Total Distortion of Economic Accomplishments
The misinformation spread about the economic performance of Donald Trump’s first presidential administration drives us bananas. Most politicians – and don’t kid yourself Republicans, Donald Trump IS most certainly a politician – stretch the truth to a certain degree, but this guy takes it to an artform.
Obviously, political dishonesty did not start with Donald Trump. In politics, deceit is called “spin,” which makes it seem more harmless than it really is. But spin is not harmless. It’s propaganda. Spin is not excusable just because it’s come to be expected in American politics. In truth, it’s just another lie.
The false narrative about Donald Trump’s economic record drives us nuts for three reasons: 1) It’s just flat wrong for people with power and a platform – whether it be the White House briefing room, a campaign debate, or a cable news channel – to bald-face lie to the American people and not be held accountable for it; 2) Americans did not have accurate information when they went to the polls in 2024 (which is actually the responsibility/fault of the opposing campaign, but that’s a gripe for another day); and 3) We must start operating from a place of truth.
Please, America. Let’s please at least agree on that. We know we sound like a broken record, but as a civil society we must get back to a place where we can, at a minimum, agree on a basic set of facts. Whatever we decide to do about that set of facts is an entirely different issue, but we must start from a place of truth.
To hear Donald Trump, his posse, and Fox News tell it, during the first Trump administration the U.S. economy was stronger than ever before. Best! Economy! Ever!
During the first go-round, President Trump and his parrots were constantly saying things like, “In many ways this is the greatest economy in the HISTORY of America” and “It’s said now that our economy is the strongest it’s ever been in the history of our country, and you just have to take a look at the numbers” and “We have the best economy the country’s ever had and it’s getting better.” …and this false narrative continued through the 2024 campaign. In their 2016 fairytale, Donald Trump, the genius financial mastermind, inherited a wrecked economy in recession. Even though Satan himself, President Barack Obama, had run the economy into the ground, Donald John Trump miraculously turned it around! Bigly!
This is just not true. We're sorry, Republicans, but it’s just not. In fact, the economy looked more like it was being run by a guy whose companies have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six different times – especially if you factor in what happened with Covid-19.
Although the United States was in the depths of the Great Recession when Barack Obama took office, we pulled out of it by June 2009, five months after he was inaugurated.
Conversely, the U.S. plowed right into a recession in February 2020, three years after Donald Trump took office. This recession – the worst since the Great Depression – ended 128 months of economic expansion, the longest uninterrupted run in U.S. history.
The truth is this: The economy that Donald Trump inherited had already been expanding for more than seven years. Unemployment had fallen to less than 5 percent, employers had been adding jobs for years, and output and incomes were growing. < Note: We're going to leave 2020 out of this entire discussion because, thanks to the pandemic, the entire year is an outlier. This is a really nice thing for us to do because, as you can imagine, including 2020 would make things look infinitely worse for DJT. >
None of this is our opinions. Everything we say here is backed up by facts released by the United States government... a government that Donald Trump has already run for four years, by the way. We're certain Donald will claim this is all Fake News! But if he does, he will just be admitting that he is a terrible executive because, if these numbers that came straight from the United States government during his first time in office are inaccurate, that happened on his watch. He loses either way.
Although, come to think of it, maybe he did learn something in his first term because these types of underperforming but accurate numbers are the very reason he has fired, or tried to fire, any person in his second administration who dared release them – including Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. He later nominated E.J. Antoni, a longtime critic of BLS methodology, to replace her – big surprise. Antoni had questioned the reliability of the agency’s monthly employment estimates and even suggested temporarily suspending the monthly jobs report (Trump ultimately withdrew Antoni’s nomination in September 2025). Now, the Trump/ Vance administration is reportedly trying to create a report that questions all BLS jobs data, past and present. Again, big surprise.
When he fired McEntarfer, President Trump said that “important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.” … which, of course, is exactly what he is doing.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measures the total value of all final goods and services produced in the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), nominal U.S. GDP grew from roughly $14.478 trillion in 2009, the year President Obama took office, to $21.54 trillion in 2019 – an increase of nearly 50 percent.
GDP is an interesting number to look at, but the GDP growth rate (i.e., the percent change from the preceding period in real Gross Domestic Product) is maybe a better indicator of the nation’s overall economic health because it measures how fast the economy is growing. During the first three years of Donald Trump’s first presidency, real GDP grew 2.5 percent in 2017, 3.0 percent in 2018, and 2.6 percent in 2019. < Again, we're excluding 2020. > By this measure, year-over-year economic growth during President Trump’s first three years – an average of about 2.7 percent – was just a little higher than during President Obama’s final three years, when growth averaged about 2.4 percent.
