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.
Although the United States was in the Great Recession when Obama began his presidency, we pulled out of it by June 2009, five months after he took the oath of office. 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 run in U.S. history.
The truth is this: The economy that Donald Trump inherited had been on a slow but steady mend for years, and that upward trajectory simply continued during the early years of his administration. < Note: We're leaving 2020 out of this 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 longtime BLS critic E.J. Antoni to replace her, big surprise. Now, the Trump/Vance administration is reportedly creating 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.
The U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total value of all the finished goods and services produced in the United States within a specific timeframe. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) – the federal agency that provides official macroeconomic and industry statistics – reports that America’s GDP grew from $14.45 trillion in 2009, the year President Obama took office, to $21.43 trillion in 2019.
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 Trump presidency, the annual GDP growth rate in the first three years was 2.3 percent, 3 percent, and 2.2 percent. < the growth rate in 2020 was -3.5 percent but, again, we're leaving 2020 out > By this measure, looking year over year, economic growth in Donald Trump’s first three years (an average of 2.5 percent) looked a lot like it did during President Obama’s last three years (an average of 2.4 percent).
To put Donald Trump’s first term economic performance into better perspective, let’s compare it to other presidencies. The annual growth rate during…
John F. Kennedy’s shortened presidency reached 6.1 percent and 4.4 percent.
Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency reached 5.8 percent, 6.5 percent, 6.6 percent, and 4.9 percent.
Richard Nixon’s presidency reached 3.1 percent, 3.3 percent, 5.3 percent, and 5.6 percent.
Gerald Ford’s short presidency reached 5.4 percent.
Jimmy Carter’s presidency reached 4.6 percent, 5.5 percent, and 3.2 percent.
During the Reagan administration, the annual growth rate broke 3 percent in six of the eight years. Four of those years broke 4 percent and one year even reached 7.2 percent.
Two years of President George H.W. Bush’s presidency broke 3 percent.
President Clinton’s administration broke 3 percent in six of his eight years. Five of those years even broke 4 percent.
Two years of President George W. Bush’s presidency broke 3 percent.
The annual growth rate of GDP is worth noting but breaking it down by quarters is sometimes even more telling. Donald often brags about the last quarter of 2017 (3.9 percent) and the first quarter of 2018 (3.8 percent), the only quarters in the first Trump presidency that broke 3 percent. However, in President Obama’s second term, the growth rate broke 3 percent in six quarters (3.6 percent, 3.2 percent, 3.2 percent, 5.5 percent, 5 percent, and 3.8 percent). You’ll notice that the growth rate even exceeded 5 percent twice. In President Obama’s first term, the growth rate broke 3 percent five times (4.5 percent, 3.7 percent, 3 percent, 4.7 percent, 3.2 percent). You’ll notice that the growth rate even exceeded 4 percent twice.
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 Trump’s relatively slow growth happened despite very costly tax cuts and a $1.3 trillion spending bill, both of which surely stimulated the economy.
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 policy decisions can create momentary waves in the market either direction, in the long-run, stock market performance has little to do with who is sitting in the White House. Inc. magazine puts it this way: “Over the last 75 years, the S&P 500 has finished higher through every presidential term except for Richard Nixon’s second term, which Gerald Ford completed for him, and under George W. Bush, who inherited the dotcom bust and faced the 9/11 terrorist attack.”
That said, based on the way he’s always running his mouth about it, Donald sure doesn’t seem to share my belief. So, in that spirit: We hate to break it to him, but stock market returns during his first term rank 8th when compared to other presidents. Yes, 8th. Behind, in order, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon Johnson.
< Note: This analysis is from Forbes magazine. They arrived at this list by analyzing each president’s stock market performance, including dividends, using data from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). They also considered the number of expansions and recessions that began during the president’s administration, along with the ratio of gross federal debt to GDP for the final year of each. There are other ideas on this – and some come to different conclusions – but those don’t include dividends and aren’t adjusted for inflation. >
During the 2020 presidential election, Donald loved to say things like “if Biden is elected, the market will crash;” 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 day of the 2020 election through early May 2021, the Dow increased roughly 26 percent, compared to the 14 percent for the same period after Donald Trump was elected president. In fact, from the day President Biden took office to early May 2021, the stock market performed better than every single president since the 1960s. In 2021, 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. Not bad. In the end, the S&P 500 posted an annual growth rate of 14.1 percent from the 2020 election to the 2024 election.
Ironically, the stock market usually does much better under Democratic presidents. We know this is counterintuitive given what the two parties supposedly represent, but it’s true. According to CFRA Research, the S&P 500’s growth rate under Democrats is 10 percent, compared with 6.7 percent under Republicans. Every Democratic president has seen the stock market rise during their tenure, while two Republicans – Richard Nixon and George W. Bush – led the nation during market downturns.
Next up, jobs. Until COVID-19 hit, Donald Trump loved to talk about how many jobs he was creating. The! Best! Jobs! Ever!
In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, America added 2.109 million jobs. In 2018, his best year in terms of job creation, America added 2.314 million jobs. In 2019, 2.096 million jobs were added. But the job growth in the last three years of President Obama’s second term were higher than in Donald Trump’s BEST year – 3.004 million (2014), 2.72 million (2015), and 2.345 million (2016). In the end, around 1.6 million more jobs were created in the last three years of President Obama’s presidency than in Donald Trump’s first three.
Incidentally, much has been said about the low unemployment rate during Donald Trump’s tenure, which supposedly led to higher wages. It’s true that by October 2019, the unemployment rate had fallen to its lowest level in fifty years. However, the unemployment rate was already 4.7 percent when he became president and had been on a steady decline since 2011.
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. In truth, for the entirety of 2019, the U.S. manufacturing sector was in a technical recession, which is triggered when output falls for at least six months (We're excluding 2020 because of the pandemic).
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.
Owned by the Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn, the glass globe is one of only four structures built on a massive plot of land, once meant to house a huge manufacturing campus that would generate 13,000 high-tech jobs. 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 – the site currently conducts a small fraction of the promised manufacturing, with a workforce of around 1,000. The underused site is now even advertised as a place that can be rented for private events and banquets.
Unfortunately for the 27,000 residents of Mount Pleasant, their local and state governments spent around $500 million to bring the project to their village, leaving the town a debt load equal to 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. That’s some project, Donny boy.