If everything you knew about the American economy were based on Donald Trump’s campaign ads, you’d be making some pretty ugly assumptions about the status quo. These assumptions would conflict with reality.
In fact, a Washington Post fact-check report took a closer look at the former president’s latest ad — which claims, among other things, that “a recession is coming our way” — and concluded: “This ad is stuck in time warp. The Trump campaign may wish this was still running in 2022 and 2023, when the economic numbers were grimmer for Democrats. But that is no excuse to pretend that the situation has not improved significantly in the past year.”
Absolutely right. For those interested in the reality of the country’s economic conditions, one of the most important things to remember is that it’s 2024, not 2022 – and there’s plenty of good economic news to think about this year. De Heuvel reported:
US gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of 3 percent in the second quarter, showing an impressive performance for the economy thanks to an environment of higher interest rates created by the Federal Reserve. The three percent growth in the Commerce Department’s third GDP estimate confirmed the second estimate, which also stood at 3 percent. Both were an increase from the 1.6 percent growth in the first quarter.
White House National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard also took stock of the bigger picture and the revised data, concluding in a written statement: “We learned this morning that the economy grew by 3,000 euros during the Biden-Harris administration. 2% per year has grown – even stronger than before. estimated – and better than the first three years of the previous government.”
That is also true. The standard Republican line on Trump’s economic performance is that 2020, when there was a recession as a direct result of a pandemic, should not count. But even excluding 2020, economic growth in the United States has been stronger under Biden/Harris than under Trump/Pence.
With less than forty days to go until Election Day, this is probably not the news Republicans wanted to see.
Returning to our recent reporting, the beginning of last month saw a sharp and unexpected downturn on Wall Street. As a New York Times report summarized, it was easy to explain: Researchers grew skittish due to a combination of a disappointing jobs report, problems in Japanese markets and concerns that the Federal Reserve had waited too long to cut interest rates. interest rates.
For Trump and his Republican Party, however, the truth was clearly inadequate, so they rewrote it. In the Republican version of reality, the brief decline on Wall Street was clearly Vice President Kamala Harris’s fault. From the Times article:
By lunchtime, it was the official party message: The Republican National Committee was hyping the “Great Kamala Crash of 2024,” and the Trump campaign had produced and distributed a video on social media linking the vice president to Monday’s stock market plunge. By midday, Trump forces had made “KamalaCrash” a “trending” topic on X.
The rhetorical push was, of course, completely ridiculous. The idea that a sitting vice president was directly responsible for brief and entirely predictable losses in the stock market was absurd, but Trump and his allies expected voters to believe it anyway.
At least that was the message from Republicans in early August. As September draws to a close, Americans no longer hear much about the “Kamala Crash,” largely because no crash occurred. All Wall Street losses from earlier this month have been recovered, and economic growth in the United States remains quite good.
The results also pose a challenge to the former president and his allies that they have not even tried to address: If voters are to believe that Harris is directly responsible for the world’s largest economy, how much credit have Trump and the Republican Party prepared ? give the sitting vice president 3% GDP growth?
As for the Republicans’ crystal ball, four years ago Trump told his supporters that Democratic policies would “unleash an economic disaster of epic proportions” and force the country “into a depression.” He has started making nearly identical predictions ahead of Election Day 2024.
Everything Trump said was wrong — and he hasn’t even tried to explain why his predictions were so hilariously misguided, or why anyone should believe his new predictions in light of his terrible record.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
