired nurse from Baltimore County, Maryland.

Ben Will, 34, noted the solid job growth during Biden’s presidency and said the infrastructure spending that Biden signed into law would help with growth.

“He’s doing a fantastic job with the cards that were dealt to him,” said Will, a marketing and advertising director from Reading, Pennsylvania.

Overall, 30% of U.S. adults say they think the national economy is good, up slightly from the 25% who said that last month, when the president and congressional Republicans were in the midst of negotiations over raising the nation’s debt limit and a historic government default was a risk. No more than about a third have called the economy good since 2021.

The administration is making a data-driven argument in addition to Biden’s speech. The Treasury Department released an analysis showing that spending on factory-related construction has doubled since 2021 after adjusting for inflation. White House economists issued a report that shows inflation is lower in the U.S. than the rest of industrialized nations in the Group of Seven.

White House aides believe that Biden’s speech on Wednesday can generate greater awareness of his policies and increase Democratic voters’ appreciation of the economy. While the president’s allies acknowledge that many Americans still hold dim views of the economy, they note that the actual economic data was far worse last November, when Democrats mounted a stronger-than-expected showing in the midterm elections.

Biden aides say they are encouraged by data showing Americans’ views can be changed by a consistent message reinforced on multiple fronts, which is what the president and his Cabinet are setting out to do by touring the U.S. over the next three weeks. Their hope is that repetition of Biden’s accomplishments, coupled with a contrast to GOP proposals to undo those initiatives, will stick with voters for 2024.

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The poll of 1,220 adults was conducted June 22-26 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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He has vowed to reverse much of the Trump administration’s aggressive deregulation and indifference to domestic spending and economic development in favor of big investments in education, infrastructure and clean energy. He wants stricter rules to rein in big tech companies and to fight climate change. And to help pay for it all, the president-elect would turn to large tax increases for corporations and wealthy individuals by reversing much of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.

Biden is already distinguishing himself from Trump in his approach to the pandemic, which economists generally see as the gravest threat to the recovery. Trump saw the pandemic’s impact on the economy through the lens of government-mandated shutdowns: He argued that to fight the pandemic by imposing curbs on face-to-face businesses like restaurants — the approach favored by most health experts — was to doom the economy.

Yet even when states reopened, many consumers stayed cautious about dining out, going to movies or flying. “It wasn’t all about shutdowns — it was about people getting scared,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist. “I imagine people are getting scared again.” Biden’s view reflects the warning from most economists that until the virus is controlled, the economy cannot fully recover. “It starts with doing everything possible to get the COVID-19 under control,” Biden said Monday, “so that we can reopen our businesses safely and sustainably.”

Striking an ominous tone, the president-elect has warned, “We’re still facing a very dark winter,” with confirmed cases surging by roughly 120,000 a day — four times the pace of last spring. That trend, along with colder weather, will severely restrict the outdoor dining that has been a lifeline for restaurants and bars across the country. It could also hamper travel plans and visits to barber shops and yoga studios. That slower growth, in turn, could intensify calls for more stimulus spending. Most economists, along with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, are warning that the economy needs more rescue aid from Congress.

The $2 trillion aid package that Congress approved in March is widely credited with fueling a sharp economic rebound this summer. But that stimulus is largely exhausted. Without additional aid, the hardships for roughly 10 million jobless Americans and thousands of struggling small businesses will deepen, along with the economy. Biden’s election victory makes another shot of stimulus spending more likely, though probably not until after his inauguration in January. A package of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion would add as much as 4.5% to growth next year, according to Capital Economics. That would be enough to return the economy to its pre-pandemic level by the end of 2021.

Most economists note that the economy’s painfully sluggish recovery from the 2008-2009 Great Recession was due in large part to government spending limits that took effect in 2010. “The most important economic issue today, tomorrow and into the next several years is fiscal policy,” said Eric Winograd, U.S. economist at AllianceBernstein, referring to the government’s tax and spending policies. “With monetary policy (by the Fed) largely bled dry, fiscal policy is the only game in town.” Unlike Trump, Biden regards big increases in government spending as critical to longer-term growth. The president-elect has proposed nearly $5.4 trillion in new spending over the next decade, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model. That includes $1.9 trillion on education and $1.6 trillion on new infrastructure — roads, bridges, highways and other public structures — and research and development.

