This paper examines the economic policy pursued under the Biden administration. We conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with senior policymakers in the aftermath of the 2024 US election, and present their assessment of US economic policy and performance. We also reflect their lessons for other economies, such as the UK. We identify a broad consensus that fiscal policy has a material inflationary impact, though practitioners believe supply-side shocks are sufficient to explain the political consequences of inflation. Contrary to the policy rhetoric of the administration, we identify a major role for factor reallocation when combined with expansionary fiscal policy and a strong underlying growth model in explaining the US' comparatively strong growth and productivity performance. Finally, we set out reflections on microeconomic policy (for place-based policy, industrial policy and its interaction with trade and national security policies), with a lower degree of confidence due to the partial nature of policy implementation at the time of the 2024 election. We conclude with reflections for policymakers in the UK and elsewhere, noting the generalisable lessons of supporting full employment and efficient and dynamic factor allocation, while identifying challenges relating to scale in the UK's growth model (despite some similarities).
Turner et al. (Fri,) studied this question.