By standard measures such as job and GDP growth and the stock market, the US economy was in excellent shape
Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.
When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.
Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.
Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president.
