Column: If Trump claims to be the master of the universe in the debate, he will be lying

If Donald Trump is re-elected in November, despite having a lot of baggage weighing heavily on any other politician, he can basically attribute it to one thing: the electorate’s belief that he can better manage his biggest fear, the economy. than President Biden. The emphasis is on “belief. “

Trump would tell Americans that, as president, he has created “the greatest economy in the history of the world” (fact check: false), and some voters are content with this. He says he will repeat the feat if he returns to power. The fact is that Trump inherited a developing economy from President Obama (just as he inherited his company from his father) and left Biden with an economy in poor health and poor health. Moreover, under his leadership, expansion has not been close to average. under Obama, or under any of the last seven U. S. presidents. Under Biden, the economy grew faster last year than any other year of Trump’s term.

Think of this as a kind of rebuttal to Trump’s false, hyperbolic, or dubious claims that he is the master of the economic universe, as he is sure to regurgitate them in his debate with Biden on CNN on Thursday night.

The argument is mine alone. Experts have recently warned that a re-elected Biden would be preferable to Trump 2. 0 when it comes to the economy and the federal budget.

The Nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has introduced a comparative review of the fiscal history. Their research released Monday shows that Trump, as president, has added $8. 4 trillion to the national debt, nearly double the $4. 3 trillion accumulated under Biden. , with seven months to go before the end of his term.

The most expensive pieces within those sums reflect the contrasting priorities of the two presidents. Not a quarter of Trump’s debt is due to his tax cuts, which have generally benefited businesses and wealthy Americans. Much of Biden’s significant spending has been spent on students. loan relief, physical care for veterans, food stamps, and Medicaid.

Neither has much in the way of the opposite economic imperative: containing the country’s growing annual budget deficits. But the $443 billion in deficit relief announced through Trump is less than a quarter of the $1. 9 trillion Biden has planned to date.

In short: Biden beats Trump, with debt and more deficit reduction.

As for the evolution of the world economy that depends on the president who will be elected after 2024, Moody’s published last week a macroeconomic study of the candidates’ programs. Spoiler alert: “At the end of the day, Biden’s policies as a whole are bigger for the economy than Trump’s,” said Moody’s Lead Economist Mark M. Zandi. “They lead to more expansion and less inflation. “

Trump was going to cause a recession before the end of 2025, thanks in large part to his two obsessions: price lists and immigrants. Trump’s plans for mass deportations of immigrants without legal standing would drain the workforce. And his proposed 10% cost lists on all imports (60% or more in Chinese goods) would increase costs for consumers and manufacturers, reduce exports as other countries retaliate with their own price lists, and charge for jobs in the United States, just as he did in his first term. more limited. the lists did.

Moody’s forecasts that after Trump’s recession, the economy would return to expansion until the end of his second term, with a 4-year average annual expansion of 1. 3%. Bidenomics expansion forecast with 4 more years?An average of 2. 1% consistent with the year. Do the math.

Moody’s is not willing to conclude in favor of Biden against Trumponomics. This week, Axios reported that 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists, with varying opinions, had signed a letter concluding, “We all agree that Joe Biden’s economic calendar is vastly superior. “

Trump likes to say that he would impose price lists and provoke deportations from “day one. “In fact, it can do many things unilaterally. But his third favorite policy, tax cuts, would require congressional approval. While Trump’s first-term income tax cuts, aimed primarily at high-income earners, are set to expire next year, he needs to increase them, at a cost of about $5 trillion over a decade. And it needs to lower the corporate tax rate even further.

Instead, Biden is proposing to expand tax rates for Americans earning less than $400,000 a year and raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, halfway to its previous 35%. And it needs a minimum estate tax of 25% for those with a net worth of $100 million or more.

You might think that the contrast between rivals’ tax plans would cause business leaders to side with Trump. This is what a recent media policy warns about the exaggeration around the donations of some billionaires: “An avalanche of elite donors to the Republican Party. “has come out “on the lines of aspect,” Axios wrote. It’s not enough.

On the heels of reports that Trump bombarded a private meeting this month with Business Roundtable executives (“remarkably wandering, unable to maintain righteous thoughts”) came Monday’s damning New York Times op-ed via Whisperer CEO Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, chairman of Sonnenfeld wrote that not a single Fortune 100 CEO supports Trump, which represents a historic rupture for the Republican majority.

“Trump’s economic package scares them. It’s incredibly inflationary,” Sonnenfeld said on CNBC, and the proposed rates in particular are “just insane. “As for Biden, Sonnenfeld wrote in his op-ed that CEOs’ aversion to the president’s attacks on corporate “greed” and competitive enforcement of antitrust laws are offset by the appreciation of their investments in infrastructure and chip manufacturing, averting a post-pandemic recession, and record energy production and corporate profits, despite Trump’s lies about it.

Sonnenfeld’s prediction: “These electors will be reluctant to vote for Biden. “

The votes of the plutocrats are not enough. Biden wants to do away with majorities of the electorate who tell pollsters that his main disorders are the economy and inflation, and that Trump would do a bigger job in both areas. Biden – and the facts – want to take more advantage of his electorate, even if they are only those who are reluctant.

@jackiekcalmes

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