As inflation continues to ebb and we begin to see truly gaudy economic numbers (a 3.7% unemployment rate, an almost unheard of 5.2% GDP growth rate, and a surging stock market!), President Joe Biden has a great story to tell. Trump also has a story to tell, but it’s not based on economic metrics so much as the pornographic Plinko game in his head.
When America expectorated Donald Trump from its quavering corpus in November 2020, he left office as the worst jobs president since the Great Depression. So when he talks about President Joe Biden potentially leading us into a new depression, he kind of—in a weird way—knows what he’s talking about.
And so on Wednesday, the same day the Dow reached an all-time high, Trump warned Iowa rallygoers that Biden’s economic stewardship will soon plunge us into another Great Depression. And it's possible that Trump knows something economists don’t and we’ll soon be standing in bread lines and scooping up Trump NFTs at bargain-basement prices. It’s also possible Matt Gaetz will win the Nobel Prize for beach.
Trump, who accomplished the feat of becoming the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to leave the country with fewer jobs by the end of his one-term presidency, claimed that the “Biden administration is running on the fumes of the great success of the Trump Administration.” He added, addressing his supporters: “Without us this thing would have crashed to levels never seen before, and if we’re not elected we’ll have a depression the likes of which I don’t believe anybody has ever seen… maybe 1929?”
While Trump’s economic legacy has been hotly debated, under his administration the unemployment rate surged to 14.7 percent in April [2020] and by the time he left office the following January, the rate had receded to 6.3 percent. Many economists have pointed to the former president’s disastrous leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic as having exacerbated the country’s economic downturn at the time.
By now, we should all be keenly aware that Trump just says stuff. Whether it’s true or not hardly concerns him. For instance, anyone who criticizes him—even a little—is automatically the worst person ever. Just ask super-overrated 21-time Oscar nominee—and three-time winner—Meryl Streep.
Case in point: In 2020, Trump predicted Biden would crash the economy if he won. (Narrator: He didn’t.)
Now that the Dow Jones just broke 37,000 for the first time in HISTORY, let's remember what Trump predicted would happen to the stock market if Biden were elected. pic.twitter.com/rCpZJQ1cYC
But Trump’s latest statement is particularly risible given the current state of our economy, which has shown steady growth and improvement—despite those unavoidable spikes in inflation—since Biden fumigated the Oval Office nearly three years ago.
Furthermore? If we took Trump’s timeless advice, the House would definitely not be launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden for the high crime of being a Democrat in the White House. Consider this 2019 tweet (there’s always a tweet):
You mean the Stock Market hit an all-time record high today and they’re actually talking impeachment!? Will I ever be given credit for anything by the Fake News Media or Radical Liberal Dems? NO COLLUSION!
Meanwhile, in case you still doubt that Trump just regurgitates whatever barmy bits bedevil his brain from one moment to the next, he’s also still obsessed with the fact that he’s inferior to former President Barack Obama in every way. So much so that he feels the need to say outrageously untrue things in order to soothe his creaky ego.
At the same Iowa rally, Trump cited the professional—and very weird—opinion of Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House doctor, to claim he’s in better physical shape than Obama. Shocker: He couched this assertion in a signature “sir” story.
“He was Obama’s doctor, too, by the way,” the ex-real estate tycoon reminded the crowd at the Hyatt Hotel.
“I said, ‘Who’s healthier?’ He said, ‘Sir, there’s no contest.’ I won’t tell you the answer, but you know the answer, okay? It was me.”
He went even further, quoting his old physician as saying: “‘If he didn’t eat junk food, he’d live to 200 years old.’ That’s my kind of a doctor.”
On whether he believed his advanced years could become an issue – as he has repeatedly insisted is the case for 81-year-old Mr Biden – Mr Trump said: “I’ll be the first to know. But I feel that right now I’m sharper than I was 20 years ago, and I don’t know why.
The U.S. economy is hitting a stride, growing at a 2.4-percent rate in the second quarter in a surprisingly strong showing that adds confidence to the idea that the nation may avoid a long-threatened recession.
The growing economy comes coupled with other good economic news: Inflation is slowing, and unemployment sits at just 3.6 percent.
Markets have noticed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 4 percent over the last month and more than 6 percent this year, despite dropping Thursday.
It's all good news for the White House and President Biden, who have used the recent string of positive economic announcements to tout their stewardship over the economy as they head into an election next year.
But it doesn't mean the administration can breathe easy — over the economy or Biden’s political future.
Some economists think a recession is still possible, and Republicans, while more focused in recent weeks on probes into Hunter Biden's legal difficulties, have not dropped their economic criticisms of the White House.
“It's entertaining to watch the administration sit here and say, ‘Oh everything’s great now,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Thursday.
“Yes, inflation has come down, but the economy in no way is growing at the levels that it needs to be and we need to enact reasonable and responsible budget cuts going forward to right size our economy and get the country moving in the right direction,” added Lawler, who represents a swing district and is one of the more vulnerable House Republicans in next year’s election.
