To the Editor:
Various spouters have said or suggested that the economy was very good under Trump. Trump, never excessively modest, recently repeated that in his NY trial recently by saying “as the president of the United States, I did a great job.”
There are lots of “jobs” a president does, one being the economy, and there Trump did a so-so job. Decent but certainly not great and nothing to boast about. There is actually no debating this: The facts are in. I’ll list the main ones, and to be fair, just ’17-’19 and not include the impact of Covid.
Manufacturing rose around 3.5% annually. Decent, about as high as Biden’s. Manufacturing employment was essentially flat.
Contrary to Trump’s bizarre claim that he would end the federal and the foreign trade deficits in eight years, they both rose dramatically between ’17 and ’19.
His tax cuts were for a 10-year period and according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, 83% of those cuts will go to the top 1% of incomes thereby both enormously increasing inequality and contributing to the rising national debt.
Contrary to Trump’s promise that he would get more, better and cheaper health care, health care rose about 3% a year from ’17-’19, and of course skyrocketed in ’20.
The GDP rose around 2.5% each year in that period, a bit less than it has grown under Biden.
Yes, mortgage rates are currently sky high, much higher than under Trump, but that is due to the Fed trying to tamp down the inflation mainly due to Covid, and has little to do with Biden. The Fed is an independent agency.
Gasoline prices averaged around $2.40 during Trump’s years and around $3.50 during Biden’s but that is mostly due, despite record pumping of oil, to U.S. companies selling U.S. oil on the red hot international market.
In short, the economy behaved pretty much under Trump like it has under Biden, except that Trump inherited a “Goldilocks” economy whereas Biden inherited a mess, with supply chains in shambles, consumers with pent-up demand spending like drunken sailors, refineries closed down and most of Europe with high inflation.
I think that the real issue is why people think the economy under Trump was so strong. Partly they do because of the illusion that he is a good businessman – mostly due to his self-promotion. His rhetoric overwhelmed the fact that most of his business ventures have failed (think Atlantic City casinos) while Biden until recently has understated his achievements. And partly it’s because the main base of the Republicans, at this point, are high-school-educated whites, who usually don’t bother to learn facts about the economy.
I recently read a poll showing that only 7% of Republicans think that current employment is “unusually strong” and 48% saying that it was unusually weak when in fact the rate under both presidents is virtually the same – very strong historically.
One last note about Trump’s business acumen – his Truth Social has just lost around $30 million and seemingly ready to collapse, joining a long list of his business failures, including Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump University and the list goes on yet his myth as an astute businessman persists. So, we seem to have another pandemic – one of factual ignorance. Unfortunately, no one has developed a vaccine for that. We definitely need one.
BRUCE ALLEN
Del Haven
