Thank you President Obama.
...... it was stagnant for most of 2015 and 2016
Financial crises usually take awhile to get over. Thankfully with the sound leadership of Barack Hussein Obama, we're a much stronger country now than we were in 2008. Trump, as is typical with his entire life, inherited his predecessor's success story.
Hate to break it to you, but if people in industrial areas were happy with the situation during obama's 8 years, they wouldn't have voted in such large numbers for a republican reality tv star. Trump won industrial counties like erie and trubmull by margins even reagan couldn't get.
This is not a full picture of what happened. They voted Trump but a lot of them were unhappy with the recovery. That said the recovery intensified. I don't necessarily buy your story about forward thinking as tax reform has been pushed off to 2018.