Trump's Economy

Until a few months ago, Trump's strongest argument for his reelection was the state of the economy, which from some angles, looked pretty good. He really didn't have anything else:

• Despite his bragging and his arguably unconstitutional redirection of funds, his "Big, Beautiful Wall" wasn't getting built. As of January 1st, 93 miles of barriers had been built, 90 of them replacing or upgrading existing structures. 
• Despite his pledges to "bring our troops home", and occasional announcements that he was in fact withdrawing from Afghanistan, all of our troops are approximately where they were when he took office. 
• His one-on-one "diplomacy"with Kim Jong-Un hasn't resulted in North Korea's denuclearizing, the official end to the Korean War, or really anything other than some claims of great friendship and "love letters". In other words, North Korea's leader is playing us just like his father and grandfather did. 
• I'll grant that he has appointed a huge number of federal judges, but this can be attributed to eight years of obstruction by Mitch McConnell than anything else, and is something that any Republican would have accomplished. 
• He brags about his tariffs, not only on China, but on our own allies, which have done nothing but increase costs for American consumers. 
• While there have been sporadic plant openings in the manufacturing sector, coal and steel are in virtually the same place that they were in 2016

So it's not surprising that Trump has emphasized things like the stock market, unemployment percentages and job creation. 

Anyone who can Google "Trump economy" and can read a simple line graph can see that all three of those metrics are simply extensions of the trends that began during Obama's administration.

• Job creation has risen in most months, but at a rate that is no different, in some instances, worse than during the previous administration
• We hear a lot from Trump when manufacturers open a new plant, or forgo moving to Mexico, but he's pretty quiet when the opposite happens, other than accusing the owners of hating America
• Unemployment numbers (until March 2020) were, it is true, often record, or close to record, lows, but again, an extension of previous trends. 
• The stock market in a lot of ways is high stakes gambling. Here's a link to some of my previous blogs about the stock market https://tjpolitics.blogspot.com/search?q=stock+market
• Stock prices follow simple rules of supply and demand, when investors think that a given stock's value will increase they will buy more of it, the greater demand causing the price to increase
• Investor behavior in the stock market reflects confidence in future events
• One of the things an investor looks for in a stock is the company's value per share of stock. For example, if a company is worth 20 million and has 1 million outstanding shares, the value per share is $20 (the actual price of the stock may be different). If there are only 500,000 shares, then the value per share doubles to $40 (simple math). What many companies have done is buy back outstanding shares with their windfall from the recent tax rate decreases. The result is that their company's value per share looked more lucrative. 

The Covid-19 pandemic and the measures taken to contain it have exposed just how shaky the supposedly great economy actually was, Unemployment numbers have equaled or exceeded those of the Great Depression. A graph showing unemployment claims for the last century is almost unreadable due to the astronomical spike for the last two months. That red line on the right side of the chart is not a border, it is the spike for the last two weeks of March. Stock prices plummeted, wiping out any gains realized during the last three years.  Whole swaths of the economy may be erased in the wake of this crisis. While some "essential" businesses have stayed open, many operations, large and small may not survive having no revenue for several months. Even large corporations are struggling, partly because they have no cash reserves due to their orgy of stock buybacks. 

Our economy, which seemed to be chugging along nicely, was the equivalent of being one paycheck away from bankruptcy. 

How great could it have been before this virus crisis if it all fell to pieces so quickly?

I'm of the opinion that, for the most part, presidents have little effect on the economy, so I'm not blaming him for the way the economy tanked so quickly, however, since he took the credit when things went well, he should take the blame when it goes south. Of course he won't. It's someone else's fault. 

But if you support Trump "because the economy" (and not his racism, xenophobia, incompetence and narcissism), well, you don't have that excuse anymore.

No, No, No...He's NOT "Doing a Great Job" With the Coronavirus

I posted this on April 10th, I have updated it in a few places

I could go on all day about different reasons that Trump should have been removed from office following his impeachment, and why he should be voted out of office in November, but his response to the Coronavirus crisis should highlight his incompetence. I know I wrote "should", but for his sycophantic, idiotic, cultic followers, they'll still think he's doing a great job and blame Obama, Pelosi, the Chinese, the media and whoever else ticks him off.

