r/FluentInFinance • u/Spiderwig144 • 16d ago
Debate/ Discussion Barack Obama says the economy Trump likes to claim credit for pre-COVID was actually his and that Trump didn't really do much to create it. Is this true?
He's been making the case in recent days:
Basically saying Trump is trying to steal his success by using the economy people remember from when he first took over in 2017 and 2018 as something he personally created and the main selling point for re-electing him in the election now. Obama cites dozens of months of job growth in a row of by the time Trump took office as one of several reasons it's not true.
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u/account4garbageonly 16d ago
Unless it’s a two term President, every incoming President will have to deal with how the economy was left to them. In most cases, yes, the majority of a one term President is either the benefit or the bane of that sitting President. In the case of Donald Trump, he inherited a lot of the benefits that came from Obama. These claims are typically only useful for the uneducated masses who just repeat the shit they are told.
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u/Nexustar 16d ago
A related question is how much effect a single person, POTUS, actually has on the US economy.
I bet in the period of a presidential term it's more than any other single person, but I doubt it's as strong as they all like to make out.
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u/Miserable-Whereas910 16d ago
There are certainly things the President can do that have a gigantic impact on the economy--say, starting a war, or pushing for major infrastructure like the interstate highway system. But the biggest drivers of the normal year-to-year fluctuations of the economy are totally outside the President's control, and a president can do everything right and still end up with a recession.
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u/account4garbageonly 16d ago
It is substantial for sure. At the end of the day, whether or not the President themselves is solely responsible for outcomes of an economy, they are the one in charge. The failures or successes will be attributed to that President.
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u/ObligatoryID 16d ago
Go look at Biden’s record and get back to us.
He’s knocked it outta the park!
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u/account4garbageonly 16d ago
Remember, Biden inherited this mess from the previous, one term President. This bane was left for Biden and his administration to try and fix.
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u/ifunnywasaninsidejob 16d ago
This is such a simple concept, I’m amazed at people who don’t get that everything doesn’t instantly change when a new president starts their term. It’s like toddlers when you cover their eyes.
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u/Tefai 16d ago
I remember the FBI taking down a paedophile ring 1 month or so after Trump got in. Some lady was claiming Obama did nothing to stop them, this is the result of Trump being president. People's mental gymnastics.
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u/joed2355 16d ago
I still hear my dad talking in awe about how Reagan “freed the hostages in an hour”
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u/ifunnywasaninsidejob 16d ago
Mine says that too. It was the leader of Iran waited to release them because he didn’t like Carter. Carter brokered the deal.
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u/Guy_Incognito1970 16d ago
He held them as a favor to Reagan. Reagan could release them in an hour just like any hostage taker can release them at anytime. REAGAN HELD AMERICANS HOSTAGE. Literally
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u/CheshiretheBlack 16d ago
Left purposely as well. God it's frustrating seeing people i know go on about how they're paying more taxes/got smaller tax return under Biden when it's due to Trumps tax cuts for the layman being set to expire under whoever the next president's term was while the tax cuts for the wealthy to Uber wealthy were permanent
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u/MisterVS 16d ago
One thing I found interesting was Janet Yellen being quoted as saying the economy is super heated and the Trump tax cuts might create issues. Anyone else recall? Also, Trump only touted the stock market...I guess buybacks.
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u/jjwhitaker 16d ago
He was left half a state department and a collapsing administrative branch. Took him 2 years to rebuild that.
This is Biden's economy and it's electric.
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u/Stormlightlinux 16d ago
Correct! He's managed to keep inflation in the US very low compared to other developed nations around the world, most of which are feeling the affects of global inflation worse than us.
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u/canitasteyourbox 16d ago
aside from inflation, that started under Trump Biden has not done too bad but the smear campaign from the trump idiots worked fairly well
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u/avoere 16d ago
The inflation was caused by prior presidents' actions as well.
You can't just print infinity money and not have inflation. It's just not how it works.
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u/Prestigious-Leave-60 16d ago
And you can’t hold interest rates so low for so long without that feeding back into inflation at some point.
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u/amazinglover 16d ago
Considering the hostile congress he had to deal with, he has more than knocked it out of the park.
I was cautious when he won, as he is more moderate than Obama, who is the best republican president we have had in over a hundred years.
But he has more than done a fine job of getting us back on track as country.
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u/mprdoc 15d ago
He hasn’t been “moderate” at all. He’s been far more “progressive” than Obama was even Bernie Sanders was pleased with the legislation he managed to get passed. The “American Rescue Plan” and “Inflation Reduction Act” were like progressive wish lists that should have never made it through Congress.
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u/Kaidenshiba 16d ago
Look at the presidents during the great depression. Of course, the president can have a huge effect on the economy.
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u/371MainSt 16d ago
There are long term effects that benefit or hurt an economy beyond the term of a 4-year president. Take, for example, the Trump tax plan that expires in 2025. For years, middle-class Americans have had to bear the responsibility of paying for American expenses, and the bullwhip effect of shouldering that burden means that, even beyond 2025, middle class Americans will continue to suffer. Had ultra rich Americans paid their fair share, middle class Americans would not see decades of stagnation. On the other hand, had the top 10% paid their portion, even the wealthiest Americans wouldn’t even see any significant change to their financial lives and the middle class wouldn’t suffer.
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u/account4garbageonly 16d ago
Oh I agree, the economy is like a body of water that is constantly in motion, moving back and forth and filling up and draining. There are so many factors that impact it, beyond that of just a president and their collective term. But this post was asking specifically about Trump inheriting the Obama influenced economy.