The White House rebuked GOP lawmakers, pointing remarks from to Fox Business Channel’s Cheryl Casone, who said Thursday: “There goes that recession talk, right?”
“Even Fox Business is welcoming today’s blockbuster economic growth numbers, the latest in a long line of proof points that Bidenomics is delivering for middle class families,” spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a memo. “That’s because this strong growth report is objectively good news for the American people, which elected officials should support regardless of their political party.”
The resilience of the economy has been a surprise for a number of reasons.
Market commentators for most of Biden’s term have been worried about a recession, and as the Federal Reserve launched a series of interest rate hikes in response to rising inflation, the fear was that a downturn would be hard to avoid.
The Federal Reserve itself in March predicted a “mild recession,” before reversing its position Wednesday after raising interest rates another quarter-percent.
“The staff now has a noticeable slowdown in growth starting later this year in the forecast, but given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday.
That resilience has taken several different forms but has been nowhere more noticeable than in the labor market. Unemployment has remained near historic lows even as the Fed has undertaken one of the fastest interest rate tightening cycles on record in response to prices that climbed as high as 9.1 percent annually last June.
Lower employment is usually associated with lower prices due to how much businesses have to pay workers and still turn a profit. But that relationship has been called into question during the recent inflation, as prices have been steadily falling since last June while unemployment has remained near record lows.
The unusual nature of the post-pandemic inflation, driven in part by massive consumer savings during the lockdown era and supply chain shutdowns, was likely the primary reason. Price fluctuations occurred in different sectors of the economy at different times, and companies raked in record profits, choosing to keep prices high.
In making the case for its handling of the economy, the Biden administration Thursday pointed to investments it made when Democrats held majorities in Congress in 2021 and 2022. Those investments were mostly in the Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan transportation and infrastructure bill and a major semiconductor bill.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) touted the investment in plants and equipment in a blog post Thursday, noting its contribution to the beefy GDP number.
“Nonresidential private fixed investment accelerated, contributing 1 percentage point to [second quarter] growth. Private construction of manufacturing facilities alone, such as factories, contributed about 0.4 percentage point, this category’s largest growth contribution since 1981,” economists with the CEA wrote.
Some key factors do leave a number of economists wary of another ding on the economy later this year. Millions will see an end to the three-year pause in student loan payments later this year, which could put a crunch on consumer spending.
Interest rate hikes have also weighed heavily on the housing market for more than a year, driving high mortgage rates and dampening demand.
Demand is beginning to rise again, but so are prices with would-be sellers reluctant to give up their low mortgage rates and put their homes on the market.
Powell said Wednesday that the housing market has “a ways to go” before it reaches a balance and prices cool.
The news of economic growth comes just weeks after the White House launched its “Bideonomics” messaging, which was met with speculation at the time about whether they were taking a victory lap too soon.
Throughout Biden’s presidency, Republicans have hammered him for high inflation, and they sought to use it against Democrats in the 2022 midterms. They are expected to focus on the economy, along with their investigations into the Biden family, again in 2024.
Biden celebrated that the GDP number Thursday, arguing that the economic progress “wasn’t inevitable or accidental” but was due to Bidenomics — a message voters can expect to keep hearing as Biden and officials traverse the country to tout their work on the economy.
“[H]ard-working Americans are seeing the results: Our unemployment rate remains near record lows, inflation has fallen by two thirds, real wages are higher than they were before the pandemic, and we’ve seen more than half a trillion dollars in private sector investment commitments in clean energy and manufacturing,” he said.
American voters usually make their election decisions on two factors, peace and prosperity. The first looks good for the president. The second is getting worse by the day.
Yes, I know, it is not his fault. This is true and irrelevant. Voters vote on results and Trump has always asked to be judged on results. If too many are out of work in the fall, if too many businesses close, if the national economic psychology is trending downwards then the president may have a rough going.
He is partially saved by the fact that Joe Biden is a weak candidate. You could call him a speech-impaired Dukakis. He will not know how to strike the right tone between sorrow over the virus and indignation at the president’s supposed shortcomings. Biden will just spew, and incoherently at that.
True, an economic rescue package is on the way and the president is doing a good job in fighting the virus. But $1,000 per person will go quickly, may be a headache to distribute, and will be long forgotten by November. The virus should be mainly over by the fall and the president is liable to get much credit for his handling of the crisis.
But will that credit overshadow an empty pocket or the loss of a job and wages? Not likely.
The president has a sharp political team and they are no doubt factoring this in to their reelection campaign. They will emphasize the probable low virus mortality rate compared to other countries and argue the president deserves votes for saving the nation from possible mass death.
They will have a point. But they will not be starting from the halcyon time of only a couple of months ago, when exoneration over impeachment and a booming economy made reelection look like a sure thing.
Trump still has an advantage because the jury is out on the economy in the fall. If it comes back guilty, if unemployment is sharply up and GDP is down, if stocks are low compared to a year ago, if business closures are numerous, then the sentence of the electoral jury may not be to the president’s liking.
This piece was written by David Kamioner on March 18, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.