Spoiler Alert: Foreign Policy Won’t Be a U.S. Election Issue

In a State of the Union speech that largely skirted international issues, U.S. President Joe Biden reinforced his populist and protectionist domestic message Tuesday night in what appeared to be a kickoff of his expected 2024 reelection campaign.

Coming only days after Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon amid a furor of controversy on Capitol Hill, the president all but ignored the strategic threat from Beijing and other international issues. Instead, Biden spent most of his 72-minute speech hammering away at domestic corporate exploitation on everything from drug prices to airline and hotel prices and sounded themes that might appeal to the U.S. middle class.

This is the “blue-collar blueprint,” as Biden called it, which he clearly believes is crucial to his reelection but which, despite low levels of unemployment, has been muddied by inflation and lagging wage gains. Biden, who recently turned 80, has lately faced grim poll numbers and doubts even within his own party about whether he should run again, given his age.

Only toward the end of his speech did the president briefly mention the strategic challenge from China and the new unity of NATO in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, which Biden called “a test for the ages.”

Indeed, it wasn’t until more than an hour into the speech that Biden made his first mention of China, saying that the United States seeks “competition, not conflict” with Beijing and suggesting that the United States was already well ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagging efforts to displace the United States as the world’s dominant power. “As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did,” Biden said. He added: “Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one. Name me one.”

But after those lines, Biden swiftly returned to his domestic political theme, apparently betting that he’s not particularly vulnerable among the electorate on his fairly hawkish foreign policy and mainly needs to make the case for his domestic achievements.

Mostly, Biden reaffirmed a populist message that he would be loath to admit he largely inherited from his predecessor, former U.S. President Donald Trump, repeatedly suggesting that “made in America” would be a key campaign theme—one that Trump called “America First.” Touting the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022—which includes a multibillion-dollar investment in semiconductors—Biden repeatedly indicated that he would make any protectionist moves necessary to restore manufacturing to the United States, citing 800,000 manufacturing jobs created even “without this law.”

“We’re going to make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” he said to bipartisan applause. Biden also announced that all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects would be made in the United States going forward.

And in an extended bit of extemporaneous repartee that delighted his political advisors, Biden shot down heckling from a divided Republican Party—whose vicious infighting he hopes will be his ticket back into the White House—as its more radical members, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, breached decorum by shouting that he was a “liar.” This came when Biden suggested that some Republicans were seeking to cut key domestic programs for seniors such as Social Security and Medicare. After some Republicans in the audience raised their voices to protest that this was untrue, and they weren’t planning to cut those programs, Biden joked: “I’m glad to see—no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion.”

A flash CNN poll immediately following Biden’s speech appeared to vindicate the president’s decision to focus on his domestic achievements, showing that approval of his economic program had shot up from 40 percent to 66 percent among political independents. Biden is expected to announce his reelection campaign in the coming weeks.

But in the face of Republican accusations that he is a poor leader, Biden will probably have no choice over the next two years but to play the hawk abroad, probably laying to rest any hopes that the president will seek some accommodation with China; after the balloon controversy, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his first planned diplomatic mission to Beijing, and White House officials indicated in the last week that it might be some time before it will be rescheduled.

“The balloon-gate story does not bode well for the rest of the year in U.S.-China relations. But I think it in part reflects a hardening of the U.S. hawkish view on China,” said Raffaello Pantucci, a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “The talk about finding a bottom to the relationship seems to have gone nowhere. And this year is going to be an ever more aggressive and outward-facing one for China as normality post-COVID returns, meaning the U.S.-China competition will sharpen ever more.”

The administration is continuing the line it’s had for the last two years: that any improvement in relations is “going to be up to China,” in the words of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in a briefing this week. The Republican Party has scaled back its attacks on Biden over the balloon but is still looking for any opportunity to show that “Biden is letting China walk all over us,” as Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley—a possible Republican hopeful for 2024—tweeted a few days ago.

But as Biden’s speech made clear, it is mainly domestic issues that the president believes will determine his success or failure in 2024, should he decide to run.