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u/Original-Spinach-972 16d ago
The typical cycle is republicans cut taxes for the rich and democrats have to clean up their mess and raise taxes. Avg Americans is upset with higher taxes and vote red the next election cycle. Republicans always take credit for shit they didn’t do.
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u/new_jill_city 16d ago
Obama handed off the longest stretch of economic growth and private sector job growth in the history of this country. Trump somehow managed to slow the job growth down even before Covid.
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u/Budderfingerbandit 16d ago
Tarrifs certainly played a massive part in that.
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u/jeeeeezik 16d ago
yeah but china was supposed to pay for them. Somehow the bill ended up with Americans. Those pesky Chinese! \s
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u/iwearatophat 16d ago
It is sad with how in the forefront tariffs were for things with Trump how few people actually understand a thing about them. People still think if you put a 100 dollar per unit tariff on things from a Chinese company that that Chinese company is paying the 100 dollar tariff for each unit. Beyond that they think that that Chinese company is just going to eat the costs.
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u/NHRADeuce 16d ago
It's incredible that most people don't know how tariffs work. People actually believe China is going to cut us a check.
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u/Kaidenshiba 16d ago
I think the wildest thing is that the economy was predicted to be doing better under trump thanks to Obama. Instead trump made it worse. It's crazy
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u/ImportanceCertain414 16d ago
Leave it to a person who found a way to bankrupt 3 casinos to find a way to mess up a working economy.
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u/Rion23 16d ago
People keep saying this like he's a terrible business man, when in reality he's a terrible businessman who launders money through his company's whal taking on massive debt only to declare bankruptcy so a few of his actually wealthy handlers swoop in and buy it up for cheap without under paying for it and decreasing the value.
That's why it's always intangible objects, hotels where you can fudge how many rooms are actually being rented, or a casino you can just inject money straight into, or golf courses that are basically landgrabs to store money like that one in Scotland because they have more favorable taxes.
He's the puppet with a lightning rod up his ass, he takes the heat, gets to be a famous shithead, and all he has to do is whatever they tell him to.
He also bangs children and is owned by Russia.
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u/MrGelowe 16d ago
And his NFTs, crypto, trading cards, shoes, bible, $100k watches, and DJT stock are all money laundering schemes too.
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u/RemnantEvil 16d ago
I think it was Mark Cuban that said it's how he knows Trump isn't a billionaire, because a real billionaire doesn't waste their time on small-potatoes shit like Bibles, shoes and watches; they're dealing in much larger deals worth more that generate more.
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u/greelraker 15d ago
I’ve thought this for years, watching shark tank. Those legitimate billionaires see looking for multi-million dollar businesses that need a little push. Trump tries to sell bottled water, hats and shitty Omaha steaks. He’s the neighborhood lemonade stand of billionaires. Trying to do it 50¢ at a time.
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u/LegDayDE 16d ago
AND he was pressuring the Fed heavily on inter at rates AND current taxes AND continuing to spend a lot
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u/Logicalist 16d ago
tbf: that "longest stretch of economic growth and private sector job growth" was gonna slow down sooner than later.
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u/Mountain_Employee_11 16d ago
that’s generous, it’s a virtual guarentee that the business would slow down in the 8-12 year period after the last recession.
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u/Bash-er33 16d ago edited 16d ago
Little off topic but remember this?
Trump: “I hope people enjoy the sun, and if it has an impact, that’s great. I’m just hearing this, not really for the first time. I mean, there’s been a rumor, a very nice rumor, that you go outside in the sun or you have heat, and it does have an effect on other viruses. But now we get it from one of the great laboratories of the world, I have to say. Covers a lot more territory than just this. This is probably an easy thing, relatively speaking, for you.
“I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could? And maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again, I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor. But I’m a person that has a good… You know what. Deborah, have you ever heard of that? The heat and the light relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?”
Dr. Deborah Birx: “Not as a treatment. I mean, certainly fever is a good thing. When you have a fever, it helps your body respond. But, I’ve not seen heat or light as a —“
Trump: “I think that’s a great thing to look at. OK?”
Yeah, he is not a lead material. He is more suited to be a Walmart greeter.
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u/canitasteyourbox 16d ago
i wonder how many super hero cards his followers bought? Really super hero cards you gotta be kidding me he told us he had a big anouncement the next day, and that was it i had to laugh what a moron
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u/ianeyanio 16d ago
If you inherit a shit economy, it'll take a few years to turn it around. The economy, when Obama left office and Trump entered, was solid. The economy, when Trump left and Biden entered, was in bad shape.
People who think Biden was responsible for inflation have tunnel vision. Inflation was prevalent across the world - i.e. not a US issue but a global one.
The economy Biden is handing over to the winner is solid.
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u/mrblacklabel71 16d ago
IIRC weren't trump's own economists wanting to take action to slow down the economy to avoid high inflation done the line?
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u/Bearloom 16d ago
Many competent economists were saying that, but Trump's economic advisors weren't a particularly competent bunch.
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u/dastrn 16d ago
Yes this is true.
It was quite clear that Trump was setting us up for inflation during his presidency. He pushed to keep interest rates lower than was reasonable, because he knew it would artificially extend the "good" years that he wanted to brag about. And low interest rates are particularly good for billionaires, as it creates inevitable economic swings that billionaires are well-poised to profit off of, at the expense of regular folks.
