The Chinese government propaganda outlet Global Times, which recently blamed leftist President Joe Biden for single-handedly tanking the Democrats’ prospects in the upcoming midterm elections, declared in an analysis on Tuesday that inflation will be a “fatal weakness” for the party in November.
Americans will be going to the polls on November 8 to participate in a variety of elections of Congressmen, Senators, governors, and positions in local government. Biden’s performance as president is likely to be at the top of voters’ concerns, given that control of both houses of Congress – and thus Biden’s ability to pass policy changes through – is on the ballot.
While Biden himself has close ties with many regime-linked Chinese elites and regularly boasts of his allegedly intimate personal relationship with genocidal dictator Xi Jinping, Chinese state vehicles routinely attack Biden for not doing enough to undo the anti-communist trade policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, and for moves made by Congress to contain the impact of China’s Uyghur slave trade or its dominance of the computer chip industry.
The Global Times observed increasingly dire predictions in American media regarding the economy on Monday, particularly forecasts suggesting that a recession is inevitable. The outlet contrasted that with the Biden administration’s repeated assurances that any economic damage under its performance will be minimal or transitory.
“While US President Joe Biden has said the US will avoid a recession and that any downturn would be ‘very slight,'” the Global Times assessed, “the rise in recession expectations indicates how poorly the Biden administration has fared in terms of both boosting the economy and bringing down inflation, which will be a fatal weakness for Democrats in the upcoming elections.”
The column also condemned the Biden administration for “fanning the flames in the Russia-Ukraine conflict” by supporting Ukraine with weapons and the Federal Reserve for raising loan interest rates in an attempt to contain the very same inflation the newspaper acknowledged was such a priority to Americans that the ruling party would endure a decisive electoral loss next month.
“On the economic level, the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes show that it only cares about how to lift the US economy while bringing down inflation so as to maintain US economic hegemony,” the Chinese outlet asserted. “With dollar hegemony, the Fed is less motivated to address the problems caused by the US’ blind and unlimited money printing, and tries to export the crisis to the rest of the world by taking advantage of a super strong dollar.”
The Global Times, and the Chinese government generally, have viewed the growing strength of the dollar currency as a global emergency, as it weakens any potential alternative to the world’s reserve coin. China and allies such as Russia and Iran have made increasingly public suggestions that the world should no longer use the U.S. dollar for international trade, despite its strength, to avoid the impact of human rights sanctions.
During a meeting in June of the BRICS coalition – consisting of Russia and China along with India, Brazil, and South Africa – the grop discussed “ways to reduce the role of the U.S. dollar in financial transactions between member states,” the Russian news agency Tass reported.
The Global Times called the strength of the dollar a “crisis” a month later.
“If the hawkish Fed policy continues to lure capital toward the U.S. from other markets, these [international] markets will suffer miserably from financial turmoil. And the next Sri Lanka may be just around the corner,” the newspaper warned, referring to the total collapse of the socialist Sri Lankan economy, preceded by the spendthrift government there signing predatory loan deals, then defaulting, with China.
The state newspaper again raised the possibility of “de-dollarization” on Tuesday, failing to returning to address the midterm elections.
“A growing number of countries are exploring the path of ‘de-dollarization,’ hoping to avoid the spillover effects of Washington’s hegemonic policy,” the Global Times claimed. “It’s becoming one of their priorities in decision-making, and they are considering how to protect their own interests from US policy by pursuing diversification of the international monetary system.”
Despite only discussing the election in passing, the column this week followed repeated similar predictions out of the Global Times, China’s most prominent English-language government newspaper. Former top editor and current commentator Hu Xijin began predicting a dire end for Democrats in November in remarks in July, claiming that Biden was to blame for any electoral woes. Hu made the dubious claim that American voters would punish the Democrats for not importing more cheap Chinese-made goods, which he claimed would decrease the impact of inflation.
“If inflation doesn’t come down in the next few months, I believe the Democrats will lose badly in the upcoming midterm elections in November,” Hu said at the time. “China has become a promoter of the livelihoods of the U.S. people, but the Biden administration has spared no efforts to fence off China, and has been hesitant about removing the additional tariffs imposed on Chinese products.”
“The Democrats deserve it if they lose the mid-term elections,” he concluded.
More recently, this month, the Global Times cited Chinese regime-approved “experts” to make the case that the Democrats have a 90-percent chance of losing the House of Representatives, single-handedly blaming Biden’s failed presidency for the poor odds. The analysis branded Biden the Democrats’ “biggest negative equity” and said Biden “has dragged down drastically the favorable views of the Democrats.”
“I have not seen the approval ratings curve of a US president like Biden, whose average approval ratings in the second year of his term were almost the lowest in American history since approval ratings were introduced,” one of the “experts,” identified as Lü Xiang, said.