Trump Returns Economy to the Same Mess It Was When He Left in 2020
Obsessed with bankrupting everything he touches, Trump is undoingBiden's success for no other reason but to (who the eff knows).
I don’t know where to begin. My brain is racing so fast, hurling out so many similes, witticisms, and metaphors that I am pretty sure smoke is wafting from my ears. Donald Trump, the worst president in American history, elected for a second time (which tells you just how stupid many Americans are), needed only 72 days to return the American — and likely world — economy to a similar place it was in 2020 during the great COVID economic collapse.
If right-wingers, M’gdiots, and independents who chose Trump over Harris for myriad of inane reasons were being honest, they would admit that Trump 2.0 has been an ongoing nightmare. When Biden took office in January 2021, I regularly wrote about how difficult it would be for him to lead the nation in the post-Trump era. Trump did so much that was so bad in his first three years that even without the COVID collapse, it would have been difficult to rebound. Trump’s criminal mismanagement during the COVID pandemic leading up to the January 6th insurrection took the United States to a low it hadn’t been since just before the first round hit Fort Sumter in South Carolina in 1860.
Nonetheless, and with little to no Republican support, the policies of Joe Biden helped return the nation to a sound financial footing. The inflation many complained about, as it turned out, was mainly due to the policies of Biden’s team and never became the nagging problem it was for most other developed economies. The crux of Trump’s economic program was to give the largest tax break in history to the nation’s wealthiest individuals, and his approach to COVID-19 was to deny its existence.
Biden, despite the incessant propagandizing of right-wing media, Trump’s continued control of the Republican Party, and the refusal of Republicans to work with the president, still rebuilt the nation’s foundation by passing bipartisan legislation and readying the country for the future. He left in place one of the most aggressive strategies to combat climate change and invest in alternative energy sources. It was the goal of his administration to help American families, workers, and veterans in need by ensuring the government existed not to serve corporations and Wall Street but to serve families and Main Street.
And yet, the media continually played the “inflation card,” discussing how out of touch the Biden administration was with the needs of Main Street. Corporate media peddled that narrative to sell advertising. Clearly, it would be quite boring to watch Biden succeed in rebuilding the country after the chaos and incompetence of Trump. Instead, corporate media pushed the lie that higher prices and collapsed supply chains were not the fault of Trump’s chaotic term but Biden’s “failing policies.” Americans who saw higher prices post-COVID decided Biden was guilty while never daring to question Trump’s culpability.
The economy lost 2.7 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 6.4%.
The international trade deficit that Trump promised to reduce went up. The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services in 2020 was the highest since 2008 and increased 36.3% from 2016.
The number of people lacking health insurance rose by 3 million.
The federal debt held by the public went up, from $14.4 trillion to $21.6 trillion.
Home prices rose 27.5%, and the homeownership rate increased 2.1 percentage points to 65.8%.
Illegal immigration increased. Apprehensions at the Southwest border rose 14.7% last year compared with 2016 (Trump’s FInal Numbers).
Here is how the economy rebuilt by Biden looked when Trump took office 72 days ago.
After inheriting a COVID-scarred nation in 2021, Mr. Biden focused on righting the economy, a strategy that economists told CBS MoneyWatch is visible in the country’s solid GDP growth and low unemployment. By several key measures, the economy is stronger than it was four years ago: The jobless rate is near a 50-year low, wages are growing and the U.S. managed to sidestep a recession widely expected by many on Wall Street as the Federal Reserve moved to curb inflation by ratcheting up interest rates.
“He should have a strong legacy when it comes to the economy,” Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, said of Mr. Biden. “He inherited an economy that was flat on its back because of the COVID pandemic, and he’s leaving an economy that’s flying high, at least in the aggregate (How Will He Be Remembered).”
The economy was “flat on its back” when Biden took office.
Donald Trump has inherited an economy that is “flying high.”
Here is how things look 72 days in.
The Trump administration’s tariffs are, by every reasonable account, an economic catastrophe in the making. So why are they happening?
Were America’s democracy functioning properly, Trump wouldn’t have the power to impose such broad tariffs unilaterally. Congress, not the presidency, has the constitutional authority to raise taxes — and tariffs are, of course, a tax on imports.
And historically, dictatorships — elected or otherwise — suffer from a fatal flaw: they have no ability to stop the people at the top from acting on their policy whims and, in the process, producing national disasters. This tendency is why democracy tends to produce superior policy outcomes over the long run; why America, and not Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, won the 20th century.
The tariffs, in short, show the true stakes of democratic decline. It’s not just a matter of abstract principle but the difference between stability and disaster (The Real Reason).
Everything he touches wilts and eventually dies. We need to oust Republicans from office and retake our country before it’s too — or it is already — late.
Get my new book, “How Bro Cutlure Won the Election for Donald Trump in 2024.”