I&I Editorial
The day before the Schiff & Pelosi Impeachment Circus opened for its fall run in the House of Representatives, President Donald Trump gave a speech at the Economic Club of New York in which he laid out his argument for a second term. And he made it clear why Democrats are desperate to avoid talking about the economy.
Trump began by resetting the clock back to 2016 when, as we’ve pointed out in this space many times, the economic forecast was grim.
“The so-called experts said Americans had no choice but to accept stagnation, decay, and a shrinking middle class as the new normal,” Trump said. “In short, the American people were told to sit back and accept a slow, inevitable decline.”
The Congressional Budget Office, he said, projected that the number of jobs would increase by just 2 million from January 2017 through the end of this year. The unemployment rate wasn’t supposed to get below 4.4% and was slated to start rising again in 2019.
The CBO said quarterly GDP growth over Trump’s first three years would never top 2.6% and would average 2%.
As Trump rightly explains, this wasn’t inevitable. It was the result of an economy being suffocated by taxes and regulations. “If we lifted these burdens from our economy, and unleashed our people to pursue their ambitions and realize their limitless potential, then economic prosperity would come thundering back.”
Sorry Trump haters everywhere, but he was right.
The economy has added three times as many jobs as the CBO had forecast. The unemployment rate is far lower. Quarterly GDP growth topped 3% in four quarters and has averaged nearly 2.6%.
Trump also has a long list of economic gains to brag about, which, not surprisingly, he did in his speech.
- The overall unemployment is the lowest it’s been since the 1960s.
- For women, it’s the lowest it’s been since the 1940s.
- For minorities, it’s lower than any time since the government started keeping such records.
- Real wages up more than 3%.
- Nearly 7 million are off food stamps.
- 10,000 new factories have opened since he took office (after a net loss of nearly 60,000 over the prior 16 years).
- Major stock indexes are up between 45% and 60%.
- The U.S. is now a net exporter of oil and natural gas.
Trump went on to show that median family incomes have climbed $5,000 so far under his administration, or almost five times the increase in the 7½ years Barack Obama presided over the economic “recovery.”
“After years of stagnation and decline,” Trump said, “American wages, salaries, and incomes are rising very fast. … At the heart of our economic revival is the biggest tax cut and reforms in American history, (and) the biggest, boldest, and most ambitious campaign to reduce regulation.”
By the way, when the New York Times fact-checked Trump’s speech, the only things it found wrong were his boast that the U.S. is winning World Trade Organization cases “for the first time,” and Trump’s odd boast that Ivanka created 14 million jobs.
Trump also previewed his attacks on Democrats. Here’s what he said:
Everything that we have achieved is under threat from the left-wing ideology that demands absolute conformity, relentless regulation, and a top-down control of the entire U.S economy.
“Far-left politicians in our nation’s capital want a massive government takeover of health care; they want to give government bureaucrats domination over every aspect of your business and your life; they want to eliminate American oil and natural gas; they want to enlist us in global projects designed to redistribute American wealth and kill American jobs all over our nation.
“Washington’s Democrats and their radical agenda of socialism would demolish our economy, reinstate the avalanche of regulations that I have already ended, decimate the middle class, and totally bankrupt our nation. As long as I’m president, America will never be a socialist country.”
Unless the economy craters in the next year, Trump has an incredibly strong hand to play. And if he tells the same story to the nation over the next 12 months that he told to the members of the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday, whoever the Democratic nominee is will be left holding aces and eights.
— Written by John Merline
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Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
Trump is one of the smarts player. He plays the Democrats. He knows than MAGA people follow him and stay with him for the rest of his life, that he will be our next President, that the Democratic Party does not have any good candidate, the America is free and will be free.
Trump is a hurricane and a tornado all rolled up in one person. I’m hoping that future Republican leaders are going to school on his ability to confound the Democrats at every turn. Here’s hoping that in his second 4 years, he focuses his attention and ours on the debt being endlessly run up by federal, state and local governments across this land. Seems to me that that must stop sooner rather than later. We shall see.
Since the increased deficits under President Trump is the Keynesian fiscal stimulus that is fueling the growth that exceeds those CBO forecasts, don’t expect deficits to decline under President Trump.
Compared to the CBO’s January 2017 deficit forecasts if there were no policy changes, the deficits under President Trump are up:
$106 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2017;
$292 billion in FY 2018; and
$383 billion in FY 2019.
We are buying a little extra growth with greatly increased deficits. Growth could be higher with better trade and immigration policies.
The deficit is from tax cuts and Republican Wars.
Did they help us in any way?
I suppose you are right. How could the rapid increase in non-defense spending have anything to do with the deficit?
Those Republican Wars are not “non-defense spending “
You are trying to give credit for the Obama Economy to Trump who is ruining it. Obama dredged our success from the stinking ruins of the Great Republican Economic Meltdown by Your Dubya. We lost 40% of the value of America under Republicans and their endless Republican Wars.
I want America to be Decent Again!
It’s hard to believe that I&I is serious about anything when you open this article with a childish characterization of the impeachment proceedings in the House.
This is nothing more than another Trump organ, and like most Trump organs, it’s rather small and doesn’t work very well.
William, u still don’t get it.I mean how, with so much facts & figures- stubborn ones- yet u r still in denial. For Pete’s sake, for once get over your infantile tantrum & have a hard,cold look at reality; none is asking u to ‘luv’ that guy, just admit the facts. Did it dawn on u how this Prez is ‘affecting’ so many people’s lives in such a +ve way. Btw most likely u r with a severe TDS, clouding your mind, reason & logic akin to the whoring MSM with their unrelentless bias & hatred for this Prez!
I take it you have a working knowledge of Trump’s organs, William?
The Democrats can’t handle the truth and have nothing to offer the American People!
Sure we can. Here it is:
52 U.S.C. § 30121
Trump is smart enough to know that he doesn’t have to win – he only needs to let the Democrats destroy themselves … again!
I always find it rich when people say it was obama’s economy and Trump just inherited it. If it was on such an upward trajectory why did obama say those jobs were never coming back and he’d need a magic wand to get them back. He clearly had no confidence in it himself. The GDP was hovering just around 1%… it was clear the regulation and taxation was crushing the middle class and stagnating growth. if it wasn’t clear before, when Trump removed those impediments things took off.
Before you misquote President Obama again, please listen to the full question and answer at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKpso3vhZtw
It refutes much of what you claim.
After explaining that we had been adding manufacturing jobs during his presidency, Obama acknowledged that some manufacturing jobs had disappeared due to moving overseas and some had disappeared due to automation.
Obama said that some of those jobs of the past are not coming back. “Some of those jobs…”
Obama said that Trump claimed, if elected, all of those jobs of the past would come back. Obama said that Trump did not have an answer for how he would accomplish this.
Yes, we have added 443,000 manufacturing jobs under President Trump. But it is also true that we added 915,000 manufacturing jobs under President Obama during the recovery from the Great Recession. (BLS series CES3000000001)
In the 33 months since President Trump took office the U.S. has added 6,250,000 total jobs. But in the prior 33 months the U.S. added 7,383,000 jobs. So job growth was faster before Trump. (BLS series CES0000000001)
If you check the Census Bureau stats, in 2016 we set a then all-time high for real median household incomes. This was under President Obama. So no, the middle class was not getting crushed under Obama.