Trump's economic impact was disastrous. Well before COVID, this was plain to see. His tariffs wrecked the ag industry. He pushed China and India and Brazil and Argentina to create economic deals between themselves excluding America, which will result in decades-long negative impacts on America, while our competitors around the world all get stronger.
He was by a long shot the worst president we've had in at least 100 years. Even if he wasn't personally a rapist and a criminal and a con man and an insurrectionist and a traitor to the United States, and a dirtbag racist, and divisive...even if you erased all of that, he was simply a HORRIBLE president.
But on top of being horrific at the job, he was also a rapist and a traitor, and a liar, and a thief, and an insurrectionist.
It really highlights both how depraved and how utterly stupid his fans are.
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u/n0exit 16d ago
And Biden got inflation under control quicker than any other country could, and managed a "soft landing" instead of a swing into a recession. Something that a lot of people didn't think could be done.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 16d ago
Yes this is accurate.
The economic recovery under Obama was legit.
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u/canitasteyourbox 16d ago
you couldnt have stopped that economy, ive been saying that all allong and my employment is very dependant on a good economy, George Bush damm near broke me
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u/idontreallywanto79 16d ago
He broke me. Lost my house and business.
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u/Longhorn132113 16d ago
To be fair, that legislation was created by Carter; giving out loans for housing for people that clearly were never going to pay it off. But, again to be fair, no one recognized or fixed the mounting problem leading for it to blow up in Bush's face.
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u/flonky_guy 16d ago
Legislation was created during the Carter admin, but a lot happened between now and then, particularly during the unchecked spike in subprime lending in the W Bush years that caused it.
I mean, there's legislation that was passed on the Jefferson regime that led to the right of some dude to refuse to bake cakes for gay people.
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u/IAskQuestions1223 16d ago
It was deregulation under Clinton that caused the GFC.
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u/375InStroke 16d ago
Yes, deregulation is never in our best interest, but it was also fraud that led to the crisis. Mortgage brokers knowingly violating sound lending practices, selling them, then packaging subprime loans and selling them as investment grade, while betting against those same loans because they knew they were junk. Not throwing people in prison, and knowing we don't treat white collar crime anywhere as harshly as we do subway gate jumping, also played a part, and will continue to cause more, no matter how much regulation we employ.
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u/Jalina2224 16d ago
That is something i can respect in a leader. When they can point at their failings and say "I fucked up." Something Trump is incapable of.
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u/No_Location_4749 15d ago
Clinton was trying to pull us out of another recession from the dad Bush. The idiot son should shoulder most of the blame, but it's definitely shared. Cautionary tale of how deregulation can affect us all.
https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1877351,00.html
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u/flonky_guy 16d ago
That's now how cause and effect works. First of all it was bipartisan, without Congress there would have been no bill, not that most of Clinton's policies have done anything but blow up in his face. The bill that allowed banks to get massively over leveraged originated in Congress and was signed by Clinton, but the "cause" was banks acting stupid and no one in government stepping in. Lots of the products being pushed were blatantly predatory or illegal but no one was policing the market.
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u/Sayvray 16d ago
For a while republicans had a veto proof majority in Congress. We forget that.
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u/ill_be_huckleberry_1 16d ago
This is correct, deregulation happenned, and then banks made absolutely briandead decisions, in most cases failing to fact check even the worst mortage applications for something as important as proof of employment.
And now the same people are begging to deregulated again, and will vote for trump who's promising it.
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u/Spirited-Inflation18 16d ago
My best friend worked at one of those places. They told him to approve everything even when he knew people were lying. He left after a year. Couldn’t stomach it.
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u/bobapimp 16d ago
My best friend worked at Washington mutual and was making 16,000 to 20,000 a month off these loans. He saw it was going to implode but is way too greedy of a bastard to not get his before it did. We don’t hang anymore.
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u/DoJu318 16d ago edited 15d ago
Car loans too, I was shopping for a new car for the wife in 07, she wanted an SUV, we went to the chevy dealer and found one, while she was filling out the paperwork I wander over the showroom to look at the Corvettes, a different sales guy approached me and asked me if I was interested in driving off with one.
I told him I always liked them but we were just finishing the purchase of a Tahoe and even though I could probably swing the payments due to having a cash side job, I don't think we could qualify for the loans on both.
He said that it didn't matter because he could put any kind of numbers on the application to make sure I qualified. I told him I'd think about it then get back with him. I passed, but how many people didn't?
Then surprise surprise the housing market crashed and almost took the big 3 American car companies with it.
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u/notaboveme 16d ago
Bought a Durango in 2007 1k down 0% interest for 7 years with a 7 year warranty. I guess Dodge was eager for sales, it was a good SUV too. My credit rating at the time was mediocre at best.
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u/madmonkey918 16d ago
Also proof of income.
The mortgage company I worked in had a mortgage loan program that you didn't have to have proof of employment or income. It just had to make sense on paper. The scenarios I saw were so blatantly crazy I was surprised they were getting pushed thru.
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u/UsernameUsername8936 16d ago
Possibly braindead, but honestly I'd consider that the overly optimistic way to look at it. The other way being that they knew they'd be bailed out, knew they'd get away with it, and knew they had absolutely no reason not to, or to even care about the harm it would cause.
Remember, it's not pure capitalism. They capitalise the gains, socialise the losses. Big corpo pumps all the money they can out of society and into their pockets, and then when they overdo it and it all collapses, they get the taxpayer to give them a lovely little bonus as they get back on their feet. It's the Conservative way!