Annual GDP growth is important, but quarterly growth can provide a more detailed picture. During Donald Trump’s first three years in office, real GDP growth exceeded 3 percent in five quarters, reaching 3.2 percent, 4.6 percent, 3.3 percent, 3.4 percent, and 4.8 percent. During President Obama’s first term, real GDP growth exceeded 3 percent in five quarters: 4.4 percent, 3.9 percent, 3.1 percent, 4.6 percent, and 3.4 percent. Growth exceeded 4 percent twice. During Obama’s second term, real GDP growth exceeded 3 percent in six quarters: 4.0 percent, 3.5 percent, 3.5 percent, 5.3 percent, 5.0 percent, and 3.6 percent. Growth reached at least 5 percent twice.
To put Donald Trump’s first-term economic performance into broader historical perspective, consider annual real GDP growth during previous presidencies:
During John F. Kennedy’s shortened presidency, annual real GDP growth reached 6.1 percent and 4.4 percent.
During Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency, growth reached 5.8 percent, 6.5 percent, 6.6 percent, and 4.9 percent.
During Richard Nixon’s presidency, growth reached 3.1 percent, 3.3 percent, 5.3 percent, and 5.6 percent.
During Gerald Ford’s shortened presidency, growth reached 5.4 percent.
During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, growth reached 4.6 percent, 5.5 percent, and 3.2 percent.
During the Reagan administration, annual real GDP growth exceeded 3 percent in six of eight years. Four of those years exceeded 4 percent, and growth reached 7.2 percent in 1984.
During George H.W. Bush’s presidency, annual growth exceeded 3 percent in two calendar years, reaching 3.7 percent in 1989 and 3.5 percent in 1992.
During the Clinton administration, annual growth exceeded 3 percent in six of eight years. It reached 4 percent or higher in five of those years.
During George W. Bush’s presidency, annual growth exceeded 3 percent twice, reaching 3.8 percent in 2004 and 3.5 percent in 2005.
Okay, we have never used the word “percent” so much in our lives, but we just wanted to show you that Donald Trump’s GDP numbers don’t even come close to being The! Best! Ever! And it’s important to remember that Donald’s relatively modest growth occurred despite significant fiscal stimulus. Congress enacted sweeping tax cuts in 2017, followed by major increases in federal spending in 2018. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that these policies boosted economic growth in the short term… yet annual real GDP growth during his first three years still averaged only about 2.7 percent.
Next up, the stock market. Throughout his presidency, Donald loved to hype the hot stock market. Best! Stock Market! Ever!
Our belief is that, while presidential policies and political events can certainly create short-term waves in the stock market – and some policies can have significant longer-term effects on particular industries – in the long run, stock market performance has little to do with who happens to be sitting in the White House. That said, based on the way he’s always running his mouth about it, Donald sure doesn’t seem to share our belief. So, in that spirit: We hate to break it to him, but stock market returns during his first term ranked 10th when compared to other presidents. Yes, 10th.
An analysis by MeasuringWorth revealed Donald Trump’s first-term stock market performance ranked 10th among presidential terms since 1900. Measuring the Dow Jones Industrial Average from inauguration to inauguration, the market grew at an annualized rate of 11.99 percent during Trump’s first term. That put him behind the terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan’s second term, Barack Obama’s first term, Dwight Eisenhower’s first term, the Harding/ Coolidge term, Harry Truman, and Woodrow Wilson’s first term.
During the 2020 presidential election, Donald loved to say things like “if Biden is elected, the market will crash;” that a Biden presidency would be the “biggest single headwind (to the stock market);” and, in a tweet, “If you want your 401k’s and stocks, which are getting closer to an all-time high (NASDAQ is already there), to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden.”
However, from the 2020 election through President Biden’s inauguration, the S&P 500 rose more than 14 percent – more than twice the roughly 6 percent gain during the comparable period following Donald Trump’s election four years earlier. In fact, the election-to-inauguration gain was the strongest for an incoming president since Herbert Hoover. The market continued to climb in 2021. That year, the S&P 500 gained 26.9 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 18.7 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 21.4 percent. Including dividends, the S&P 500’s total return was approximately 28.7 percent.
