First 100: The Things Out of Biden’s Control

You try to set up an agenda and a boat gets stuck in the Suez Canal.

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It’s March 29, 2021 and welcome to First 100. You can sign up to have First 100 delivered to your email by clicking here.

The Chief

We have President Biden today because, despite all of Donald Trump’s attempts to command attention, something completely out of control called the coronavirus spread throughout the world. It was the signature example of how presidents do not have full control of the forces that define their presidencies. Trump certainly could have responded to COVID-19 in a way that would have improved his political standing—according to Dr. Birx hundreds of thousands of deaths were preventable—but that’s purely reactive. Trump didn’t invent the virus in the lab to have something he could conquer.

It’s completely unknown right now what will be that defining moment of the Biden presidency, though obviously COVID and the vaccine rollout has a good chance. (We’ve had 10.2 million vaccinations in the last three days.) The smallest things can trigger major changes and force presidents into reaction mode. It’s a big part of the job.

I’m not talking about something like the child migrant surge, which is actually driven by Biden policy; keeping Title 42 (the public health order that allows immediate deportations due to COVID) in place but exempting children was always going to create this result. Other events had no policy trigger, but they will consume a lot of time at the White House. Here’s an early look:

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This boat in the Suez Canal: So last night, the Ever Given cargo ship, as big as the Empire State Building on its side, wrested free from the shore in Egypt. There was one last hiccup, like Hans Gruber in Die Hard not quite being dead, as the ship swung back toward the banks amid high winds. But they managed to steady it, and the Ever Given is now re-floated, to the dismay of meme makers everywhere. Turns out global warming saved us; higher tides enabled the re-floating.

That is not the end of this crisis, however. There’s a backlog of hundreds of ships with billions of dollars in goods. And global supply chains were already under strain before the boat wedged itself in. Semiconductors are in short supply amid a mismatch between expectations of consumer demand and reality. Many auto plants have shut down production as a result (good time for a fire at an automotive chip factory). High demand has led to ships routinely sitting offshore at U.S. ports. And the cold weather in Texas and the South last month added to the toll, leading to a plastic shortage. There’s also a container shortage, as the pandemic has played havoc with supply chains. This is a partial list.

Because many ships stuck in the Suez queue decided to take a two-week trip around the Cape of Good Hope, the after effects of the stuck boat will endure. We also live in a just-in-time logistics world where even minor disruptions can ripple out. Shortages can lead to inflation and dampened economic activity. They can lead to the shutdown of entire industries.

The lessons of supply chain vulnerability are significant. We have super-sized ships and shipping companies which make our economy less resilient; the shipping industry is nearly seven times more consolidated now than it was in 2000. Centralized production in Asian manufacturing hubs causes similar problems. Matt Stoller has a lot more about this built-in fragility into the global economic system. Possible responses include reshoring (Intel is making a major commitment), breaking apart consolidations that make the world so susceptible to disruptions, and ending constant debt financing so big boats seem more efficient and little things like quality control aren’t sacrificed.

The Amazon union election: In a very real sense, the outcome of the warehouse election in Bessemer, Alabama, which ends today, will set a course for the revival of organized labor in the United States. Unions know this; that’s why they’ve made such a big bet on the outcome, funneling resources to assist the RWDSU in their fight. Jeff Bezos knows it; that’s why he apparently ordered his PR department to go insane on Twitter.

Suggesting that a win in Bessemer can spread across the country is something we have heard in other contexts for a long time. But it really is true here; Amazon has hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers, and retail more generally could see a boost from a newly galvanized retail workers union. Ultimately you need something like the PRO Act to allow for widespread unionization; but something like this election could provide a spark.

Union households went for Trump in increasing numbers but still not at the same rate as similarly situated working class people. Biden clearly wants blue-collar workers back in the Democratic column; this could be a way to get there. We should know the results pretty soon.

The pandemic isn’t done: Variants in the United States have reversed the trend on cases, although as I noted on Friday that might not necessarily lead to more deaths. Variants in Brazil have that country with an out of control outbreak, and that mutation has already been seen in New York. Variants and a bad vaccine launch in Europe has countries spiraling and economies sagging. And lack of vaccines throughout the world means that these tragedies could be replicated for years.

Biden will still have to deal with COVID-19, maybe for the entire length of his first term. The administration is reportedly considering lifting the intellectual property shield for vaccines and treatments (and treatments like a new pill for COVID are arguably more important, because you end up needing to give it to fewer people), and that will be a critical decision. We have to make ameliorants to this crisis available to everyone as soon as humanly possible.

What Day of Biden’s Presidency Is It?

Day 69.

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