As the Democratic nominees vie for their party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential election, the U.S. economy continues on its path of solid performance. Conrad Black in American Greatness notes how absolute and per capita GDP growth, manufacturing jobs growth, shrinkage of minority unemployment, and purchasing power for working and lower-middle-class families are all supportive of the success of the Trump administration.
The fact that the election approaches and the importance of the economy in electoral results is proverbial, and the serial evaporation of the false issues that have been pinned on Trump in his inexorable elephantine march through his first term, now combine to attempt the incitement of hysteria on this subject.
It is true that the deficit tops $1 trillion and that is not sustainable indefinitely, but that is 35 percent less than the Obama average (admittedly coming after a debacle bequeathed by George W. Bush); and the GDP is about 25 percent above the latter Obama years. So despite a very large tax reduction and a strong defense build-up, the deficit as a percentage of GDP has shrunk in about five years from 8.5 percent to less than 5 percent, unacceptable, but progress.
The most important single measurement, especially for insertion into political predictions, is GDP per capita growth, which declined dangerously from 4.5 percent in the Reagan years to 3.9 percent in the Clinton terms, to 2 percent under George W. Bush to 1 percent with Obama. This trend had to be reversed to prevent extreme economic and political stress.
Economics, essentially, is half psychology and half third-grade arithmetic. Trump has won the arithmetic and there are no serious signs of incipient recession: neither rising interest rates presaging inflation, which could require recessive measures to cool, nor serious slackening of demand.
Under the circumstances, it will be hard for Democratic officials and media fear-mongering to win the psychological battle over the direct personal experience and observations of the voters.
An Inconvenient Truth
The Democrats and their media are trying to delay the sober and balanced assessment of the merits of the candidates coming up to the 2020 election. To repurpose a beloved Democratic expression, the inconvenient truth is that Trump has been a good president who has kept his promises.
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