"The Biden and Trump economies were both pretty good " but only one president has gotten credit
There's no denying that the economy was good under Trump, and the 2019 pre-pandemic economy is now seen as a baseline against which Biden's economy is being judged.
But Trump arrived in office when the economy was already pretty strong. He was "just riding on the coattails of a 10-year-long economic recovery," said Al R. Bustamante, deputy director of worker power and economic security at Roosevelt Forward, the progressive political arm of the Roosevelt Institute.
The economy continued to grow modestly on his watch until the pandemic hit in 2020, and after that, his stimulus checks kept it buoyant for a while. The stock market saw significant growth under Trump (and at least for the last year, under Biden, too " more on that later).
But some of Trump's signature economic policies have also been found to have had little to no measurable effect on the economy " and a few might have even hurt.
Multiple studies have shown that the Trump tariffs at best had a neutral effect on the economy and at worst cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs and higher prices for consumers.
And his 2017 tax cuts, which increased investment in the economy and contributed to modest wage growth in the short term, fell far short of Republicans' promise that they would pay for themselves and are projected to significantly raise federal debt and increase income inequality.
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Biden, on the other hand, faced the immediate task upon assuming office of heading off a recession as the country started to bounce back from the pandemic. The US did recover from that pandemic economic slump. But there is evidence that his policies, including the stimulus checks he issued, contributed to an inflationary spiral.
The US did, however, manage to curb inflation faster than other economically developed countries, while also maintaining much lower levels of unemployment and higher wage growth.
The Federal Reserve might deserve most of the credit for that, given its carefully timed interest rate hikes. "
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