Nixon billed it as temporary, but it became permanent. Nixon also froze wages and prices for 90 days — the first time that had been done in peacetime — and imposed a 10 percent surcharge on imports. To Garten, the Nixon shock of 1971 and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan both signaled a turning inward and a refocusing. Nixon wanted to deal with social ills at home while reorienting foreign policy to the threat of the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, China. Biden, likewise, has an ambitious $3.5 trillion budget blueprint at home and is clearing the foreign policy decks to focus on China and, to a lesser extent, Russia.

Source: International New York Times August 18, 2021 17:03 UTC