The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2020
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OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Trump’s Record & Where Biden Stands on Those Issues By TJH Staff No longer do presidential campaigns involve much talk about records, plan,s and proposals. They have pretty much become personality food fights, with voters being asked to decide who they like more. Love him or hate him (after all, isn’t that what this election is all about?), the following is a discussion of President Trump’s record on several key issues and where Joe Biden stands on those issues.
ECONOMY A
ny non-economist who dives into economic data will quickly feel their eyes glaze over – “Why can’t it be a yes or no question? Is the economy good or not?” The answer is that there are countless data points to answer that question, and oftentimes it is a matter of perspective that determines how the question is answered. Add the devastating impact of Covid-19 and the question becomes similar to “What do you think of the cook’s cholent recipe…and try not to consider the dead cat that landed in it.” President Trump’s economic plan over the past four years involved around a three-pronged approach: tax cuts, deregulation, and upending trade policy. He did all three of those things. In 2017, Trump delivered a tax cut which cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and lowered individual tax rates. On the deregulation front, the Trump administration cut eight-and-a-half regulations for every new rule and slashed regulatory costs by nearly $50 billion to-date. On the trade front, one of Trump’s first actions was withdrawing from the TPP, which was a 12-nation trade deal that the Obama administration agreed to participate in. He also renegotiated NAFTA, which is the U.S. trade deal with Mexico and Canada. Most significantly, he placed tariffs on China imports, resulting in a trade deal with China which, in the first phase included a Chinese commitment to purchase an additional $200 billion in American goods by the end of 2021. So how did the Trump economic plan go? According to the Economist, from 2017 to 2019, the U.S. economy “performed marginally better than expected.” Gross domestic product (GDP), which is the most common yardstick of the economy, grew somewhat faster in 2017-19 than it was in either Barack Obama’s first or second term. GDP growth reached 3.1 percent in early 2019. Household income soared during Trump’s first three years in office, reaching a record $68,703 in 2019, an increase of $5,805 from 2016 after
adjusting for inflation. On the unemployment front, unemployment fell to 3.5 percent in 2019, the lowest in half a century. Then the bottom fell out. When Covid-19 came ashore from China in early 2020, 22 million jobs evaporated in a matter of weeks. Pandemic lockdowns resulted in an unprecedented 32.9% annualized drop in real GDP in the second quarter of 2020. The outlook looked dim. Emergency measures were taken. Trump signed four bills designed to offer relief to the American economy, injecting more than $2.5 trillion into the economy, some by the way of stimulus directly to families, some by way of funds to prop up struggling businesses. In July 2020, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the unemployment rate in December would be 10.5 percent. However, in the past five months, 52 percent of the job losses from the pandemic have been recovered, and the United States has gained more than 11.4 million jobs resulting in a current unemployment rate of 7.9 percent. So what are the candidates promising for the future of the economy? When it comes to taxes, Trump is promising a second-term middle-class tax cut, thus stimulating further growth. Biden wants to raise the top income tax rate back to 39.6% from 37% and the corporate income tax rate to 28% from 21%, providing the federal government with more tax dollars to distribute to lower income earners. America’s economy is becoming more entangled with China, which is now the globe’s second largest economy behind the U.S. and is gunning for the number one slot. After Trump’s efforts to right the ship, for the first time in six years, in 2019, the trade deficit with China fell to $616.8 billion. Trump has promised to continue his hawkish measures by increasing pressure on China with the threat of tariffs. Biden sees China as less of an economic threat. In May 2019, Biden said China was “not competition for us,” since it had domestic problems to deal with. He is promising to take a radically different approach than Trump; he says that he will change the economic dynamic with China by forming a coalition with allies and partners, not through unilateral tariffs.
“We’re currently witnessing the fastest labor market recovery from an economic crisis in history. Next year will be the greatest economic year in the history our country, I project.” - President Trump “The depth of economic devastation our nation is experiencing is not an act of G-d. It’s a failure of presidential leadership.” - Joe Biden
