". . . Trump didn’t build the pre-coronavirus economy he hails as his own. He inherited its major trends. This is true by just about every major metric, such as job growth and the decline in the unemployment rate, both of which had been steady during the Obama years and carried over into Trump’s presidency. . . Trump, of course, regularly claims he inherited a smoldering landscape of economic wreckage and turned it into a spectacular, glittering success. But it may now become harder to get away with this nonsense. . . Meanwhile, Trump might be in a better position to argue that he will rebuild our economy if he hadn’t thrown away whatever “economic populist” cred he once enjoyed. His massive corporate tax cut lavished most of its benefits on the wealthy while doing little for working people. He and Republicans are still trying to gut the Affordable Care Act’s health-care protections for millions. . ."
" . . . (President) Windrip had promised to make everybody richer, and had contrived to make everybody, except for a few hundred bankers and industrialists and soldiers, much poorer. He needed no higher mathematicians to produce his financial statements: any ordinary press agent could do them. To show a 100 per cent economy in military expenditures, while increasing the establishment 700 per cent, it had been necessary only to charge up all expenditures for the Minute Men to non-military departments, so that their training in the art of bayonet-sticking was debited to the Department of Education. To show an increase in average wages one did tricks with "categories of labor" and "required minimum wages," and forgot to state how many workers ever did become entitled to the "minimum," and how much was charged as wages, on the books, for food and shelter for the millions in the labor camps. . . "
". . . In the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump promised to eliminate the deficit (and all existing U.S. debt) in eight years. Instead, the budget deficit is two-thirds larger than the deficit he inherited, and his latest spending plan expects the shortfall to linger into 2035. And that’s only because the budget is built on a mountain of falsity — from an expectation that the economy will grow by 3% (which it hasn’t in the Trump era) and that Democratically held U.S. House of Representatives will accept a slew of damaging social safety net reductions, including cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, while substantially increasing spending on the military and a border wall. . . "
". . . One of the biggest themes of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address — and one of the biggest themes of his reelection campaign — is that he inherited a weak economy from President Barack Obama and turned it into a strong economy by implementing his own policies. . . "The years of economic decay are over," he told the joint session of Congress on Feb. 4, 2020. "The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. Gone, too, are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power and prestige.". . . Trump added, "If we hadn’t reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success.". . . When we reached out to the Trump campaign, they offered several statistics showing Trump has notched greater gains than Obama did, such as manufacturing job creation, the unemployment rate, and economic growth. We found those statistics, and other specific facts Trump cited during the State of the Union, were accurate, or largely so. . .However, unlike Obama, who inherited the Great Recession, Trump inherited an economy that was already getting back on its feet. Overall, we found a continuation of the favorable trend lines Trump inherited from Obama. . . "
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. . . of suggested gravity on which to concentrate instead of bullying children (who, coincidentally, are much more intelligent that you) in public, online forums . . .
". . . "Look beyond the daily headlines about the stock market and the unemployment rate, you’ll see a grim, long-term picture of our economy," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in an economic speech (recently). . .
"Trump said he's going to take care of the forgotten man. He got elected and forgot them," former Vice President Joe Biden said . . . last week. . .
"(Trump) is saying, 'the economy is doing great, just look at the stock market.' And a lot of folks around the country and around here in South Bend say, 'What about me?'" Mayor Pete Buttigieg told NBC . . .
In 2017 he traveled to Youngstown, Ohio, to assure voters he would revive the struggling manufacturing sector and keep open a nearby G.M. plant the automaker was threatening to close.
"Those jobs have left Ohio — they're all coming back. They’re all coming back,” Trump told a cheering crowd. "Don't move. Don't sell your house." . . . G.M. shuttered the plant this year. . ."
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. . . to a random facebook post (love-letter to the current U.S. president . . .
(from various fact-check and other internet sources)
Booming Economy-
Gross Domestic Product, Third Quarter 2019 (Advance Estimate) Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 1.9 percent in the third quarter of 2019. in 2012, when GDP growth similarly dropped to a revised 1.9 percent in the first quarter of the year. That was under former President Barack Obama, so Trump had another opinion on the matter.
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
Q1 GDP has just been revised down to 1.9% http://1.usa.gov/3hAL The economy is in deep trouble.
African-Americans Back At Work-
Trump did not inherit a mess. Here’s what history will record: More jobs were created in Obama’s last two years (5.1 million) than in Trump’s first two years (4.9 million). Growth in manufacturing employment began in Obama’s second term, when 386,000 jobs were added, and accelerated under Trump. Black unemployment did reach a record low during the Trump administration: 5.9 percent in May 2018. It currently stands at 6 percent. But many economists view the continued economic growth since the middle of 2009, when Democratic President Barack Obama was in office, as the primary explanation for hiring. More important, there are multiple signs that the racial wealth gap is now worsening and the administration appears to have done little, if anything, to specifically address this challenge. African Americans also had higher income prior to the Trump administration. A black household earned median income of $40,258 in 2017, the latest data available. That’s below a 2000 peak of $42,348, according to the Census Bureau.
