Thread by @JECDems

(1/12) President Trump says he inherited an economic “disaster” from President Obama and that he “accomplished an economic turnaround of historic proportions.”

He’s very wrong, and in this thread we’ll show why.

(2/12) It was Pres. Obama who inherited (from Bush) a disaster, & along with congressional Democrats took action that stopped the bleeding and led to growth.

He handed Trump a solid economy, with GDP rising at 2% & unemployment down by more than half from the Recession peak.

(3/12) According to Greg Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush:

nytimes.com/2018/09/09/us/…

(4/12) In fact, average real GDP growth was roughly the same (2.6%) for the first 11quarters under President Trump and for the last 11 quarters under President Obama.

(5/12) Job growth actually has been weaker during the Trump administration. During the last 35 months of the Obama administration, non-farm job growth averaged 227,000 per month. During the first 35 months of the Trump administration, the average was 36,000 fewer jobs per month.

(6/12) Trump’s tax cuts added some fuel to the economy bc they boosted profits & gave (particularly wealthy) households more to spend. But many economists say that the “sugar high” from the tax cuts is wearing off & GDP growth will slow in 2020. We’ll get 2019 Q4 GDP on Thurs.

(7/12) But the tax cuts came at an extremely high price—$1.9 trillion over 10 years according to CBO. The largest benefits went to corporations & the wealthy, but it’s likely that most Americans will end up paying higher taxes in the future or losing popular government services.

(8/12) The Republican tax law, the president’s signature legislative accomplishment, was supposed to accelerate this business investment. But it is actually down.

(9/12) Business investment has dropped from a 4.6% annual rate in the seven quarters before the Republican tax cut to a 3.5% annual rate in the seven quarters following the tax cut.

And in the two most recent quarters, real business investment has fallen.

(10/12) Trump’s phase-one trade deal with Beijing didn’t address the major complaints that businesses have about trade with China, & left in place billions of dollars in tariffs. Despite what Trump says, American businesses & consumers pay those tariffs.

cnbc.com/2020/01/21/wef…

(11/12) One analysis finds that the trade war with China has already cost 300,000 American jobs, while the @USCBO estimated that the trade war reduced GDP by 0.3% by 2020.

cnbc.com/2019/08/21/cbo…

@USCBO (12/12) In sum: Trump’s trade war has hurt American consumers and businesses. His tax cuts did little but cost a *lot.*

Donald Trump inherited a strong economy from Barack Obama, and now the real question is whether he’ll screw it up.

jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/…