Did Trump handle the economy well (Pre-COVID)?
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  Did Trump handle the economy well (Pre-COVID)?
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Author Topic: Did Trump handle the economy well (Pre-COVID)?  (Read 702 times)
Bomster
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« on: December 19, 2020, 09:27:13 PM »

This was his strongest issue, even after the pandemic wreaked havoc on America and the world. Was President Trump’s economic agenda one of the few positive accomplishments of his presidency?
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Battista Minola 1616
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« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2020, 06:20:22 AM »

In so much as the main plank of his economic agenda consisted in a monstrous tax law which is effectively a real tax cut for corporations and generally the wealthy but a delayed tax increase for a (lower-income) majority of Americans and is blowing a hole in the deficit, I wouldn't call it a positive accomplishment.

Aside from that, it seems to me that macroeconomic indicators were generally pretty good before COVID-19, but I don't know how much Presidents actually deserve credit (or blame) for that.
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AGA
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« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2020, 06:37:36 PM »

Aside from the $1 trillion+ deficit, sure.
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Bomster
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« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2020, 06:48:32 PM »

Aside from the $1 trillion+ deficit, sure.
Reading about it, it seems Trump’s economy was the equivalent to a bodybuilder taking steroids... but steroids have long lasting negative effects.
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America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS
Solid4096
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« Reply #4 on: December 20, 2020, 09:59:29 PM »

No
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Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
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« Reply #5 on: December 20, 2020, 10:09:09 PM »

If he had managed to get infrastructure done, then yes because they might be some tangible positives that would outlast him.

Absent that it is just more short-term, paper based, debt fueled consumption as the previous administrations.
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Clarko95 📚💰📈
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« Reply #6 on: December 20, 2020, 10:22:11 PM »

Not really, most of the progress of 2017 - 2019 was merely a continuation of the previous trend, despite his tax cuts and the roaring stock markets. Wage growth and job creation over the 2017 to 2019 period looked an awful lot like how it did over 2014 to 2016.

In fact, his trade wars that began to ramp up in late-2018 began to drag on the macroeconomy, and the manufacturing and transportation sectors saw job creation stagnate in 2019 as some industries began laying off workers (and that's after the sectors saw net employment increase by 600k+ over 2017 and 2018). Business investment ticked up at a normal pace in 2017 and 2018 despite the tax law and then fell quite noticeably over the course of 2019. Business PMIs were falling quite sharply in 2019 to levels that were worse than the manufacturing mini-recession of 2015-16 and on par with levels seen in 2009.

Furthermore, the tax cuts combined with increased spending drove up the value of the US Dollar, further worsening our trade deficit as exports fell slightly but imports increase notably.

So by his own fake-populist economic standards, he failed.

There's also the question marks surrounding the high levels of corporate debt that were run up over the decade, along with the weird Fed interventions in the repo markets in late-2019, which may be related to the Trump administration loosening the Volcker Rule, which would make sense if credit markets became less liquid because banks were suddenly free to engage in previously-restricted trading activities and went all-in on this at the same time.

Doesn't necessarily mean that we would have had a recession in 2020 without COVID-19, because consumers were ultimately resilient (but this was accomplished by them taking on more debt, particularly credit cards and auto loans). But the light version of his key economic policies put stress on the real economy and if he really ramped up his trade war even further, it would have started to be an even bigger drag and would have been noticed.

I'd say the economy was "okay" over the 2014 - 2019 period, but what few economic policies the Trump administration enacted via regulatory changes or managed to pass through Congress were ultimately harmful. And ultimately, the fundamental problems and imbalances were not solved, but rather worsened during the 2017 - 2020 period.
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brucejoel99
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« Reply #7 on: December 20, 2020, 10:29:28 PM »

Given that Trump's economy was built on the back of President Obama, from whom he subsequently inherited it, Trump evidently handled the economy in the same way as he has handled his whole life: he inherited it & called it his own as if he'd built it from the ground up.
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Bomster
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« Reply #8 on: December 20, 2020, 10:35:05 PM »

Given that Trump's economy was built on the back of President Obama, from whom he subsequently inherited it, Trump evidently handled the economy in the same way as he has handled his whole life: he inherited it & called it his own as if he'd built it from the ground up.
And then he drove it into bankruptcy.
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Oregon Eagle Politics
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« Reply #9 on: January 13, 2021, 12:46:07 PM »

No.
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Benjamin Frank
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« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2021, 10:57:27 AM »

One way of looking at the economy under Obama is that it didn't get back to pre recession levels until 2014, another way of looking at that though is that after the U.S economy started to grow again around 2009, it took 11 years for the U.S economy to go into another recession.

As detailed above, what it took to keep the U.S economy growing is accurate, I don't doubt, but there are benefits to long term growth such as this. Essentially there is a feedback effect of continued growth having positive effects through business confidence to make long term investments, to people being willing to take risks to start new businesses, to the long term unemployed being able to find work as the economy continues to expand. 

When it is expected that there will be a recession every 3-5 years, these things don't happen to anywhere near the same extent. 

So, Trump was able to benefit from this feedback effect until Covid.

In short: Thanks Obama!
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Chips
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« Reply #11 on: January 25, 2021, 04:44:37 PM »

Lean Yes. Still wasn't a very good president before COVID in hindsight tho.
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