Trump's economic arguments

Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her long-awaited economic plan, telling supporters, “We were facing one of the worst economic crises in modern history” as she and President Joe Biden took the oath of office. Even liberal economists criticized the plan.

Despite the bad reviews, her new communications director persisted on Monday, claiming that “the economy was in the doldrums” at the time. But was it? Harris' strategy is obviously to make up for her administration's economic failures by blaming greedy corporations and the “other guy.” But the other guy has plenty of facts to refute this economic disinformation if he wants to use them.

First, despite Democrats' exaggerations, voters remain pessimistic about the state of the national economy: 27 percent say it is excellent or good, and 72 percent say it is not so good/bad, according to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted August 9-13.

In her remarks, Harris acknowledged the negative impact of inflation, particularly on food and housing, but did not take responsibility for it. Whoever wins this economic argument will likely win the upcoming presidential debate. When it comes to the data, former President Donald Trump has the upper hand.

First up is inflation, voters' biggest economic concern.

Biden spent much of the past year falsely claiming he inherited a 9 percent inflation rate. Even a cursory glance at Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the rate was actually 1.4 percent in January 2021.

In fact, Biden and Harris' inflation rate is one of the worst of any presidency in recent history. Since they took office, prices have risen by a total of 20.2 percent. At the same point in Trump's presidency (after 41 months), prices had risen by only 6.7 percent. Trump's inflation figures were even lower than those of Barack Obama (8.5 percent) and George W. Bush (8.2 percent).

Under the current government, prices have risen across the board. However, the prices of gas (49.9 percent), electricity (31.7 percent), rent (22.0 percent) and food (22.0 percent) have been particularly devastating for household budgets.

There is no sugarcoating the data or the likely trigger of this catastrophic inflation – the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of March 2021. Harris cast the deciding procedural vote to get the bill to Biden's desk. The following month, the inflation rate rose above three percent and stayed there for the next 39 consecutive months. Before that, inflation had been below three percent for 111 consecutive months.

January 2021, when Biden and Harris took office, marked the tenth consecutive month of inflation below 2 percent since the bipartisan $2.2 trillion CARES Act was passed in March 2020. The two stimulus packages appear to have had very different effects on inflation, a difference that may be a powerful element of Trump's economic policy message.

The Vice President and her team also like to boast about the “16 million new jobs” created during Biden and Harris’s administration. But how many of those were actually new jobs, or is “rehiring” a better description for the majority of jobs created again?

They also regale their electorate with a misleading comparison between Trump and Herbert Hoover in terms of job losses. But 2020 was no ordinary year. It is important to remember that in April 2020, the country lost 20,477,000 jobs, after losing 1,411,000 in March, bringing the total to 21,888,000. This is a staggering number caused by the COVID-19 lockdown.

But by January 2021, 12,495,000 of those jobs had been restored under the Trump administration. When the current administration took power, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, down from 14.8 percent in April 2020, a decline of 8.4 percent in nine months.

These figures represent the largest decline in the unemployment rate over a nine-month period in the entire BLS database, a historic recovery.

Biden/Harris, on the other hand, needed another 17 months to restore the remaining 9.4 million jobs, meaning that of the 15.8 million (actual) jobs they claimed, only 6.4 million were created.

Finally, in the budget deficit debate, Democrats are trying to portray Trump as the one who spends more money in order to distract from the record of Biden and Harris. In fact, Biden will be the first president to have a budget deficit of over a trillion dollars in each of his four years in office. For Obama, it was four out of eight years and for Trump, one out of four years – in the Covid-19 year of 2020.

The last four years have seen the worst inflation since the early 1980s. The majority of Americans have never experienced such an economic catastrophe, which explains why they have such a negative view of the economy. This brings us to one of the strategic questions of this election: To what extent do voters believe that Democratic policies, particularly the American Rescue Plan, have fueled inflation?

A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted Aug. 14-16 asked voters whether food and grocery prices would rise or fall depending on which candidate won. If Harris won, 48 percent thought they would rise, while 22 percent thought they would fall.

Thirty-seven percent of voters believed prices would rise if Trump won, while 42 percent said they would fall. Among independents, the split was 50 percent to 17 percent for Harris and 36 percent to 41 percent for Trump. That is, voters have a clearer idea of ​​the impact of a Harris victory, but the impact of Trump is less clear, which is one of the main reasons why the vote among independents is basically even, with 50 percent for Trump and 49 percent for Harris.

The country has endured an exceptionally difficult time, a global pandemic with terrible economic and personal consequences. Trump's economy was doing well until COVID-19 struck and the economy in America came to a halt. Shutting down the economy was uncharted territory, and people still remember that by the time Trump left office, life in the country was slowly returning to normal.

It is true that Covid-19 was still a serious problem when Biden and Harris took the reins. But it is also true that they were left with a recovering economy. That is the argument Trump must make.