The Economic Case for Donald Trump is Incoherent
Do you want to go back to a weaker economy? Donald Trump is the candidate for you.
Hey everyone. I know I did a longer piece on Wednesday, but I wanted to do a quick note on a thing that has been sticking in my head lately.
Maybe you are like me and you have seen the memes floating around where it says, “Kamala had 3.5 years to fix everything that she is now saying she will fix.” Even leaving aside the absurdity of the argument (what were Mike Pence’s big policy achievements from his time as Vice President?), I often wonder why we can’t apply the same logic to Trump? Why does he need another four years if his first term was so strong? So, let’s take these rules and apply them fairly: Harris will have to defend her record as the Vice President of the Biden Administration and Trump will have to defend his record as the prequel to Idiocracy President from 2017 to January 2021.
The case Trump’s own supporters often make is that we “have to get back” to the economy that we had under Trump. When they say this, they don’t mean the 14.8% unemployment we had in April of 2020, or the 6.4% unemployment rate we had in January 2021, when he “left” office. According to his supporters, Trump’s presidency only lasted from January 2017 through February 28, 2020, and everything after that date belongs to Joe Biden.
But I have an idea: Let’s give Trump that framing of the argument. We can pretend that Donald Trump bears no responsibility for the economy’s performance during COVID, which was an external issue outside of his control. Let’s just look at his job performance from 2017 through early 2020.
We can average out all of the positive years of Trump’s job growth:
In 2017, he created around 181,000 jobs a month.
In 2018, he created around 193,000 jobs a month.
In 2019, he created around 167,000 jobs a month.
We won’t even include his overall negative year (2020), which wipes out all of his job gains. Let’s just give him everything and compare it to Joe Biden/Kamala Harris:
Let’s also give Trump another leg up in this competition: He repeatedly says that the jobs created by Biden/Harris are “bounce back” jobs. So, let’s only start calculating job growth after the U.S. economy officially recovered all the jobs lost from COVID in June 2022. When you do that, you get:
In 2022, Biden created around 323,000 jobs a month.
In 2023, Biden created around 251,000 jobs a month.
In 2024, Biden created around 184,000 jobs a month (the year isn’t finished and still subject to revisions).
So, even when you give Trump the terms most favorable to him, Biden still comes out on top. I know what every Trump supporter is thinking right now: “But Trump did his job growth with no inflation!” True enough, and we’ll get to that, but it’s also worth noting that before plummeting to a low in 2016, inflation rates actually began to rise under Trump after he enacted his tariffs in 2017:
COVID pushed the inflation rate to nearly zero with a global recession. But do you know who else had low inflation rates? I’ll give you a hint; they also had better job growth than Donald Trump. That’s right. It’s everyone’s favorite President who isn’t a nursing home resident, Barack Obama:
In 2014, Obama created around 250,000 jobs a month.
In 2015, Obama created around 226,000 jobs a month.
In 2016, Obama created around 193,000 jobs a month.
So, when a Trump supporter says we need to get back to his golden economy - with low inflation and “strong” job growth - they are essentially arguing that we need a weaker version of the Obama economy.
A common refrain from Trump supporters is, “I will deal with the mean tweets, I just want Trump’s economy back.” But if Obama managed to have a stronger economy than Trump and didn’t threaten nuclear war with Kim Jong Un, then why can’t we just clone Obama and have him run again?
I sort of understand the pro-Trump argument against the Biden/Harris economy. It doesn’t actually matter that he lowered crime rates, or created jobs, or had the best economic growth in the world after COVID: Inflation is the biggest issue right now and it has hurt people more than Harris’s supporters want to admit.
It is obviously true that inflation - although back down to normal levels (or below) now - hit America hard from 2021 to 2023. But what Trump supporters never want to admit is that inflation was a global crisis, and one that Biden handled very well:
Few presidents have a full term without some sort of global or domestic crisis that tests their ability to lead. Trump came into office in a time of relative peace and inherited a robust economy that he (sort of) managed to not screw up until COVID hit.1
To me, this is the fundamental difference between Harris and Trump: When Trump was hit with a global crisis (COVID), he failed the test. Not only did we emerge from the pandemic with one of the world’s highest death rates, but our economy was free-falling even after the absolute worst part of the crisis was over. The month before Trump left office, we lost almost 250,000 jobs.
Contrast that with the Biden Administration,2 which Harris was a part of: When they faced a global crisis, not only did they steward the country toward a soft landing, they also managed to preside over the biggest economic expansion in the world.
When you actually absorb the data, it is pretty clear that the case for Donald Trump is incoherent. It actually doesn’t make a lick of sense. Moreover, it is fundamentally unrealistic: We are never going back to a pre-COVID economy because we cannot go back to a place where the pandemic never happened.
Work from home is always going to be a thing, and that means it will continue to contribute to increases in home prices. Some things are not going down in price ever again because the insane demand following the re-opening of the planet has left us with permanent shortages (try finding a bottle of Chartreuse at your local liquor store). And yes, fast food places are going to continue to take advantage of your laziness because you taught them that you are addicted to DoorDash. We’re never going back to 2019.
That doesn’t mean things can’t get better, but the question then becomes who do you want to lead us into a better future? The woman whose Administration stared down the worst global inflation crisis in 40 years or the dude who told people at the height of the pandemic to inject themselves with bleach?
You guys will hear from me again soon, but I had to get this thought out of my head and onto the page.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally titled, The Case for Donald Trump is Incoherent
Trump’s tariffs were causing inflation before COVID, and I guess it remains to be seen what would have happened had the world not fallen into a global recession. Economists are currently predicting that if his economic plans are realized in his second term, they will wipe out all the jobs created under Biden and cause heavy inflation.
Obama is also relevant here: When he came into office, the Great Recession was fully underway and he managed to steer the U.S. out of that crisis, allowing us to have the strongest economy in the world by the time Trump took office. Great presidents face a crisis and bring the country out of it.
Awesome post!