Joe Biden calls Liz Truss tax cuts a ‘mistake’ as political fallout continues
Joe Biden has called Liz Truss’s abandoned economic plan that sent financial markets into chaos and caused a sharp drop in the value of the pound a “mistake” as criticism of her approach continued.
The US president hinted that other world leaders felt the same way about her disastrous mini-budget saying he “wasn’t the only one” who had concerns over the lack of “sound policy” in other countries.
Biden said it was “predictable” that the new British prime minister was forced on Friday to backtrack on plans to aggressively cut taxes without saying how they would be paid for, after Truss’s proposal caused turmoil in global financial markets.
His comments on Sunday to reporters at an ice-cream parlour in Oregon marked a highly unusual intervention by a US president into the domestic policy decisions of one of its closest allies.
“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake,” Biden said. “I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when … I disagree with the policy, but it’s up to Britain to make that judgement, not me.”
Labour immediately leapt on the US president’s remarks. The shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, said: “As well as crashing the economy, Liz Truss’s humiliating U-turns have made Britain’s economy an international punchline.
“President Biden knows the dangerous folly of trickle-down economics. His comments confirm the hit our reputation has taken thanks to the Conservatives.”
Biden has repeatedly poured scorn on so-called trickle down economics and ahead of his first bilateral talks with Truss in New York last month tweeted that he was “sick and tired” of the approach, which he claimed had never worked.
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