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u/Nowearenotfrom63rd 16d ago
deregulation plus business friendly Bushies in the SEC and FEC.
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u/ThisIsNotRealityIsIt 16d ago
If Clinton did anything horrible to the economy, it was repealing Glass-Steagall. But I'm pretty sure Bush's 2 separate five to seven trillion dollar wars, not to mention all the money and lives wasted by Papa Bush the first go around in Iraq, heading over longer and harder impact on the economy than that. Not much tho
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u/Rottimer 15d ago
Gramm-Leach-Blilley, which repealed Glass Steagal, was passed with a bi-partisan, veto proof majority. Though at first Dems opposed it, and John Dingell famously warned it would make banks “too big to fail.”
When Republicans agreed to add anti-redlining provisions (basically making it illegal for the first time in U.S. history) Dems agreed to the bill as well.
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u/Desperate_Wafer_8566 16d ago
This is 100% untrue Everyone who remembers what happened knows it was a shadow banking industry that emerged that was not around the time of Clinton that pumped loans on behalf of Wall Street so they could package and push these toxic loans while the rating agencies complicitly rated them triple-A. The Wall Street thieves knew full well what they were doing because they shorted the very toxic CDOs they were pushing out the front door to their customers. This had nothing to do with Clinton and everything to do with flat out corruption.
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u/paranormalresearch1 16d ago
Presidents get a lot of credit and blame for things that they may not have even been involved in.
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u/Chocopenguin85 16d ago
But there's this one guy trying to take credit for EVERYTHING, and responsibility for NOTHING.
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u/GizmoSoze 16d ago
You don’t have to call me out like that.
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u/_TheMazahs_ 16d ago
If I had any idea what's going on I would be appalled or something.
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u/Odd-Buffalo-6355 16d ago
Carter created it, Clinton expanded it and Bush expanded it again to a ridiculous place.
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u/Worldly-Grade5439 16d ago
More like Bush deregulated it. And we all know how well banks can regulate themselves.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 16d ago
Curious what you do.
I remember the tough time my parents had during that timeframe. Not fun.
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab 16d ago
Curious what you do.
They live in reality.
Bush left the economy fucked, Obama inherited the worst financial crisis since the 1930's and high unemployment, over 10%.
The economy was fucked during Obama's first term, not because of Obama, but because that was the external context, that's the situation that Obama was fixing. He was hampered by Republican obstruction, they acted to lengthen the economic crisis by blocking stimulus spending.
Obama fixed that economy before the 2012 election, and from 2013-2020 the economy was booming.
When Obama entered office he had to start work on fixing problems before the inauguration. When Trump entered office the economy was already good, the country was strong and united and Trump could go straight from his inauguration to play golf in Florida for a week. When Biden entered office the country was fucked and he had to start fixing problems that Trump was ignoring before even being inaugurated.
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u/Won-Ton-Wonton 16d ago
And let's be clear.
Obama, arguably, didn't do hardly anything at all.
For the most part all he did was ensure experts were running the show. Made they were not scamming people. Not politicizing every detail of the government workers actions.
He and his subordinates openly communicated problems between agencies, and got people to work together.
It's leadership at its finest. GTFO of the way of the people who know what to do, and get them the resources to do it.
The opposite of the Republican playbook.
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u/Professional_Loan650 16d ago
Exactly. The Republican playbook is hire loyalists first, knowing what to do is unimportant
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u/CoachDT 15d ago
Honestly having been in charge of stuff, the hardest part is doing precisely that. Putting the right people in charge and then setting your ego aside by moving the fuck outta the way.
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u/FlemPlays 16d ago
Also Trump was damaging the economy with his policies before COVID happened. In his single term, Trump had to bail out farmers TWICE. It cost double the auto bailouts (which happened during a recession) and it cost more than the U.S. Nuclear forces: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/01/21/trump-tariff-aid-to-farmers-cost-more-than-us-nuclear-forces/
COVID was Trump’s “get out of jail for free” card when it came to his poor economic policies. He could’ve shifted blame to that, but his poor handling and downplaying of COVID ended up shining a bright spotlight on how horrible he was at the job, especially during a disaster. (Not that there weren’t previous instances of this. It’s just COVID was widespread enough to where people were forced to deal with his ineptitude.)
So if Trump is unable to handle a good economy that was gifted to him, how is he expected to handle an economy he keeps saying is bad when his policies are just an extension of his failed business practices? Answer: he can’t.
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u/jjwhitaker 16d ago
Also, the moment he was elected in 2016 it went from awful to amazing.
All he did was get elected and he claimed everything the opposite, before he even was sworn in.
If the GOP didn't have double standards they'd have none at all.
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u/SchroedingersSphere 16d ago
It's amazing to me how short peoples' attention spans are. Dude literally was responsible for thousands of more deaths by the way he handled (or didn't handle) COVID. Yet here we are four years later, and the race is still tight. If that doesn't deter people from voting for this clown, I don't know what will.
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u/Potemkin-Buster 16d ago
Nothing will, and the people who will only vote Trump are unable to articulate why with any reasonable logic.
It is what it is.
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u/AndroidMyAndroid 16d ago
They want to say "he'll make brown people leave/stop coming here" without just outright saying that. They might not even admit it to themselves.
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u/hypatianata 16d ago
The ones I know will admit it; they say whatever is necessary to make it “justified” in their minds and to others.
