Janet Yellen kicks off month-long economic victory tour in Detroit

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will deliver a major economic speech in Detroit next week as part of a month-long push to sell President Biden’s signature legislative achievements before the midterms, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Deploying Yellen, an economist who has been reluctant to lend her name to arguments she doesn’t buy, is the administration’s attempt to seize on a spate of positive headlines and make a broader intellectual argument for Biden’s efforts to re-engineer large sections of the economy.

  • Yellen will defend the administration’s March 2021 $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan — which Republicans blame for stoking inflation — as a key factor in preventing the economic recovery from stalling out during the pandemic.
  • She will also focus on a trio of legislative accomplishments — with trillions in collective new spending for infrastructure, semiconductors and climate change — as critical to improving productivity and growing…

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