“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said on Saturday. “I disagree with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain.”…reports Asian Lite News
US President Joe Biden has called embattled British PM Liz Truss’ abandoned tax cut plan a ‘mistake.’ He further added that other nations’ fiscal policies may hurt the US amid “worldwide inflation.”
Biden said it was “predictable” that the new prime minister on Friday was forced to walk back plans to aggressively cut taxes without identifying cost savings, after Truss’ proposal caused turmoil in global financial markets. It marked an unusual criticism by a US president of the domestic policy decisions of one of its closest allies.
“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said on Saturday. “I disagree with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain.”
Earlier, Britain’s new finance minister Jeremy Hunt said, “There were some mistakes made in the last few weeks. That’s why I’m sitting here. It was a mistake to cut the top rate of tax at a period when we’re asking everyone to make sacrifices.”
“It was also a mistake,” Hunt said, to “fly blind” and produce the tax plans without allowing the independent fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, to check the figures.
Biden’s comments came after weeks of White House officials declining to criticise Truss’ plans, though they emphasised they were monitoring the economic fallout closely. He was speaking to reporters at an Oregon ice cream shop where he made an unannounced stop to promote the candidacy of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek, as Democrats across the country face a tough political environment amid GOP criticism of their handling of the economy.
Biden said he was not concerned about the strength of the dollar — it set a new record against the British Pound in recent weeks — which benefits US imports but makes the country’s exports more expensive to the rest of the world.
The president said the US economy “is strong as hell.”
“I’m concerned about the rest of the world,” he added. “The problem is the lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries.”
“It’s worldwide inflation, that’s consequential,” he said.
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