The annual growth rate of GDP is worth noting, but breaking it down by quarters is sometimes more telling.  Donald often brags about the last quarter of 2017 (3.9 percent) and the first quarter of 2018 (3.8 percent), the only quarters in the Trump presidency that broke 3 percent.  However, in President Obama’s second term, the growth rate broke 3 percent in six quarters (3.6 percent, 3.2 percent, 3.2 percent, 5.5 percent, 5 percent, and 3.8 percent).  You’ll notice that the growth rate even exceeded 5 percent twice.

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In President Obama’s first term, the growth rate broke 3 percent five times (4.5 percent, 3.7 percent, 3 percent, 4.7 percent, 3.2 percent).  You’ll notice that the growth rate even exceeded 4 percent twice.

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Okay, we have never used the word “percent” so much in our lives, but we just wanted to show you that Donald Trump’s GDP numbers don’t even come close to being The! Best! Ever!  And it’s important to remember that his relatively slow growth happened in spite of very costly tax cuts and a $1.3 trillion spending bill, both of which should have stimulated the economy.

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Next up, the stock market.  Throughout his presidency, Donald loved to hype the hot stock market.  Best!  Stock Market!  Ever!

 

We hate to break it to him, but stock market returns during his presidency rank 8th when compared to other presidents.  Yes, 8th.  Behind, in order, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Harry Truman, George H.W. Bush, and Lyndon Johnson.

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During the presidential election, Donald loved to say things like “if Biden is elected, the market will crash” and that a Biden presidency would be the “biggest single headwind (to the stock market) is if he got in” and, in a tweet, “If you want your 401k’s and stocks, which are getting closer to an all time high (NASDAQ is already there), to disintegrate and disappear, vote for the Radical Left Do Nothing Democrats and Corrupt Joe Biden.”

 

However, from the day of the 2020 election through early May 2021, the Dow increased roughly 26 percent, compared to the 14 percent for the same period after Donald Trump was elected president.  In fact, from the day President Biden took office to early May 2021, the stock market performed better than every single president since the 1960s.

 

In the end, in 2021, the S&P 500 gained 26.9 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 18.7 percent and the Nasdaq Composite gained 21.4 percent.  Not bad.

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Ironically, the stock market usually does much better under Democratic presidents. We know this is counterintuitive given what both parties supposedly represent, but it’s true.  According to Forbes magazine, “From 1952 through June 2020, annualized real stock market returns under Democrats have been 10.6 percent compared with 4.8 percent for Republicans.”

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Next up, jobs.  Until Covid-19 hit, Donald Trump loved to talk about how many jobs he was creating.  The! Best! Jobs! Ever! 

 

In 2017, his first year in office, America added 2.109 million jobs.  In 2018, Donald’s best year in regard to job creation, America added 2.314 million jobs and, in 2019, 2.096 million jobs were added.

 

However, the job growth in the last three years of President Obama’s second term were higher than in Donald Trump’s BEST year — 3.004 million (2014), 2.72 million (2015), and 2.345 million (2016).  In the end, around 1.6 million more jobs were created in the last three years of President Obama’s presidency than in Donald Trump’s first three.

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Incidentally, much has been said about the low unemployment rate during Donald Trump’s tenure, which supposedly led to higher wages. It’s true that by October 2019, the unemployment rate had fallen to its lowest level in fifty years. However, the unemployment rate was already 4.7 percent when he became president and had been on a steady decline since 2011.

 

Also, a quick word about Donald Trump’s claims of working “miracles” in the manufacturing sector. This is just not true.

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During his failed 2020 reelection campaign, he told the crowd at a Michigan rally, “You better vote for me, I got you so many damn car plants.  And we’re going to bring you a lot more!"  Nope. Michigan’s manufacturing sector lost 66,500 workers from July 2019 to 2020 alone. As you can see from the dates, this was already happening before the pandemic. On the campaign trail in Ohio, Donald said, “Over the last six months, we’ve witnessed one manufacturing miracle after another.”  Nope. Ohio’s manufacturing sector lost 48,000 workers from July 2019 to 2020.

 

In truth, for the entirety of 2019, the U.S. manufacturing sector was in a technical recession — which is triggered when output falls for at least six months (we're excluding 2020 from this discussion because of the outliers inherent to the Covid disruption).

 

The PMI, or the Purchasing Managers’ Index — the most common way to measure the health of manufacturing — plummeted. In December 2019, another popular gauge of the manufacturing sector’s health — a survey of purchasing managers from the Institute for Supply Management — fell to its lowest level since the Great Recession.

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Plus, there is tangible evidence. One must look no further than the 100-foor-tall glass sphere in the middle of Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin for proof of Donald Trump’s failure to deliver on the dazzling manufacturing promises he boisterously made. Owned by the Taiwanese manufacturing company Foxconn, the glass globe is one of only four structures built on a massive plot of land, once meant to house a huge manufacturing campus that would generate 13,000 high-tech jobs.

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Far from the “Eighth Wonder of the World” — which is what Donald called it as he stood (with big shovel in hand) beside Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Foxconn’s chairman at the groundbreaking — the site currently conducts a small fraction of the promised manufacturing, with a workforce of around 1,000. The underused site is now even advertised as a place that can be rented for private events and banquets.

 

Unfortunately for the 27,000 residents of Mount Pleasant, their local and state governments spent around $500 million to bring the project to their village, leaving the town a debt load equal to 570 percent of its annual revenue. As a bonus, around 100 homeowners were forced to move to make way for the project, some under the threat of eminent domain. That’s some project, Donny boy.