President Joe Biden is slated to visit Maine later this week, although the specifics have yet to be released about the trip.
According to a brief description in the president's weekly schedule, Biden will travel to Maine to discuss how his economic policies are "driving a manufacturing boom and helping workers and innovators invent and make more in America." A White House spokesman said no additional details about the trip – such as where the president would be and when – were available on Monday.
This will be Biden's first visit to Maine as president, although First Lady Jill Biden visited Southern Maine Community College in South Portland in April.
The visit is part of what's been dubbed the "Bidenomics” tour, which has also taken the president to Philadelphia and South Carolina in recent weeks. Top administration officials have also been popping up around the county as the White House's attempts to highlight positive aspects of the national economy – such as the strong labor market and rising wages – ahead of 2024 elections when economic concerns such as inflation and consumer confidence are expected to be top issues.
“Bidenomics” is a play on the term “Reaganomics” often used in reference to the economic policies of Republican President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. But the Biden administration has said their economic plan “grows the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down” through public investment, education and workforce training, and promoting competition.
“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people,” the White House said last month after president delivered a major economic address. “Our economy has added more than 13 million jobs — including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs — and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom. There were more than 10 million applications for new small businesses filed in 2021 and 2022—the strongest two years on record. America has seen the strongest growth since the pandemic of any leading economy in the world.
But recent polls have pegged Biden’s approval rating nationally at around 40%. An April poll of Maine voters by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed the president faring somewhat better here but still underwater, with an approval rating of 47%. That’s consistent with an October poll by Pan Atlantic Research that found 46% of Maine respondents had a favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president.
Biden won Maine with 53% of the vote in 2020 versus 44% for former President Donald Trump. But Trump, who is currently the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 race, picked up one of Maine’s four electoral votes by winning the majority of voters in Maine’s more rural and conservative 2nd Congressional District.
