Joe Biden speaks at the PD&R Event, April 7, 2015. Photo courtesy of USHUD.
Democrats were forthcoming last night with their pledges to confiscate Americans’ guns and to destroy the healthcare system, but there was one word that Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren couldn’t bring themselves to say in the entire three hours of discussion: Jobs.
The two front runners didn’t want to talk about jobs, and it’s no surprise. Here’s a summary of Trump’s record on job creation:
Today, the Census Bureau released its official measures of the economic well-being of Americans in 2018. While Americans across the board generally saw improvements, the data show that in many cases those who had been forgotten in the past were lifted up the most.
Real median household income increased to more than $63,000 in 2018, the highest level in nearly two decades. A growing economy that produces more jobs and higher earnings has driven the improvement in economic well-being. There were 2.3 million more full-time, year-round workers in 2018 than in 2017, of which 1.6 million were women.
Since 2016, 4.7 million more full-time, year-round workers have been added to the workforce. Their earnings are higher, as well. Real median earnings of full-time, year-round workers increased by 3.4 percent ($1,832) among men and by 3.3 percent ($1,439) among women in 2018 compared to the previous year.
With incomes rising for Americans, the poverty rate fell to its lowest level since 2001. The poverty rate fell by 0.5 percentage points to 11.8 percent in 2018, following a 0.4 percentage point decline in 2017—or almost a full point drop over the first two years of the Administration. Since 2017, 1.4 million Americans have been lifted out of poverty. The decline in the official poverty rate mirrors a 0.7 percentage point decline in food insecurity in 2018, reported last month by the Department of Agriculture, even as 4.2 million people were lifted off of food stamps during the year.
Disadvantaged groups experienced the largest poverty reductions in 2018. The poverty rate fell by 0.9 percentage points for black Americans and by 0.8 percentage points for Hispanic Americans, with both groups reaching historic lows (see figure 1). The poverty rates for black and Hispanic Americans in 2018 have never been closer to the overall poverty rate in the United States. Children fared especially well in 2018, with a 1.2 percentage point decrease in poverty for those under 18. Poverty among single mothers with children fell by 2.5 percentage points.
As incomes rose, inequality fell. The share of income held by the top 20 percent fell by the largest amount in over a decade, as did the Gini index (an overall measure of inequality in the population). In fact, households between the 20th and 40th percentile of the distribution experienced the largest increase in average household income among all quintiles in 2018, with a gain of 2.5 percent.
Before today’s release of the latest Census data, it was already clear that the growing economy was adding millions of jobs and pushing up wages for American workers. We now have evidence that the gains were particularly important in 2018 for those typically left behind: Income increased the most for lower-income families. Inequality fell. Poverty fell, especially for black and Hispanic families, and for children in general.
Trump Administration policies, such as tax reform and deregulation, have unleashed the private sector. As a result, unemployment has reached record lows, millions of jobs have been added, and wages have risen. It can no longer be denied that some of the biggest beneficiaries are Americans who have been disadvantaged historically.
Part of Trump’s winning strategy in 2016 was a hard line on trade with China. That stance took Trump to victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin. He’s likely to win in those states again, and maybe even more. In their feeble attempts to layout an economic policy, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren could only echo Trump’s winning strategy. Warren said:
So our trade policy in America has been broken for decades, and it has been broken because it works for giant multinational corporations and not for much of anyone else. These are giant corporations that, shoot, if they can save a nickel by moving a job to a foreign country, they’ll do it in a heartbeat.
And yet for decades now, who’s been whispering in the ears of our trade negotiators? Who has shaped our trade policy? It’s been the giant corporations. It’s been their lobbyists and their executives.
The way we change our trade policy in America is, first, the procedures. Who sits at the table? I want to negotiate trade with unions at the table. I want to negotiate it with small farmers at the table. I want to negotiate it with environmentalists at the table. I want to negotiate with human rights activists at the table.
Biden for his part could only echo Warren echoing Trump. He said:
Yeah, well, look, we’re either going to make policy or China’s going to make the rules of the road. We make up 25 percent of the world economy. We need another 25 percent to join us.
And I think Elizabeth — Senator Warren is correct. At the table has to be labor and at the table have to be environmentalists. The fact of the matter is, China — the problem isn’t the trade deficit, the problem is they’re stealing our intellectual property. The problem is they’re violating the WTO. They’re dumping steel on us. That’s a different issue than whether or not they’re dumping agricultural products on us.
In addition to that, we’re in a position where, if we don’t set the rules, we, in fact, are going to find ourselves with China setting the rules. And that’s why you need to organize the world to take on China, to stop the corrupt practices that are underway.
It’s hard to imagine how Biden or Warren will take back the Rust Belt by simply echoing Trump’s hardline on China. The two have spent years in the Senate getting nothing done on the issue. Meanwhile, Trump became president and immediately took action against China.
In 2020 it’s likely Americans will face a choice between Donald Trump and either Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren. They can choose a man who has made overwhelming progress on job gains, and has taken the trade fight directly to China, or a senator who has spent years getting nothing done, and can only stand in Trump’s shadow on trade. The choice will be easy.
You can read more about the Trump economy here.
