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.