American Companies Returning from Overseas-
A report on NBC’s “Today Show” by correspondent Ari Melber concluded that Trump’s impact on new investments and job creation in the U.S. announced recently by several companies has been “very small or nonexistent.” Several auto industry experts we spoke to said the announcements by GM and Ford were in the works before Trump was elected, and were largely market-driven decisions that fit a years-long trend in the industry. Indeed, car companies have been announcing such deals — many of them bigger — for years. As for Lockheed Martin, the jobs aren’t “coming back,” they are being added as part of a larger contract for more F-35 planes.
China Is Paying Attention-
Threatening to buy Greenland certainly did capture the attention of China. Again, how did that benefit U.S. citizens?
Strengthening Israel-
The U.S. president’s hasty decision to withdraw American troops from northern Syria has consequently left Israel reeling from the implications – all of which could put it (Israel) in increased danger.
Freeing Iran from a Devastating Regime-
It would be easy for Iranian leaders to conclude that the goal of U.S. policy toward Iran has nothing to do with changing its regional behavior or renegotiating the Iran nuclear accord — and everything to do with strangling Iran economically to fracture the regime or provoke a massive public uprising that would ultimately lead to the its collapse. And they’d be right.
Delivering on every promise he made-
The Promise: "I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great great wall on our southern border and I’ll have Mexico pay for that wall." Update: Donald Trump stalls on promise to build a wall, have Mexico pay for it.
A Lover of America-
He grabbed an unassuming Old Glory by its stand like a prom date, and gave it a brief, slightly terrifying, slow-dance to "Proud to be an American." In that moment, in a way, the flag was so many of us -- Americans recoiling at the smothering and unwanted advances of an unstable lech. On behalf of the flag, I wanted to shout: "I beg your pardon, sir! Get your hands off of me!"
You See An American Hero-
Without providing specific instances of heroics, one's perception and designation of "Hero" is strictly and totally subjective.
You See A Lover of America-
Regarding 'love', 'fault', 'expectations' and 'fighting the establishment', you have provided nothing of substance. Regarding 'policies', he clearly, as evidenced by his consistent inconsistencies, (see his exhortations on impeachment, Ukraine, Biden, whistleblowers etc) he has NO policies. This presidency is a disaster.
". . . Trump asserted that the tariffs already in place have boosted the economy. . .“These payments are partially responsible for our great economic results,” he tweeted on Sunday. . . Economists disagree. . .“It’s pretty hard to justify the argument that tariffs have strengthened the economy,” said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America. “In the first quarter GDP report, there was a very sharp reduction in imports. Of course that makes GDP look bigger, so that would be a result of the tariffs coming into play. However, that is not a way to grow an economy,” he said. . ."
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". . . The Dow. . . set an all-time high 70 times in 2017—once every five days—while the unemployment rate has neared an all-century low. . . Is this happening because of President Trump? Yes, according to President Trump. . . Like so many miracles, this is revisionist history. . . Even if Trump’s first 100 days had produced a bevy of new legislation, it typically takes about a year for policy to affect national economic statistics. But Trump’s first 100 days produced no major legislation, despite effectively unwinding Obama-era regulations for labor, environmental, and consumer protections. Instead, Trump is treating the U.S. economy the way he might treat the licensing of a fully built hotel: He has slapped his surname on the facade and shifted around the interior decor. But the foundation, scaffolding, and architecture of the thing either preexisted his term or are beyond his control. . . The most important reason for this global boomlet is somewhat boring: After eight years of central banks printing money to help businesses and companies recover from the global financial crisis, the entire world finally seems to be growing. Global trade in 2017—which has little to do with White House policy—has grown at its fastest pace in the last five years. . . Claiming individual credit for global phenomena is a risky long-term strategy for any president. If the price of energy plummets, the White House will find that the Trump miracle will end, through no fault of Trump. Between 2010 and 2014, Obama presided over a 30 percent boom in mining jobs, thanks to a burst in energy demand and a fracking revolution whose technology was decades in the making. Two years later, all of that net job growth had disappeared, as the global price for natural gas plummeted. Obama wasn’t the captain of the global market for energy; he was merely a powerful bystander. That’s just how it is: The president depends on the economy far more than the economy depends on the president. . ."
(from The First Tycoon; The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles)
". . . The Bank War spun American politics in a centrifuge, concentrating the two impulses of the day into distinct parties. On one side were (Andrew) Jackson's followers, the Democratic Party - or the Democracy, as they called it - the party of individual equality and limited government. Under the slogan "Jackson, Commerce, and Our Country," they celebrated a market economy of real persons and republican simplicity. In opposition arose the Whigs, who were more trusting in the beneficial role of active government. At the time, the division between the two seemed as natural as a canyon. The Democrats had emerged out of the resistance to the eighteenth-century patricians and their culture of deference, out of battles against the limited franchise, aristocratic privileges, and mercantilist monopolies. Though their elected leaders often would make use of government's economic power, the most radical among them . . . championed laissez-faire as their definition of equal rights. . . "
". . . Saudi authorities have detained at least six activists, including three of the country's most prominent women's rights campaigners, just weeks before the kingdom is set to lift a ban on women driving, people familiar with the arrests said Friday. . . As activists remain under pressure to keep silent, credit for reforms, such as lifting the ban on women driving, has largely gone to the king's 32-year-old son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He has relaxed some of the country's ultraconservative rules by allowing women into stadiums to watch sports and bringing back musical concerts and movie theaters. . . Such measures, however, are more about boosting the economy and improving the country's image abroad, and less about promoting personal freedoms. The kingdom remains an absolute monarchy where protests are illegal and where the king and his son oversee all major decision-making. . ."
