When Donald Trump assumed the position of the President of the US, he had called out to the blue-collar laborers as the ‘the forgotten American people.’ He had claimed to bridge the economic gap between them and the elite groups. However, now he is leaving the office with an extremely poor economic record in comparison to all other previous presidents.
The coronavirus pandemic further deteriorated the economic growth and increased the unemployment rate in the country. But America’s economic recession had already begun way before the pandemic hit the world as per the Federal Reserves!
In 2018, under Trump’s watch, the country saw its last economic growth.
There are very few instances when Trump’s performance as the President was satisfactory. Under his watch, the rate of unemployment increased, and his tax cut-off policies for the upper 1% also led to a continuously increasing budget deficit.
There was a brief surge in trade and investments and increased pricing on energy products that raised the economy, but it was also nothing permanent or solid. The production lines fell into recession too.
In trading also, he initiated a war of tariffs and the tech cold war between America and China worsened due to his bad policies. He had abandoned the partnership with transpacific allies, something that the ex-President Barak Obama had worked for. All of that kept deteriorating the economic situation of the country. At the beginning of 2020, he tried to have a truce with China without any structural reforms. Perhaps it was because he wanted to have at least one good thing on his record to boast about and remain in the office for the next term too after winning the election. However, that did not happen, and he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
Despite all his claims of foul play, the fact of the matter is that he will be leaving the office in January 2021 with the country in a very bad economic shape!
His disproportionate tax cuts led to the rich become richer and the poor become poorer.
The top tier of the American society remained at the top, and despite Trump’s tall electoral claims that he would bridge the gap between the common man and the elites fell flat. He achieved some temporary financial gains when the S&P 500 index rose to an average of 14.34% per year during his tenure. This was something good, but these gains were because of extremely low-interest rates. Now, low-interest rates pull in investors into buying stocks in hopes of a higher return. But the maximum benefits are anyway for those people who own the largest number of stocks.
There was a 3.23% annual gain in real per capita disposable income.
This is a good thing, only if the wealth did not continue rotating between the wealthiest people who were from the top tier who received the benefits of tax cut-offs. By the end of September 2020, America’s 1.9% of net worth only belongs to almost 50% of the poor American citizens. While 30.5% of the total net worth of the country belongs to the upper 1% of people.
So, at the end of the day, whatever benefits there were ever were either short-term or at the cost of the common man of America, the forgotten people whom Trump had made tall claims for.
I’m Ava Paul, an experienced news website author with a special focus on the entertainment section. Over the past five years, I have worked in various positions of media and communication at World Stock Market. My experience has given me extensive knowledge in writing, editing, researching and reporting on stories related to the entertainment industry.