The president-elect has also said he would raise $3.4 trillion in additional tax revenue over a decade to help pay for it, Penn Wharton found. He has proposed raising the corporate income-tax to 28% from 21%, reversing half of Trump’s cut from 35% in 2017. Biden would also raise income and payroll taxes for people making $400,000 a year or more — about 2% of the population. Yet Biden may be the first president since George H.W. Bush not to have both the House and Senate controlled by his party during at least his first two years in office.

Whether that becomes true will depend on the outcome of two Senate runoff elections in Georgia in January. But most observers expect Biden to face a GOP Senate, which would likely block much of his agenda. Republican senators would fight Biden’s tax increases and at least limit the size of a new economic stimulus package. “The outcome of the Senate race, arguably, is the most important consideration as far as likely tax legislation is concerned,” said Robert Willens, a professor of finance at Columbia University.

Biden’s spending proposals include $2 trillion over four years to counter climate change, a reversal from Trump’s focus on supporting oil and gas drilling. He wants to spend money to retrofit homes and buildings to make them more energy efficient and building out an infrastructure for electric vehicles. In many areas, Biden can operate through executive orders or regulation. He could also reverse much of the administration’s approach to legal immigration, which has cut the annual number of new arrivals to to about 600,000 from 1 million.

Most economists say the effects of Biden’s policies would be negligible in the short run but would expand the nation’s long-run economic output by accelerating population growth. Biden also plans to rejoin the Paris Agreement on behalf of the nation and has said he will sign executive orders to fight climate change. He aims to stop climate-damaging emissions from power plants by 2035 and to reach net-zero emissions in the economy overall no later than 2050.

The president-elect could also reverse some of Trump’s executive orders by imposing tougher fuel economy standards, compelling coal plants to reduce emissions or restoring requirements that strengthen the oil and gas industry’s reporting and reduction of toxic chemicals. On trade, Biden will jettison Trump’s go-it-alone style in confronting China. Instead, the president-elect says he will seek to build alliances with Europe and Japan to confront China’s government subsidies, intellectual property rights violations and market restrictions, among other trade concerns.

To maintain those alliances, Biden is all but certain to drop his predecessor’s inclination to target America’s allies by threatening tariffs on car imports from Europe, or imposing tariffs on steel imports from Canada and Mexico. Still, Democrats in Congress are suspicious of China, and trade tensions will likely persist. Trump has sought to ban Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat and has taken steps to root out Huawei from the small space it occupies in U.S. telecom networks. He has done so while pressuring other countries not to use Huawei in their next-generation 5G networks.

Though Republican and Democrats are both suspicious of Huawei, TikTok could get a reprieve under Biden. Robert Atkinson, the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which is funded by U.S. tech companies, said the TikTok ban was “much more of a Trump issue” that Biden might drop. The president-elect could continue the government’s rising efforts to curb the outsize power of the tech industry.

The Trump administration launched what could be a landmark antitrust case against Google that will likely continue. And, like the Trump administration, Biden has also taken aim at Section 230, a law that is foundational to the modern internet and gives tech firms liability protection from lawsuits for what users post. The president-elect has said it should be revoked. Trump and other Republicans have baselessly asserted that the social media companies were censoring conservatives.

Democrats criticize the law because they think social-media companies are failing to suppress misinformation and hate speech. Atkinson said he also sees relations between the White House and business returning to a more normal, predictable state under Biden, after Trump’s willingness to loudly condemn companies that criticized him. “If they would ever pressure a company, it would be very quiet,” Atkinson said. “Biden is not going to use the bully pulpit to name and shame American companies.”

Arbel reported from Phoenix. AP Business Writer Sarah Skidmore Sell in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and TALI ARBEL AP Economics Writer

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