Poor Donald Trump. Twice elected president only to have to clean up the economic messes left to him by Democrats.
In 2016, he groused about inheriting “a disaster” from Barack Obama. On Thursday, just four days before his second inauguration, he sent out a fundraising email claiming for the gazillionth time, “During my first term, we made the economy stronger than anyone ever thought possible. And then, Joe Biden came in and destroyed it.”
Except that — no surprise — neither Trump claim is true.
In fact, it was Obama and Biden who were bequeathed messes, from former Republican presidents George W. Bush and Trump himself. Obama took office after what Ben Bernanke, then the Federal Reserve chair, called “the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.” And four years ago, Biden confronted a nation mired in a pandemic and economic distress exacerbated by Trump’s response. Even Trump’s pre-pandemic economy, as good as it was, was far from “the greatest economy in the history of the world,” as he still contends. By various metrics, it was either no better or not as good as under Obama.
As for the handoff in 2017: “Trump inherits Obama boom,” said one headline ahead of his inauguration. And now he’s inheriting even better. “Biden is leaving a stellar economy,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, wrote as 2024 ended.
Zandi expanded in October: “The economy is at full-employment, no more and no less. Wage growth is strong, and given big productivity gains, it is consistent with low and stable inflation. One couldn’t paint a prettier picture of the job market and broader economy.” In a letter to clients on Friday, UBS Financial Services declared this a new “Roaring ‘20s.”
And here’s another expert take that might come in handy while listening to Trump’s inaugural address Monday, should he resort to talk of “American carnage” as he did four years ago. Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and Stephen Henriques, a fellow there, recently wrote, “As Trump bellows to crowds, ‘Are you better off economically than you were four years ago?’, the answer should be a loud YES!”
The problem for Biden, and for his replacement on Democrats’ losing 2024 ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris, many voters’ answer to that question was a loud “NO!”
For one thing, the pain of pandemic-spawned high inflation lingers in what Americans pay for groceries, goods and services. And yet, it’s worth establishing the facts as a baseline to counter what are sure to be Trump’s claims that he not only revived a destroyed economy but topped his own (nonexistent) world record.
The latest good news came Friday, when the International Monetary Fund forecast that the U.S. economy would grow faster this year than recently projected, given gains in employment and investment. The United States is buoying the global economy. “The big story is the divergence between the U.S. and the rest of the world,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas told reporters.
But the fund’s forecast also echoed U.S. economists’ concerns that Trump’s agenda — more deficit-financed tax cuts, wholesale deregulation, across-the-board tariffs, immigration crackdowns and challenges to the Fed’s independence — could reignite inflation and add to the nation’s already unsustainable debt load.
In other words, Trump could break what’s not broken.
Inflation peaked at 9% at the midterm of the Biden administration, and as much as any issue, that helped elect Trump. It’s largely subsided, and good thing: After winning, Trump fessed up that, contrary to his campaign boasts, there’s not much he could do about inflation. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he told Time magazine.
What’s worse is that his proposed tariffs — “my favorite word,” says Trump — could raise costs for a typical family about $1,700 a year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. And U.S. trading partners could raise those costs even more if they retaliate with tariffs on American products: “Of course we will,” Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, told CNN on Thursday.
Economic growth was 3.1% on an annual basis in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported, making 2024 “yet another shocker year in which the U.S. economy surprised to the upside,” as Axios put it. Last month the Fed cut interest rates for the third straight meeting, but indicated fewer reductions ahead amid the Trump-generated uncertainty over what’s coming. The unemployment rate is at 4.1%; it was 6.4% when Trump left office. Job growth in Biden’s final full month of December was a higher-than-expected 256,000 positions, and job openings exceeded the number of unemployed job seekers. In Trump’s first three years as president, before the pandemic, the number of U.S. jobs increased by nearly 6.7 million; Biden’s four-year total is nearly 17 million. And wage growth, though stymied initially by inflation, now is greater than under Trump.
For all Trump’s talk of “drill, baby, drill,” energy production already is at a record high, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The number of Americans without health insurance is at an all-time low, though Republicans aren’t likely to renew the tax credits that helped make the reduction possible.
Biden used his farewell speech Wednesday for a pre-buttal to Trump’s inevitable attempts to usurp credit for good times — assuming they remain good. The outgoing president hailed the post-pandemic revival on his watch and suggested that the laws he got passed for infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor investments would keep delivering: “The seeds are planted, and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come.”
Zandi, the Moody’s economist, expects the United States economy to continue to lead the world: “Of course, this assumes there will be no policy errors going forward.” And then he added: “Hmmm…”