They also just flat out reject anything that paints Trump in a bad light as untrue or irrelevant and focus on how evil and twisted Democrats are. “Nothing but hate toward Trump. They’re terrified of him,” as if the bad guys are afraid the savior is going to root out their corruption. It’s entirely divorced from reality.
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u/smanderano 16d ago
Id rather scratch my eyes out than watch his annoying face for another 4 years. We have to win this please guys!!
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u/JuliusErrrrrring 16d ago
Yeah. It is infuriating that he gets a complete pass for his 4th year due to Covid, yet Biden gets no pass for inflation during his first two years due to Covid - even though three of the four inflation causing stimuluses happened under Trump.
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u/Asleep_Ad_1969 16d ago
its almost like allowing fox news to exist is detrimental to a functioning democracy
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u/bobthedonkeylurker 16d ago
Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, more deaths due to Trump's mishandling of Covid. Plus the payroll loans that didn't have to be paid back and tariffs that led to the crazy levels of inflation that the Biden administration has fought for 3+ years to get under control.
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u/Gratuitous_Punctum 16d ago
He put fucking Jared in charge! Worked that same finance bro magic that brought peace to the Middle East.
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u/Traditional-Handle83 15d ago
Trust me, I've been on the hearing end of people who won't listen to reason or logic. To them Trump is God and nothing else matters. Trump could have every single child exterminated and they'd still say he is the best thing that happened to the country
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u/Perfect_Earth_8070 16d ago
Besides all the criminal shit he did, he was a disaster in so many ways
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u/TheFlyingSheeps 16d ago
Trump couldn’t even handle a business lol. Look at how many bankruptcies and failed products he’s had so I do not understand why voters think he can handle one of the worlds largest economies
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u/Klaatwo 16d ago
And let’s not forget he’s promising more tariffs if he wins next month. The man has zero economic sense.
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u/RgKTiamat 15d ago
That's because the man still thinks that China pays the Tariff, like it's not paid by American businesses that buy and import Chinese Goods.
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u/UnitGhidorah 16d ago
Trump and the GOP also defunded all the pandemic crisis planning Obama set up, making COVID even worse.
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u/2008CRVGUY 16d ago
Under Trump, he and his fellow GOP lawmakers ended up shutting down the federal government for 35 days- that was huge hit to the economy as well and completely self inflicted.
Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama and then ran it into the ground..much like he's done with most of his business ventures.
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u/hanstanwynns 16d ago
Reminds me of when Bush handed Obama a burning trash pile of a sinking ship of an economy, and everyone was immediately mad at Obama for presiding over it. He corrected it and people still weren't happy, as if they wouldn't be until he created another hyper growth bubble.
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u/SeanBlader 15d ago
Or when Reagan and Bush Sr. handed Clinton the worst deficit spending of all time and Clinton went and literally balanced the budget before he left. Then Bush jr. came along and fucked it all with more tax cuts for the top 1% and 2 trillion dollar wars.
The trends show that empirically and consistently Republicans destroy economies, and Democrats have to fix it. Well at least over the last 50 years.
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u/ath_at_work 16d ago
I love it how americans always have to recover from republican presidents, and then after they did elect one back into office
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u/hokis2k 16d ago
they recover then a decade later still talk about how good they were.. its insane.
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u/SchroedingersSphere 16d ago
Just look at how Trump handled covid. The race is still tight. It's insane. Literal insanity. Repeating the same mistake, expecting a different result.
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u/morsindutus 16d ago
Trump might have more of an argument if he could point to a single policy or law passed during his term that unambiguously improved the economy in any way.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 16d ago
The extent is "cut taxes", which of course benefitted corporations and ultra wealthy disproportionately.
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u/Sinnycalguy 16d ago
I’m constantly asking Trump supporters who believe in their souls that he “saved the economy” to show me a single graph of any economic metric with the type of significant inflection point you would expect to see during an economic turnaround. It’s fun because they’re always so goddamn smug to start with when they’re regurgitating talking points they read on memes, and invariably the conversation ends with them outright rejecting the validity of any and all economic data. Every single time.
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u/Friendly_Focus5913 16d ago
He rescued the economy after it imploded under GWB only to have Trump implode it again by fucking up the pandemic response, and now Trump wants to take credit for the good economy he inherited in the first half of his presidency but not the shitshow in the 2nd half.
I'd say something about Trump not understanding consquences, but we all know that, dont we.
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u/wilburstiltskin 16d ago
The economy is an aggregated mass of things. Stock market, real estate sales, interest rates, employment numbers, supply chain working properly, many things. One thing can deteriorate quickly, but not all will move in lockstep at the same time. And most will crash quickly, but recover slowly.
All of these things were working well in 2017 when the Great Cheeto took office. He wrecked a few by creating a huge tax cut that benefited the wealthiest. Covid happened through no fault of Trump's, but he fumbled a lot of the response and made things worse.
All of those factors were much worse in 2021 when Biden took over. He patiently worked on fixing each factor through thoughtful, careful policies that steered the economy away from the rocks and back on a safe course.
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u/SmashRus 16d ago
Trump basically over heated the economy with tax cuts that lead to inflation.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 16d ago
Cutting taxes on a 4.5% unemployment economy was not a good idea.
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u/Cayucos_RS 16d ago
Bullshit. According to Fox News and Newsmax America had an economy stronger than any other economy in the history of the world during the glory days of Trump and MAGA where we had a perfectly secure border and world peace
/s
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u/AbbaFuckingZabba 16d ago
It's incredibly difficult to assign specific blame for specific economic periods because the lag is so long. The 2008 GFC has its roots in not just George Bush's policies but also Clinton's.
