MILWAUKEE — Republicans kicked off their presidential nominating convention Monday, continuing to sell a myth central to their effort to recapture the White House in November: that Donald Trump has created the best economy in American history.
“A booming economy,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in his address to delegates at the “Make America Wealthy Again” themed evening of the four-day gathering.
“The massive inflation caused by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” intoned Florida Rep. Byron Donalds.
Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn discussed how low gas prices were when Trump left the White House in 2021 compared to today. “Bidenomics is a dirty word,” she said.
These talking points began to emerge within months of Democrat Joe Biden taking office — and remain as false today as they were then.
Due to the COVID pandemic, unemployment skyrocketed and gross domestic product collapsed in Trump’s final year in office, making him the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he took office.
But even excluding the pandemic year, Trump’s economy saw weaker GDP growth and fewer jobs in his first three years in office than the last three years of his predecessor Barack Obama. Republicans, including Trump, have decried those years as an economic disaster.
As for inflation, many economists believe that the high inflation rates of 2022 and 2023—and the high interest rates the Federal Reserve has subsequently applied—were caused by the $5.7 trillion in COVID-19 stimulus spending, intended to keep the economy from falling into depression. If they are right, it follows that two-thirds of the blame for inflation logically falls on Trump, under whose watch two-thirds of the spending occurred.
And while it’s true that gasoline prices collapsed in Trump’s final year, that’s because so many Americans lost their jobs in 2020 and so many businesses closed that demand for gasoline plummeted. Before the pandemic, gasoline prices were higher on average in 2017, 2018 and 2019 than they were in Obama’s final year, 2016.
“With inflation falling and manufacturing booming under President Biden, economists warn that a second Trump term would trigger an ‘inflation bomb’ and raise costs for middle-class families by $2,600 a year,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said. “Americans cannot afford four more years of his failed leadership.”
Trump attempted a coup to stay in power after losing the 2020 election and was convicted in May of felony charges, but he nonetheless officially became the Republican presidential nominee for the 2024 election on Monday. He is expected to deliver his acceptance speech on Thursday.
News Source : www.huffpost.com
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