The true Trump-Uneconomy

Republican proven incompetence in Economics

One recurring question of European friends and family, who are nearly all trilingual EFG (English, French, German), watch CNN, read NYT, Le Monde, TheGuardian, Frankfurter Allgemeine. and generally a local paper (like Darmstaedter Echo) is: are you stupid to become Republican, or are you becoming stupid after you become Republican?

Whereupon I say: put yourself through watching Fox news for 3 months and ask the question again.

The one or 2 Republican Voters I know (in my district Trump got a grand total of 4%, so I am lucky; bonds for general improvement are, to the lament of the conservatives in my 2 counties always approved) I treat with data.

Data Block 1: Trump-induced Inflation vs. Biden-Harris-cured Inflation

The rapid rise of inflation, before the other G7 countries, is clearly (following Eisenhower’s dictum of the finances in the first year of a presidency) due to Biden’s predecessor Trump. Because by declaring Covid a hoax, Trump not only condemned an additional 600,000 Americans to death, he also set the economy on a death spiral. The US economic decline then punched through, with the Eisenhower 1-year delay, to the other G7. Study the inserts in the plot to understand what Biden-Harris then did to fix the problem.

Data Block 2: Percentage Employment change, by President

Looking at the historic economic performance of Democratic Presidents versus Republican Presidents, you ask yourself: how low has the IQ of a voter has to be to prefer a Republican President for economic reasons. Would an IQ of 75% maybe even too high?

Looking at the GDP as a function of president, makes you wish Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris would openly say: I will continue the Biden-Harris policies in the economy. It is clearly implicitly shown in her balanced budget proposal, in contrast to a $5trillion corporate tax cut by Trump. Among other things, the Bidenomics policies have skillfully produced the only soft landing known to mankind from a classical inflation fight with raising interest rates. Preferred would have been what the 16 US Nobel prized Winners in Economy recommend: raise taxes. Raising taxes slows the churning of the economy, and gives the Government the means to improve the infrastructure.

While the right-wing claim that the individual handles money better than the Government, this generally is not so, and therefore in the last century all Republican presidents with an early tax cut for trickle down effects have done badly, while the Democratic presidents have done the better the high initial tax increases were. But this is not only true for the US. Merkel did very well with an immediate tax increase when she became Chancellor. Reason: keep the interest rate on Government bonds (the “Bund”) low.

The only exception is Reagan: when he realized that his initial tax cut of 6% of the budget did not work, he disregarded the screaming of trickle-downers and raised taxes.

A semi-exception is Obama as the lowest Democrat performer, because (a) he got a lousy economy handed from Bush 2, and (b) he missed the opportunity to just let the Bush tax cuts expire. He did not have enough backbone in view of the Republican screaming.