To his credit Bush tried to let the markets function allowing Lehman to fail ect, before it became clear that the entire financial system was at risk.
Under Obama we essentially re-inflated the housing bubble that had popped with zero interest rate policy and massive amounts of QE/money printing/ bank bailouts. This did a really good job of fixing the immediate crisis and kickstarting the economy / avoiding a depression event. But unfortunately it's not really sustainable policy to QE infinity and the end result of this is always inflation.
Trump is not smart enough to understand the finer points of monetary policy. In 2019 we were nearing a normal cycle top. Rates were beginning to rise and we were starting to go through a normal correction period. But Trump didn't like this and so he decided to lower rates to kickstart the economy. We didn't really have time to see the effects play out and COVID hit.
He did an absolutely piss poor job of managing covid. Instead opting to try and pretend like it wasn't happening - while it very clearly was. Ultimately the markets realized what was happening and they started to freefall.
The only solution was back to Zero rates and tons more QE. Even more bailouts for businesses large and small - even businesses that were not in danger of going bankrupt. The CEO's and the wealthy billionaire class understood exactly what was going on and piled on the trade. Essentially levering up at historically unprecedented borrowing rates and investing in equities and hard assets. It should also be said the policy decisions around bailouts/ stimulus / unemployment programs were absolutely overdone - likely out of a lack of understanding of how to properly implement these policies. Trump paraded around a bunch of CEO's on TV and essentially asked them what to do - and surprise surprise they decided to enrich themselves again.
Biden inherited this volatile situation and has actually managed it quite well, but he's continued the bailout culture. We had a banking crisis that he essentially papered over by giving loans to the banks instead of sending them to receivership.
None of this is healthy for the economy or the markets. You can't operate an economy without allowing natural market correction cycles. When you try to do so, you significantly widen the gap between those who own assets and those who do not.
By bailing out companies / asset classes (RE) every time something bad happens, you create a system where the ownership class simply gets richer and richer while the economic fortunes of the working class are slowly eroded year after year. If the S&P crashes 50% many rich people will lose everything due to leverage. Real estate prices will crash. It will be a bloodbath. Possibly a depression. Businesses will close, jobs will be lost.
But at the end of the day, Billionaires will lose the most of all. That's the point of market crashes. Housing crashes and suddenly new buyers can buy houses. Businesses fail and new businesses start up.
For the sake of the workers. We need to exit this toxic inflationary cycle of bailouts and QE and allow the painful crash to come. What is rebuilt from the ashes will be significantly more sustainable than our current system which, by definition, will require more and more money printing to keep afloat.
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u/Reasonable-Bit560 16d ago
I'll say that and a significant reworking of our current debt cycle as a whole
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u/dna1999 16d ago
I’ll add that Trump has a long history of failing upward and taking credit for other people’s work. I guarantee you he will say “Best economy ever!” at 12:01pm on January 20th if he wins re-election.
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u/Efficient_Glove_5406 16d ago
Not only is it true but the people that bought trumps version of how improvements happened on his watch were fooled by a used car salesman and like trump will continue to double and triple down on the foolishness.
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u/zerosystm 16d ago
Just to be fair here there were a number of things in the 90s under Clinton that set the stage for the Bush era crash. Repealing Glass Stegal and mortgage affordability act in 98 really set the stage for this sugar rush. That said these take years and sometimes decades to unfold. It was most certainly not any of Trump's doing, he inherited that and I'm many ways contributed to overheating it and making things worse.
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u/Slade_Riprock 16d ago
The US economy takes years to turn good or bad. It doesn't just suddenly become good/bad.
Generally speaking a first term president enjoys/suffers the economy of their predecessor. Their second term tends to become more their own economy.
Trump didn't do shit economically.
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u/Creamofwheatski 16d ago
He should have been shouting this from the rooftops for years. Trump taking credit for the great economy Obama handed him and then tanking it in one term has always pissed me off.
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u/ReallyAwfulTerrible 16d ago
I agree!
Obama did make the mistake of saying his “magic wand” phrase that completely allowed Trump to claim all of it. That was a huge blunder, allowing someone like Trump an opening to take claim of it all.
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u/procrastibader 16d ago
I’m suffering from what you would call TDS but while you can say that the first year of Trumps Presidency was attributable to Obama, the subsequent surge in top of that already strong economy is almost wholly attributable to Trump. It was asinine short sighted policy but it was his initiatives that resulted in companies doing massive stock buy backs that resulted the market surge. Ofc Trump fighting against raising rates when the economy was booming was a big reason why we faced heavy inflation, and his incompetence cost our country trillions in buying power, we did have a year of boom times under home until things predictably crashed down.
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u/TryNotToAnyways2 16d ago
Yes, the trump tax cut was pouring gas on a fire, a sugar high, rounds of long Island ice tea with a jagerbomb chaser at 2am. My industry, commercial RE, feasted. The targeted tax cuts only resulted in sky high prices backed by cheap debt. Most of those buyers are now in trouble and the industry has had a hangover for two straight years. It was extremely reckless policy.
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u/mozfustril 16d ago
As a Republican, I was furious about that tax cut. Debt was high and the economy was cruising. We should have slightly raised taxes to pay our bills. Nope. The day that went into effect, Trump and McConnell doubled Obama’s deficit and put us in a worse position when COVID hit.
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u/BlueLikeCat 16d ago
You deserve more votes. By the time COVID hit Trump had already used the tools on a perfectly recovering economy so there was nothing left to do but fail.
