The Patriot Post® · As 2019 Ends, Trump Economy Running Full Speed Ahead

In June 2016, New York Times economic correspondent Neil Irwin, echoing the findings of economists at Moody’s Analytics, predicted that if Republican Donald J. Trump was elected, “the United States would experience a lengthy recession, enormous job losses, much higher interest rates and diminished long-term growth prospects.”

On Nov. 9, 2016, after global stock markets plunged following the shocking victory of Trump over Hillary Clinton the day before, Nobel Prize-winning economist and NYT writer Paul Krugman wrote, “It really does now look like [America elected] President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? … A first-pass answer is never.”

Krugman continued his demoralized denunciation of Trump, declaring, “Under any circumstances, putting an irresponsible, ignorant man who takes his advice from all the wrong people in charge of the nation with the world’s most important economy would be very bad news. … So we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.”

Never let it be said that the NYT or Paul Krugman ever missed an opportunity to be spectacularly wrong.

Ironically enough for these naysayers, nearly half of the counties carried by Trump were actually already in recession in 2016 — during the Barack Obama “recovery” — and thus voters took a chance on the business mogul.

Now, not quite three years into the Trump presidency, it’s hard to imagine the economic news being much rosier, especially considering Democrats’ completely unified opposition to every effort by President Trump to bring us out of the economic doldrums of the Obama years.

Yet Trump, working with House and Senate Republicans, has unleashed a wave of economic good news unimaginable three years ago. With passage of the GOP’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — without a single Democrat vote — the corporate tax rate was slashed from 35% to 21%, resulting in a huge influx of capital investment and job creation.

Contrary to Krugman’s false prophecy of the markets “never” recovering, the Dow Jones recently gained its 10,000th point since Trump’s election. There have been more than 100 new record highs since Trump took office, and he now presides over the longest bull market in history, which is fattening up 401(k) retirement accounts for workers.

In November, the economy created 266,000 new jobs, nearly 80,000 more than expected, driving the unemployment rate down to 3.5%, the lowest level since the end of WWII. For historical perspective, the last time the unemployment rate was below 3.5% was 1929.

And it is not just “the rich” or white Americans who are benefitting. The black unemployment rate of 5.4% in October and the Hispanic unemployment rate of 3.9% in September were both the lowest ever recorded.

Additionally, the Trump-signed GOP tax bill created Opportunity Zones in low-income, distressed minority neighborhoods, encouraging investment in those communities. This and other pro-small-business policies have resulted in an increase in minority-owned businesses.

The Trump economy is so good that there are actually more job openings than Americans looking for work. Employers struggle to find available workers with the necessary skills.

The Trump economy has been a huge boon for families, with median income up $4,144 in just three years under Trump, an increase of 6.8%, and a more than quadrupling of the modest $1,000 increase during the eight years of Obama.

The GOP tax cuts have also allowed workers to keep much more of their earnings. The increase in the standard deduction and a doubling of the Child Tax Credit has spurred consumer spending, debt reduction, and savings, allowing Americans to spend on what is important to them.

And Republican improvements in the 529 education savings plans now allow parents to not only save for college, but to use the money for K-12 education expenses in public, private, and religious schools.

Earlier this year, Democrats claimed Trump’s hard-nose tactics with Canada and Mexico in negotiating a new trade agreement, as well as an escalating trade war with China, would send the U.S. economy into a downward spiral.

Yet those tactics resulted in the recent vote by the Democrat-controlled House to pass the Trump-negotiated USMCA (U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement), giving American businesses and consumers more favorable trading terms and purchasing power.

And after threats of massive new tariffs on China made markets nervous, Trump recently announced he’d reached consensus on “phase one” of a new trade agreement, which addresses the structural trade imbalance between the nations. Trump has agreed to back off of some tariffs, and China has committed to making an additional $200 billion in purchases of U.S. goods over the next two years. This is expected to drive GDP growth up to around 3% next year.

This forced the anti-Trump Washington Post to admit a “dramatic turnaround in momentum,” with economists reversing their predictions of a looming recession from just a few months ago.

Of course, this is horrible news for Democrats, who see their chances of retaking the White House evaporating even as their farcical impeachment efforts get more and more desperate. They know that no president since WWII has lost reelection when unemployment was below 7.4%. Trump’s unemployment rate is less than half that.

This realization caused a panicked Georgia House Democrat leader to fret following the recent jobs report, “If … the economy doesn’t take a nose dive, I fear we lose to President ImANut.” This echoed the lament of Democrat Congressman Al Green, who warned that Democrats must impeach Trump to prevent his reelection.

Try as they desperately have, Democrats just haven’t been able to derail the Trump economy.

And that is a very, very, very good thing for the American people.