GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover

The pandemic was partly to blame, and there are some measures that make his record look better. But it was not a stellar performance.

It was the whopping-yet-still-disappointing 6.5% annualized growth number for the second quarter that got most of the attention when the U.S. gross domestic product report came out Thursday. But the data release from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis also included revisions to GDP and related measures back to 1999, making this an opportune time to take another look at economic growth under Donald Trump and his predecessors.

This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance. There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results may be felt long after he’s left Washington. Still, it’s a widely used metric and Trump was downright obsessed with it, so here goes.



OK, maybe that GDP obsession didn’t work out so well for Trump. The chart starts with Dwight Eisenhower because his was the first presidency for which the BEA has full quarterly GDP data. Annual GDP numbers go back to 1929, and if you measure from Herbert Hoover’s first year in office (1929) to the year he left (1933), annualized growth was negative 7.4 percent. So Trump did a lot better than that! But his was the worst GDP performance since then (measured the same way as with Hoover, annualized GDP growth was 9.1% under Franklin Roosevelt and 1.8% under Harry Truman).

This does seem a bit unfair, given the pandemic and all. Trump didn’t always rise to the challenges posed by Covid-19, but thanks in part to legislation he signed and a vaccine-development program his administration put in motion, the U.S. economy has experienced one of the world’s quicker recoveries. Lots of other presidents have suffered economic setbacks due to events outside their control, of course, and you can’t just ignore a quarter or two because they were affected by bad economic luck. But there is something to be said for trying some other ways of measuring growth during his term.

One is to adjust the timing. For the above chart I’ve taken real GDP in the quarter a president entered office and the quarter he left, and calculated the compound annual growth rate from one to the other. Here’s what it looks like if you shift that back or forward by a quarter.

 

ouch

 

Nice try, but that's complete hogwash. If you look at historical GDP below, it is easy to see from the slope of the GDP curve that, aside from the decline precipitated by the COVID shutdown, GDP grew faster during Trump's presidency than during that of most other president's, Clinton excepted.





That's all the author had to do. It would have been quite a simple exercise, really. Instead, he / she manipulatively concocted the one fiscal quarter timing adjustment as a way to convince readers that his / her analysis and conclusion were fair, which they were not.

 

fred? HAHAHAHAHAHA

 

Gotta agree. If you exclude 2020, the average growth for the rest of Trump's presidency is ~2.4%/year.

 

what about that great health care plan trump rolled out...so good...the best

 

The article clearly speaks to that point however, when do we ever just get to consider only the parts that make us look good and ignore the totality of the data? Do you think the pandemic economy will be ignored for Biden? Do you think that they ignored the financial catastrophe Bush left Obama? Do you think that they ever codsider the sound economic shape this country handed Trump? It's all or nothing folks.

 

I think the dip from the pandemic had little to do with economic policy and isn't a fair reflection of his performance overall. Had it not happened there's no reason to think it wouldn't have held to near 2.4%. An average of total isn't always the best metric.

 

Don't you recognize the source FD?

 

Considering how obsessed with this number Trump was and how much bloviating he did, I'm willing to let him die on that hill. Karma baby! Karma!

 

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...nomy-didnt-suddenly-get-strong-under-donald-/

Donald Trump
stated on February 4, 2020:
"Years of economic decay are over" because Trump "reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration."

• ECONOMY
  
• JOBS
  
• DONALD TRUMP

People watch as President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, during a watch party hosted by Miami Young Republicans and Trump Victory Miami on Feb. 4, 2020, in Coral Gables, Fla. (AP)



By Louis JacobsonFebruary 6, 2020
No, the economy didn't suddenly get strong under Donald Trump
IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT
• Across a broad range of economic metrics, economic performance under Trump continued gains made during the final years under Obama. Charts below show the trendlines.

• Many factors beyond a president’s control also shape the health of the economy.

See the sources for this fact-check

One of the biggest themes of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address — and one of the biggest themes of his reelection campaign — is that he inherited a weak economy from President Barack Obama and turned it into a strong economy by implementing his own policies.

"The years of economic decay are over," he told the joint session of Congress on Feb. 4, 2020. "The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. Gone, too, are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power and prestige."

Trump added, "If we hadn’t reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration, the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success."

When we reached out to the Trump campaign, they offered several statistics showing Trump has notched greater gains than Obama did, such as manufacturing job creation, the unemployment rate, and economic growth. We found those statistics, and other specific facts Trump cited during the State of the Union, were accurate, or largely so.

However, unlike Obama, who inherited the Great Recession, Trump inherited an economy that was already getting back on its feet. Overall, we found a continuation of the favorable trend lines Trump inherited from Obama.

We looked at 15 common economic statistics, from unemployment rates to growth in gross domestic product to poverty, foreclosures, and bank failures.

They cover the period of the Great Recession until today. Where possible, we’ve highlighted periods under a Republican president in red and periods under a Democratic president in blue.

The bottom line: For virtually each of these measurements, we found that the trend lines continued almost seamlessly from the second half of Obama’s presidency into the first three years of Trump’s tenure. Trump’s claim that he turned around a failing economy is wrong.

"I do not think economic gains have been any faster or better under Trump than gains we would have forecast based on the steady improvements we saw in the economy and job market in President Obama’s second term," said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution.

Also, no president has total control over the factors affecting the economy. Broader trends beyond their powers — from international economic conditions to technological changes — shape the course of the economy as well.

"All our decisions together produce the economy," said Aaron Sojourner, a University of Minnesota economist. "It doesn't change when the resident of the White House does."

Employment statistics
For unemployment rates and for median weeks of unemployment, the declines under Obama were at least as fast — if not faster — than they have been under Trump. That holds for several of the racial and ethnic groups Trump often cites in speeches, as well as for women.

J

 

Hmm. It just feels disingenuous. He did plenty of things wrong he's responsible for and I think it dilutes the impact of those things to hype up potentially misleading narratives.

Also, gonna hop on the the train a bit with the conservatives here, I'm tired of Trump. He's yesterday's news. Today's responsibility is putting pressure on Biden to keep his promises. There's a faction of people in Congress that support him vehemently, but fractures are showing. For instance, the recent infrastructure bill passed into the debate stage in the Senate 67-32, with 17 Republicans voting in favor of moving it forward. This was after Trump warned "If this deal happens, lots of primaries will be coming your way!" to Republicans who vote for it.

 

Trump still scares the republicans silly and he may be running in 2024, if he's not in jail

 

Misleading? Did the Trump Administration NOT mishandle the pandemic response? Of course they did and they deserve everything that goes along with that decision including the financial fallout. I am not a fan of excusing incompetence with other incompetence.

 

Virtually every country on Earth had GDP losses though. I just don't think that metric, as much as he wanted it to be, was in his or anyone's control.

 

I guess we'll never know will we?

 

we had the world's worst death rate though.

 

Yeah, that was bad. Turns out though, for the purposes of this thread, direct death rate isn't particularly closely tied to GDP growth rates.

 

While the COVID-related death rate was higher in the USA than in most nations, your claim is a clear exaggeration.

 

yeah, India beat us, but they have three times the population. we would have won if it weren't for the damn masks