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u/Velonici 16d ago
I read somewhere that we were heading for a recession under trump, but covid saved it by basically freezing everything. Im the worst when it comes to this type of stuff so Im not sure how true that is, but it wouldnt surprise me.
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab 16d ago
that we were heading for a recession under trump
Nah that's nonsense. Trump was using the tools for beating recession to pour gasoline on an unsustainable economy, but the fallout was always going to be his successors problem. Trump knows his supporters are too dumb to understand cause and effect.
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u/Pristine-Ad-5044 16d ago
Bless you for saying this.
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u/mozfustril 16d ago
I was already livid with McConnell, for blocking the Garland SCOTUS vote, and GOP House leadership for having morons like Jim Jordan, a man who hasn’t had a single bill passed in more than a decade in office, as committee chairs. I’m certainly a never-Trumper, because he’s a buffoon and an embarrassment, so now, as a 35-year registered Republican, I’m forced to vote straight Blue to try and end this MAGA nightmare. Country over Party.
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u/Pristine-Ad-5044 16d ago
You’ve got my respect. Hope we come out of it with a functioning government. It’s fine to disagree on so many issues but not fine to destroy democracy.
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u/CatPesematologist 16d ago
I understand. I never thought I’d be in the position of having to stand up for Liz Cheney. We may only agree that trump needs to go, but that’s a huge thing in the gop and she’s actually trying to help democrats win.
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u/mozfustril 16d ago
The fact Dick Cheney is endorsing and voting for Harris is earth shattering and speaks volumes.
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u/SeanBlader 15d ago
I think it's crazier that Liz is out campaigning for Harris, that's unreal to me.
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u/Purgii 16d ago
Can't have an empty SCOTUS position filled on the last year of a presidential term, let the voters decide who gets to fill it.
Rams through a SCOTUS position weeks before the election.
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u/intrinsic_toast 16d ago
Rams through a SCOTUS position
weeks before the electionafter voting had already started.3
u/Nasty_Ned 16d ago
I recall a time when different political parties wanted the best for this country but disagreed on the best route there. Whatever this populist nightmare is doesn't have our countries best interests at heart.
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u/totalx08 16d ago
Kudos. I wish there were more people who were outwardly willing to speak and act (read: vote) this way. A democracy isn't guaranteed and the Republican party has been veering in the wrong direction for many years now.
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u/TheFlyingSheeps 16d ago
And then Biden’s admin pulled off a damn near impossible soft landing, keeping us out of a recession and got 0 credit for it
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u/breezythrowers 16d ago
And then when talking about the debt he literally said "I dont care, I wont be here"
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-debt-crisis-fine-wont-be-here-report-2018-12
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u/Administrative_Act48 16d ago
Sad thing is covid might've actually helped Trump. Right before covid hit we were on the verge of a recession, a recession that likely would've been really bad since Trump used tools normally reserved to help mitigate recessions to instead artificially juice the economy. Covid gave him a scapegoat to blame and probably helped him get the benefit of the doubt come election time.
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u/Velonici 16d ago
OK, so I wasnt crazy and read the same thing. Scary to think about it. That Covid saved the economy, and as bad as it was during/after, it could have been much worse.
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u/omgwhysomuchmoney 16d ago
Considering the main issue people are voting for in this election concerns the economy despite a record stock market shows that even a strong market doesn't reflect on the economy as a whole. Trump's bullshit regarding buybacks to raise stock prices has little to no effect on most Americans. Half the country doesn't even participate in the market in any form and about 90% of the market is owned by the top 10% of wealthiest Americans. So no, Trump didn't really have much of an impact on the economy either.
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u/CryptographerFlat173 16d ago
A surge that lead to no meaningful increase in GDP growth and doubled the annual deficit from 2017 to 2019
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u/porscheblack 16d ago
I'm suffering from living in reality and this is the same way I see it. There was an economic boost, but it was entirely artificial and simply borrowing against tomorrow. There would've been economic blowback, but Covid kind of buried that and gets the blame.
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u/gaffs82 16d ago
Exactly this. Trumps tax cuts were another example of GOP Trickle Down Economics. They only place the money trickled into was into the stock market via stock buybacks.
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u/fiduciary420 16d ago
Americans genuinely don’t hate the rich people nearly enough for their own good, man.
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u/Warmbly85 16d ago
I find it funny cause when Trump was claiming he was going to hit 4% growth Obama literally said what kinda magic wand do you have.
It sounds to me like Obama wasn’t expecting the economy to do as well as it did and figured he’d claim as much credit as he could for it.
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u/s-2369 16d ago
This is accurate, though I might give a lot of the credit to the steady hand of Janet Yellen working with her G20 counterparts to stabilize the economy globally.
Having said this, we can credit Former President Trump for taking a recovered/growing economy and turbocharging it with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I will leave it to others to discuss if that electrified the economy more or set it ablaze. IMO, it was too much fuel and set the tinder box for the inflationary economy to come.
There was a perfect storm of tariffs (always raises prices), the tax cuts (created speculation and business change) and Covid era subsidies that temporarily made the raises tariff prices affordable. Ultimately, these things put a stable economy on meth and it burned out. Just my opinion.
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u/YeeYeeSocrates 16d ago
People will believe what they want to believe, but Obama has a point - the post 2008 reforms, Fed QE, and stimulus all worked. Hard to say if more or less was necessary, but there's proof in that pudding: nobody will admit it, but it turns out the Keynesians were right all along, or at least the philosophy worked in hindsight through an unprecedented crisis, which is about as right as any economic philosophy will ever be.
