If Donald Trump is re-elected in November, despite a baggage that would crush any other politician, he can owe it mainly to one thing: voters’ perception that he can handle their problems. top concern – the economy – better than President Biden. Emphasis on ‘perception’.
Trump wants Americans to believe that as president he has created “the greatest economy in the history of the world” (Fact check: false), and some voters buy that. He says he will repeat this feat if he returns to power. The truth is that Trump inherited a growing economy from President Obama — just as he inherited his business from his father — and he left a pandemic-hit economy to Biden. Also growth on his watch did not come close to the average under Obama, or any of the previous seven American presidents. Under Biden, the economy grew more last year than in any year during Trump’s term.
Consider this a precursor to Trump’s false, hyperbolic or dubious claims that he is master of the economic universe, as he will surely regurgitate them again during his debate with Biden on CNN Thursday night.
The argument is not just mine. Experts have emerged lately to suggest that a re-elected Biden would be preferable to Trump 2.0 when it comes to the economy and the federal budget.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is on the road with a comparative look at the budget results. Its analysis The release released Monday showed that Trump added $8.4 trillion to the national debt as president, nearly double the $4.3 trillion increase under Biden, with seven months left in his term.
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The big spending items within those numbers reflect the contrasting priorities of the two presidents. Less than a quarter of Trump’s debt is a product of his tax cuts, which benefited corporations and wealthy Americans. Much of Biden’s big spending went to student loan relief, veterans’ health care, food stamps and Medicaid.
Neither focused much on the opposite economic imperative: keeping the country’s rising annual budget deficits in check. But Trump’s $443 billion deficit reduction is less than a quarter of Biden’s $1.9 trillion so far.
The bottom line: Biden beats Trump, with less debt and more deficit reduction.
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As for how the economy as a whole would fare depending on who becomes president after 2024, Moody’s released a macroeconomic report last week. analysis of the candidates’ agendas. Spoiler alert: “The bottom line is that Biden’s policies overall are better for the economy than Trump’s,” Moody’s chief economist Mark M. Zandi told me. “They lead to more growth and less inflation.”
Trump would actually trigger a recession before 2025, thanks in large part to his twin obsessions: tariffs and immigrants. Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants without legal status would deplete the workforce. And his proposed 10% tariff on all imports (60% or more on Chinese goods) would raise prices for consumers and manufacturers, reduce exports if other countries retaliate with their own tariffs, and cost American jobs — just like his more limited First period. rates did.
Moody’s predicts the economy will return to growth after Trump’s recession late in his second term, with four-year average annual growth of 1.3%. The growth forecast with four more years of Binomics? Average 2.1% per year. Do the math.
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Moody’s is not alone in favoring Biden over Trumponomics in its conclusion. This week Axios reported that 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists with differing views signed a letter concluding: “We all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior.”
Trump likes to say he would impose tariffs and carry out deportations on “Day One.” He can indeed do a lot unilaterally. But his third pet policy – tax cuts – would need congressional approval. With Trump’s first installment of income tax cuts for mostly high-income Americans set to expire next year, he wants to extend them at a cost of about $5 trillion over ten years. And he wants to further reduce corporate income tax rates.
Biden instead proposes to raise tax rates on Americans who earn less than $400,000 a year, and to raise the corporate rate from 21% to 28%, halfway back to the previous 35%. And he wants a wealth tax of at least 25% for people with a net worth of $100 million or more.
You might think that the contrast between rivals’ tax plans would cause business leaders to side en masse with Trump. That’s what recent media reporting suggested through the hype of a few billionaires’ endorsements and donations: “A tidal wave of elite GOP donors” coming “from the sidelines,” Axios wrote. Not quite.
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After the messages that Trump had bombed during a private meeting this month with executives from the Business Roundtable (“remarkably squirming, couldn’t think straight”) Monday’s damning statement came op-ed in the New York Times “CEO whisperer” Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, chairman of Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute. Sonnenfeld wrote that not a single Fortune 100 CEO supports Trump, marking a historic breakthrough for the largely Republican audience.
“Trump’s economic package scares them. It is extremely inflationary,” Sonnenfeld said on CNBC, and especially the proposed rates are ‘just crazy’. As for Biden, Sonnenfeld wrote in his op-ed that the CEOs’ distaste for the president’s attacks on corporate “greed” and aggressive antitrust enforcement is outweighed by their appreciation for his investments in infrastructure and chip manufacturing, and avoiding a post-pandemic recession. and registering record energy production and corporate profits – despite Trump’s lies about it all.
Sonnenfeld’s prediction: “They will be reluctant Biden voters.”
The votes of the plutocrats are not enough. Biden needs to appeal to the majority of voters who tell pollsters that their top issues are the economy and inflation, and that Trump would do a better job in both areas. Biden – and the facts – must make more of them his voters, even if they are only reluctant voters.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
