Today, we introduce Axios Macro Happy Hour, in which we sit down with a prominent economic thinker or policymaker over a beverage or three for a wide-ranging discussion. They pick the location, Axios covers the tab.

• For this first edition, Neil Irwin traveled to Portland, Maine, to speak with Brian Deese, who was President Biden's top White House economic adviser until earlier this year.

We met at Oxbow Blending & Bottling, the downtown Portland location of a brewery that takes its Maine origins seriously. Deese arrived looking rested, a contrast to when he was given the unenviable task of spinning last year's bad inflation numbers from the White House briefing room.

• Deese was in the white-hot center of the most eventful stretch of economic policymaking in memory, helping push the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS and Science Act through tumultuous legislative paths.
• They collectively form the core of what the White House now sells as Bidenomics.

After I settled on a glass of Oxbow's Farmhouse Pale Ale and Deese on Maine Grown, a farmhouse ale made with all Maine-produced grain and hops, we claimed an outdoor picnic table. I started with the obvious question for a longtime professional contact who you haven't seen in many months: What have you been up to?

• "I've been decompressing, spending a lot of time with my kids and my wife and my extended family, reintroducing myself to them," he told me.
• I wondered if five months in Maine — far...

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