For most of Trump's presidency things have gone fairly well for the economy, at least for some parts of it. Even though not everyone was benefiting, Trump could brag about record high stock market numbers, record low unemployment and regular job creation. Even though anyone who could read a line graph of economic trends since 2008 could see that the positive numbers were simply extensions of Obama-era numbers, and in some cases worse than Obama numbers, his base was satisfied. Despite his belligerence toward our allies and threatening war with both North Korea and Iran, worst case scenarios never came to pass. To many, Trump's incoherence, incompetence and ignorance was simply background noise that didn't affect their daily lives in any meaningful way.

Now we have a problem that can't be bullied into silence by Trump: the Coronavirus. Trump's response to this pandemic has been erratic from the start.

• He played it down as a "Chinese problem" and bragged that it wouldn't effect the United States.
• The CDC was already responding to the possibility of infections in the U.S. in early January and was including warnings about the virus in Trump's daily security briefings. 
• HHS Secretary Azar is finally able to meet with Trump about the virus on January 18th, but Trump wanted to talk about vaping instead. 
• The daily security briefings contained warnings about the danger of a pandemic via the Coronavirus throughout January
• In Trump's first public statement on January 22, he claims that we have it under control and everything is fine. 
• On January 31st Trump finally institutes a partial travel ban on people coming from China. (He later brags that this shows that he took the virus seriously - this was after several airlines had shut down flights to and from China). 
• Advisers call for a more forceful response; Treasury Secretary Mnuchin objects because of the possible effect on the economy. 
• Throughout February Trump is still insisting that "everything will be fine"
• In late February Trump is still saying it's under control and brags about the stock market
• On March 10, Trump tells the nation to "stay calm, it will go away"
• Trump claims that with only 15 people infected, soon down to zero, "we're doing pretty good"
• Finally Trump declares a national emergency on March 13th
• On March 16th he begins his revisionism and gaslighting by claiming that he never said the virus was under control, but that our response was under control
• Trump starts doing daily doing daily press briefings in the White House Briefing Room (they must have had to clear out the dust and cobwebs first) - despite social distancing concerns, he has his team standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the stage.
• Trump uses these briefings to:
• Promote unapproved treatments for Covid-19
• (One anti-malaria drug that he was pushing later turned out to be harmful when not used for its intended purpose)
• Although he didn't technically promote ingesting bleach, he did seriously suggest that doctors "look in to" injecting disinfectants
• Lied about who he was talking to about injecting disinfectants, incredibly suggesting that he was "sarcastically" addressing reporters "to see what they would do"
• Contradict the few experts on his team
• Lie about airport screenings
• Lie about availability of ventilators and other medical equipment
• Complain about governors who don't sufficiently praise him
• Threaten to refuse to help governors who are mean to him
• Recently he threatened to withhold Covid-19 support from states that had sanctuary cities or did not cooperate with ICE
• Blame Obama for having a "bad" treatment for Covid-19 in storage (Covid-19 did not exist 3 years ago)
• Blame the media for blowing the situation out of proportion
• Also blame the media for not taking the situation seriously enough
• Blame Obama for pretty much every shortcoming of his team
• Claim that he is doing a great job and rates an A+ for his handling of the crisis
• After his supporters blame Democrats for the slow response by distracting him with impeachment, he claims that he couldn't have done a better job, even if there hadn't been an impeachment
• Blame the Democrats for holding up relief bills
• Brag about how well he is doing responding to the challenge
• Turn the briefing into campaign rallies, complete with attacks on the Democrats and the media
• Lie about his daughter's job creation record
• Insult reporters who ask him questions
• Rewrite history by claiming to have done things he had not in fact done and denying saying things for which there is clear video/audio evidence

In short, this is an enormous fuck-up. Certainly there are things that Trump and his team have done right, but the whole goal of his plan for responding to this crisis seems to be making Trump look good and stroking his ego.

In times like this we don't need someone who puts themself at the center, someone who craves adulation and who lies about his shortcomings and failures, we need a leader who will selflessly and compassionately lead.