The U.S. President, Joe Biden, pledged to target cryptocurrency traders and hedge fund managers in his economic policy speech where he talked about Bidenomics. The president’s speech in Chicago yesterday highlighted the vision for “Bidenomics,” a catchall term referring to his investment strategy to boost the middle class and increase competition to reduce the costs for working families.
Biden to eliminate loopholes for crypto traders
During the Bidenomics report speech, the U.S. president vowed to keep making tax increases on the wealthy and increase childcare and provide education access. According to him, these items will see that Americans are unified, considering that the wealthy and superwealthy and big corporations will begin to pay their fair share while maintaining the current tax pay for the middle class.
In his quest to ensure everyone pays their proper tax share, he said the government would eliminate loopholes for crypto traders and hedge fund managers. In an earlier proposal in the 2024 budget, he suggested changing the crypto transaction tax to eliminate the use of crypto losses to lower tax bills. According to the statehouse, this provision would create $24 billion in new revenue.
The Biden administration has been very skeptical and negative when it came to the subject of cryptocurrencies. Earlier this year, they released a blog titled “The DAME Tax: Making Crypto Miners Pay for Costs They Impose on Others,” which said that while crypto assets were virtual, their energy consumption had negative spillovers on the environment, electricity grids and quality of life. Hence, they proposed an electricity tax of 30% on crypto miners that would be effective after December 31, 2023. The Council of Economic Advisers, during the time, estimated the tax would raise $3.5 billion over ten years.
In March, a Republican congressman together with a former bank regulator that has deep cryptocurrency ties accused the Biden administration of pushing American crypto firms and their customers based in the U.S. into the offshore, unregulated, and unsafe markets.
At the start of the year, the Biden administration released a “roadmap” to mitigate crypto risks. The roadmap report asked authorities to increase their enforcement and Congress to increase its efforts to regulate the crypto sector. It also highlighted that legislation should not be a green light for mainstream institutions to enter and participate in the cryptocurrency market.
Bidenomics aiming to promote economic success amid public doubts
Biden’s main focus during the speech was to convince skeptical voters that the economy was thriving under his watch. While his top economic advisers believe that the inflation’s worst effects are a thing of the past and that the economy is approaching a soft-landing and averting recession, most Americans are convinced that the economy is poorly performing, with the president to blame.
The Bidenomics report was part of a larger effort to bring Americans to Biden’s achievements as the architect of an economy that has performed beyond expectations of a recession. The latest economic numbers show that unemployment is still at 3.7% while inflation has decreased to 4% from 9.1% last June. The Fed also paused its 18-month streak of hiking the interest rate last week.
A more comprehensive economic messaging campaign has been in the works at the White House for months, and the choice to start it now shows the administration’s unwavering confidence that the economy’s upward trend is sustainable. Also necessary was a resolution to the debt ceiling standoff and the start of the implementation of Biden’s major economic legislation.
White House officials view the Bidenomics initiative as a chance to bring the president’s economic achievements, the philosophy that guided those policies, and a booming economy together in a single term. According to Doug Sosnik, a veteran senior counselor to President Clinton, the chances of a president’s re-election largely depend on the status of the economy, so Biden has little choice but to run on his record.