". . . (Larry)Kudlow (appointed Director of the National Economic Council by US President Donald Trump) has made some enormous and stupendously bad calls. In the fall of 2007, when the housing and stock markets were collapsing, he downplayed it, writing in National Review that, “Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S economy continues moving ahead quarter after quarter, year after year, defying dire forecasts and delivering positive growth.” Looking ahead to 2008—when the entire U.S. economy came crashing down and millions of Americans lost their jobs, and banks, automobile makers and mortgage lenders had it be bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars—he said “we are about to enter the seventh consecutive year of the Bush boom.” . . . Anyone who thinks otherwise, he added with flair, “are going to wind up with egg on their faces.”. . . from 1993: “There is no question that President Clinton’s across-the-board tax increases on labor, capital and energy will throw a wet blanket over the recovery and depress the economy’s long-run potential,” Kudlow wrote. What happened next? The U.S. economy began an eight-year expansion, creating 21 million jobs—and the federal budget was balanced. . . Let’s hope that Kudlow’s forecasting skills have improved with age. . ."
(from http://www.globaltrademag.com/in-the-news/nafta-negotiations-restart-today)
". . . A Trade Partnership Worldwide for the Business Roundtable report concludes that a termination of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would have significant negative impacts on the economy and employment in the U.S. High tariffs would be reimposed on U.S. exports and imports, which would reduce competitiveness both domestically and abroad. U.S. exports would drop, to Canada, Mexico and globally, as U.S. output becomes more expensive. Foreign purchasers would shift away from U.S. goods and services in favor of lower-cost goods and services made elsewhere. Lower output will translate to less employment: 1.8 million workers would lose their jobs in the first year. . ."
". . . Trump relentlessly congratulates himself for the healthy state of the US economy, with its steady growth, low unemployment, busier factories and confident consumers. . . But in the year since Trump’s inauguration, most analysts tend to agree on this: The economy remains essentially the same sturdy one he inherited from Barack Obama. . .Growth has picked up, but it’s not yet clear if it can sustain a faster expansion. Hiring and wage growth actually slowed slightly from Obama’s last year in office. Consumers and businesses are much more optimistic, but their spending has yet to move meaningfully higher. . .“I don’t see any noticeable break over the past year,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “We tend to overstate the degree to which the president has the ability to control the economy.”. . . "
. . . (part of the record) of the "worst president in the history of the United States" - labeled as such by the current president . . .
(http://www.factcheck.org/2016/01/obamas-numbers-january-2016-update/ - as of January 12, 2016)
-Homicides have dropped 13 percent, but gun sales have surged
-The economy has added more than 9 million jobs, and the jobless rate has dropped to below the historical median
-The number of long-term unemployed Americans has dropped by 614,000, but it is still 761,000 higher than at the start of the Great Recession
-Corporate profits are up 166 percent; real weekly wages are up 3.4 percent
-There are 15 million fewer people who lack health insurance
-Wind and solar power have nearly tripled, and now account for more than 5 percent of U.S. electricity
(http://www.npr.org/2017/06/21/533889445/after-georgia-win-a-triumphant-trump-returns-to-campaign-trail-in-iowa)
". . . it was freewheeling Trump as he jumped from topic to topic, strayed off-message, made some head-scratching remarks and revisited some old campaign trail favorites. . . In talking about his cadre of advisers, he boasted about their financial pedigrees — even though he'd slammed Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail or being too close to those same interests. . . "We have Gary Cohn, who is the president of Goldman Sachs. He's the president of Goldman Sachs. He had to pay $200 million dollars in taxes to take the job, right? So, somebody said 'Why did you appoint a rich person to be in charge of the economy?' I said, 'Because that's the kind of thinking we want,' " Trump said, adding that Cohn and other multimillionaires in his Cabinet had to "give up a lot" in taking administration jobs, going from "massive paydays to peanuts.". . ."
. . . for those who haven't checked the facts . . .
(from http://www.factcheck.org/2015/01/obamas-numbers-january-2015-update/)
". . . Jobs, paychecks, corporate profits and stock prices have all improved since our last report on the Obama statistical record. . . The economy has now gained nearly five times more jobs under President Barack Obama than it did during the presidency of George W. Bush, and the unemployment rate has dropped to just below the historical average. Real weekly earnings are up 1.7 percent, thanks in part to a plunge in gasoline prices. Corporate profits have nearly tripled, and stock prices have soared. . . "
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