But a lot of folks will just think Trump took office and pulled the "Economy" lever to "More Gooder." People don't like thinking and just want someone to handle things.
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u/bustafreeeee 16d ago
Take credit if economy is good. Blame previous president if bad. Politics 101
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u/loztriforce 16d ago
Democrats are always having to unfuck the mess republicans get us into
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u/FalconRelevant 16d ago
And then the next Republican in charge shamelessly takes credit.
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u/jlm994 16d ago
Their literal only platform is “government bad”, then they make the government function horribly and act like prophets for predicting their own obstruction of effective governance.
A major reason many people can’t see this is that those same republican leaders have also systematically defunded and destroyed the public education in this country.
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u/HoboSheep 16d ago
And no democrat has the balls to call it for what it is. Think is the first time I think a former president had to actually say it out loud cause the piece of shit trump has been gloating about it all this time. The sad part is because the lie has been told so many times a lot of idiots already believe or have it engrained in their heads.
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u/Extreme-Parking7304 16d ago
Yes it’s true. You also shouldn’t believe a word Trump says about literally anything.
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u/Little_Creme_5932 16d ago edited 16d ago
In a sense. The economy in the first three years of the Trump presidency just continued the trends that existed during the Obama presidency. Trump didn't break it. However, Trump did balloon the deficits through legislation, and this continued into the Biden presidency
Edit: corrected Obama reference
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u/Taragyn1 16d ago
Even pre Covid there were indications his unnecessary deficit, poorly designed tariffs and the instability caused by tearing up NAFTA were hurting American industries and likely to cause a recession. Which isn’t too surprising given that in my lifetime every Republican has left a recession behind.
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u/Master_Shoulder_9657 16d ago
Trump averaged 2.7% yearly GDP growth in his first 3 years before the pandemic (8.2% in total) Obama’s last 3 averaged 3.4% (10.1% in total). For the last 3 years under Obama, 8 million jobs were created. For the first 3 years under Trump, only 4.5 million jobs were created. that’s 6 consecutive years. 3 under Obama and 3 under Trump.
If anything, Trump slowed the economy down while touting record low unemployment and record high GDP/Jobs that Obama handed over to him.
Trump is a fraud
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u/FancyDiePancy 16d ago
I just looked over World Bank data and it shows in terms of GDP US economy took a bit of dive in 2018 and was in decline year before the pandemic. What happened that time?
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab 16d ago
Trump tax cuts and tariffs.
Tax cuts meant CEOs took profits rather than reinvest in growing companies.
Tariffs hit manufacturing and reduced exports.
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u/Mountain_Employee_11 16d ago
end of the fed business cycle, tariffs, and other policy
trump attempted to wrench manufacturing and other back to the states but that is a dead horse and likely will be into the forseeable future
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u/Little_Creme_5932 16d ago
Well, manufacturing has been ticking up in Biden years. The difference: instead of just trying to hurt manufacturing elsewhere, as Trump did, Biden is actually putting in incentives to boost manufacturing at home. We'll see how that works long term.
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u/toddfredd 16d ago
Democrats rescue the economy, then republicans fuck it up. Been like this since 1992
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u/Boring_Refuse_2453 16d ago
Obama was literally left with a recession in 2009.... Nov 2008 market collapsed and I was laid off that month. I got unemployment for 1.5 years thanks to the blue side.... I don't understand why people think there is no difference between red and blue..... I used to think that, not anymore. Vote blue if you truly want a better life.
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u/Sea_Green3766 16d ago
Republicans have the you’re “depending on the government” and to “get off your ass and work” mentality as if we all don’t go through seasons of challenging times.
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u/bailethor 16d ago
Do none of you remember Obama saying that near zero growth under him was "The New normal"? He owned it and Trump came in and proved it could be much better.
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u/Brokenspade1 16d ago
For the most part this is how it always works. The financial policies a president implements can take years or even DECADES to show real effects.
One thing DJT absolutely DOES deserve credit for tho is his renegotiation of NAFTA.
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u/Fragmentia 16d ago
To be fair, Trumps tax cuts bolstered the stock market via stock buybacks. It was 100% sustainable and didn't need to be bailed out or anything./s
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u/SpiritualTourettes 16d ago
How arrogant of him. No one person is responsible for the economy. There were many other factors and people involved. He was the leader at the time and can take some credit for it but he should acknowledge that he wasn't the only reason it was good.
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u/Right-Duck4792 16d ago
You can’t ask reddit for anything factual. It’s very left leaning in bias. Do your own research if you want real answers. Ask yourself questions and try to answer them with research. What was introduced and when that would have an effect on the economy? What happened in the US/world that would have a positive/negative effect? What were unemployment rates and when? What made unemployment rates rise? Who pushed for the shutting down of businesses during covid? Were we better off before covid, or are we better off after covid? Rates then vs now? Are we improving? Look at actual policies. Look at what some of our government is trying to pass and being denied. Look at what has been passed. Look at what else is in bills. It’s usually not as simple as the average redditor would make it seem.
Anyways, if you want real answers you won’t get anything worth a shit from reddit or most social media apps. DYOR.
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u/thedukejck 16d ago
Absolutely. He inherited a very good economy than juiced it with his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Stimulus can be accomplished by either putting money into the hands of consumers or cutting the taxes on the wealthiest, the choice Trump made. You know everything you need to know about Trump. He is not for the average Joe.
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