Biden's economic team starkly contrasts with Trump loyalists

On November 30, US President-elect Joe Biden formally announced key members of his highly anticipated economic team, commanding expertise from several heavyweights as well as a diverse cluster of women and minorities. The historic list includes former US Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, former Deputy National Security Adviser Walley Adeyemo, Princeton University's Dr. Cecelia Rouse, as well as economists Heather Boushey and Jared Bernstein. "This crisis-tested team will help lift America out of our current economic downturn and build back better," said the Biden-Harris transition team in a statement. A marked departure from Trump's revolving door of loyalists is certainly evident.

Yellen, nominated by Biden as the next US Secretary of Treasury, could play a vital role in reviving support for pandemic-hit businesses and workers, at a time when competing priorities of the White House and the Federal Reserve hamper advancement of a labor-intensive market. She inherits the colossal task of rescuing America's economy from its steepest slump in decades, but notes that the path to economic recovery is inextricably tied to the navigation of the ongoing public health crisis.

An embrace of this correlation in the upper echelons of the Treasury effectively takes the emphasis away from the outgoing government's cosmetic shifts in tax cuts and de-regulation drives – many of which have arrived at the expense of consumer protections. Yellen is also likely to be supported by the extensive experience of Wally Adeyemo, Biden's nominee for deputy secretary of the Treasury – a former senior-ranking economic adviser under Obama.

Some skeptics argue that Yellen's demonstrated success in identifying and navigating the 2007 financial crisis was free of political turbulence. Across party lines, the debate on government borrowing and spending is characterized by sharp polarization, and staggered stimulus support in the Senate compounds that task. Yellen was asked little of such politics as chairwoman of the US Federal Reserve.

However, if confirmed by the Senate, Yellen's moderate stake in politics is exactly what affords her crucial middle ground between Democrat centrists and the hard left within the party. This political configuration could earn a degree of traction with Republicans too, as she mends frictions between the Reserve and the Treasury to improve credit flow and prepare the ground for tenable monetary and fiscal inputs.

Neera Tanden, Biden's nominee to lead the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is a former Clinton and Obama adviser with an acclaimed role in the policy planning of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

The prospect of Tanden's appointment was greeted with fury from Republican ranks, with many dismissing her pre-nomination views as partisan. "Neera Tanden is a big-government, big-spending radical liberal who's a terrible choice for OMB Director. It's just more proof that @JoeBiden and the Democrats will continue to move further and further to the Left," tweeted Republican Senator Rick Scott.

But the binding fact is that Tanden is a stark contrast to Mick Mulvaney, the Trump-appointed OMB director, who left a self-defeating legacy of slashing federal spending, only to ramp-up federal debt from the sidelines. Tanden's appointment is also consistent with some of the more demanding aspects of OMB leadership in the post-Trump era: the ability to clearly communicate the government's thinking on budget planning, spending priorities, without giving into GOP doublespeak.

Cecilia Rouse, a Harvard-educated labor economist and dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, would chair Biden's three-member Council of Economic Advisers. An Obama and Clinton administration alumnus, Rouse's expertise sits at the intersections of economics, education and equality – tried-and-tested across both academia and government circles.

But given the gravity of America's pandemic-induced economic crisis, it will take several layers of demonstrated expertise to advance worker and labor rights, without comprising targets for unemployment-focused federal spending.

Rouse is joined by Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, an economic duo subscribing to more liberal, labor-oriented interventions for economic recovery. Though their approach is contingent on ambitious assumptions with moderate workability, it is open to examination in the Senate. Republicans have long treated hefty fiscal stimulus packages as a zero-sum choice between debt and spending, creating an opportunity for Bernstein and Boushey to back their stimulus endorsements with compelling reasoning.

Therefore, a sheer diversity of gender, representation, service and expertise in Biden's economic team gives teeth to his highly ambitious economic recovery plan, generating optimism for delivery. A high premium on past experience, demonstrated merit, and a common purpose make it possible to factor policy rationales from the ground-up, without confining American governance to an executive overdrive.

Hannan Hussain is a foreign affairs commentator and author. He is a Fulbright recipient at the University of Maryland (US) and a former assistant researcher at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.