On his inauguration day in January 2021, President Joe Biden inherited a bad economy. More accurately, he inherited a lot of bad things, mainly due to the then-dire pandemic and all its reverberating, devastating impacts. From hamstrung supply chains to slowed business growth to vast unemployment to civil unrest, it was as difficult an entry point as any president could expect to navigate—and Biden got right to work providing relief.
As he signed those orders, the economy “was in a downward spiral,” recalled Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary for the first half of President Biden’s first term—and a current MSNBC host. “There were a range of impacts, including the supply-chain slowdown, and the fact that so many businesses, small and large, across the country were shut down,” she told Fortune in a recent interview.
