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Biden makes reelection pitch in key state Pennsylvania

China Daily | Updated: 2023-06-19 00:00
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PHILADELPHIA — US President Joe Biden made his 2024 reelection pitch to union members in Philadelphia on Saturday in his first political rally since launching his campaign in April, aiming to shore up a key part of his political coalition.

Biden appealed to blue-collar workers to support his reelection quest and help him compel the richest US citizens to pay more taxes.

"It's about time the super wealthy start paying their fair share," Biden told hundreds of union workers in the industrial state of Pennsylvania.

The campaign rally was sponsored by the AFL-CIO, a union federation that represents 12.5 million US workers and that formally endorsed Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris a day earlier.

Biden launched his 2024 reelection bid on April 25 but had held no major campaign events before Saturday's rally.

Biden made his pitch as a crowded field of Republicans jostle for the party's nomination, with former president Donald Trump the runaway front-runner despite facing federal criminal charges that he mishandled US government secrets, being impeached twice over allegations of misconduct during his White House tenure, and a swirl of other legal troubles.

Biden described blue-collar workers as the backbone of the economy.

"Wall Street didn't build America. You did," Biden said to cheers.

Biden vowed to protect Social Security and other benefit programs to help average Americans.

"When the middle class does well, everybody does well," he said, adding that reforms are needed to ensure middle-class prosperity, including reforming a tax code that is "simply not fair".

"How could it be fair, when 55 of the largest corporations in America pay zero in federal income tax on $40 billion in profit?" he asked.

Biden said the number of US billionaires has climbed to about 1,000. They pay an average of eight percent federal taxes on their earnings, he said.

Biden won 57 percent of union households nationwide in 2020 compared with 40 percent for Trump, according to Edison Research.

But Biden's relationship with labor as president has not always been smooth, Reuters reported. In December, some unions criticized Biden for signing legislation preventing a nationwide rail strike. Separately, the United Auto Workers said in May that it was not immediately endorsing Biden because of his push to transition the United States into a nation reliant on electric vehicles.

Earlier in the day, Biden took an aerial tour of a bridge on an interstate highway in Philadelphia that collapsed after a tanker truck caught fire.

The stretch of the East Coast's main north-south highway collapsed early on June 11 after a tractor-trailer hauling fuel flipped over on an off-ramp and caught fire. State transportation officials said the driver was trying to navigate a curve and lost control.

Agencies Via Xinhua

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