Ironically – even though they aren’t necessarily responsible for it – the stock market usually does much better under Democratic presidents. I know this is counterintuitive given what the two parties supposedly represent, but it’s true. According to an analysis by CFRA Research, from 1945 through 2020 the S&P 500 gained an average of 11.2 percent annually under Democratic presidents, compared with 6.9 percent under Republican presidents.
Next up, jobs. Until Covid-19 hit, Donald Trump loved to talk about how many jobs he was creating. The! Best! Jobs! Ever!
The economy did add millions of jobs during Trump’s first three years in office. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ current data, nonfarm payroll employment increased by approximately 2.1 million in 2017, 2.3 million in 2018, and 2 million in 2019.
But job growth was stronger during each of President Obama’s final three years in office. Approximately 3 million jobs were added in 2014, 2.7 million in 2015, and 2.3 million in 2016.
Altogether, about 8 million jobs were added during Obama’s final three years, compared with about 6.4 million during Trump’s first three – a difference of roughly 1.65 million jobs. Put another way, the economy added an average of about 223,000 jobs per month during Obama’s final three years, compared with about 177,000 per month during Trump’s first three.
The Biden years produced much larger raw employment gains. From January 2021 to January 2025, nonfarm payroll employment increased by approximately 15.4 million jobs – an average of roughly 321,000 per month. But remember, Biden took office while the economy was still recovering from the enormous job losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, so a substantial portion of those gains represented the restoration of jobs lost during the pandemic rather than entirely new employment above the pre-pandemic peak. Even so, employment eventually moved well beyond its pre-pandemic level.
Incidentally, much has been said about the low unemployment rate during Donald Trump’s tenure. It’s true that unemployment fell to 3.5 percent in 2019 – the lowest level in nearly fifty years. But Trump inherited a rate of just 4.7 percent, down from 10 percent in 2009 after years of steady decline. Covid-19 abruptly reversed that progress. When President Biden took office in January 2021, unemployment stood at 6.4 percent. It subsequently fell to 3.4 percent in 2023 – slightly below Trump’s pre-pandemic low and the lowest rate since 1969 – before rising to 4 percent by January 2025.
Also, a quick word about Donald Trump’s claims of working “miracles” in the manufacturing sector during his first term as president. This is just not true.
During his failed 2020 reelection campaign, he told the crowd at a Michigan rally, “You better vote for me, I got you so many damn car plants. And we’re going to bring you a lot more!” Nope. Michigan’s manufacturing sector lost 66,500 workers from July 2019 to 2020 alone. As you can see from the dates, this was already happening before the pandemic.
On the 2020 campaign trail in Ohio, Donald said, “Over the last six months, we’ve witnessed one manufacturing miracle after another.” Nope. Ohio’s manufacturing sector lost 48,000 workers from July 2019 to 2020. Even before the pandemic, manufacturing nationwide was struggling. Manufacturing output declined in both the first and second quarters of 2019 and fell 1.3 percent for the year.
The PMI, or the Purchasing Managers’ Index – the most common way to measure the health of manufacturing – plummeted. In December 2019, another popular gauge of the manufacturing sector’s health – a survey of purchasing managers from the Institute for Supply Management – fell to its lowest level since the Great Recession.
But more important than numbers on a page, there is also real-world examples. One must look no further than the 100-foot-tall glass sphere in the middle of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin for proof of Donald Trump’s failure to deliver on the dazzling manufacturing promises he boisterously made.
In 2017, the Taiwanese manufacturer announced plans for a $10 billion manufacturing complex that was eventually supposed to employ 13,000 people. Local and state governments ultimately spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring land and building infrastructure for the project. By 2023, Mount Pleasant was carrying debt equal to roughly 570 percent of its annual revenue. As a bonus, around 100 homeowners were forced to move to make way for the project, some under the threat of eminent domain.
But far from the “Eighth Wonder of the World” – which is what Donald called it as he stood (with big shovel in hand) beside Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Foxconn’s chairman at the groundbreaking – by the end of 2024, Wisconsin officials had verified 1,242 Foxconn jobs and about $717 million in eligible investment – a fraction of the original commitment.
< For a while, the glass globe was advertised as a place that could be rented for private events and banquets, but in 2025 Foxconn announced a $569 million expansion in that could bring its Wisconsin workforce to more than 2,600 by the end of 2029. Microsoft has also taken over portions of the land originally intended for Foxconn and is developing a multibillion-dollar AI data-center campus there. >
That’s some project, Donny boy!