Media Ignores Trump Economic Success

One of the most important news items, the virtual rebirth of the American economy under the Trump Administration, is also one of the most under-reported.

The reasons for that are political. Obviously, it is a success for a White House that most of the media almost desperately attempted to prevent getting elected, and, once that effort failed, did everything possible to cripple. The magnitude of the Trump economic revival could be sufficient to get the President re-elected, an outcome that media seeks to prevent at all costs.

There is also an embarrassment factor, as key left-wing writers and politicians claimed Trump’s policies were incompetent or worse. Just two examples: The New York Times’ Paul Krugman predicted that Trump’s policies would lead to a “Global recession, with no end in sight.” Obama himself mocked Trump’s promise to revive manufacturing employment, stating that “those jobs aren’t coming back.”

Obama’s approach of extensive regulation at home and timidity in confronting China abroad provided poor results for American industry and related employment, continuing a downward spiral that could be traced back to the Clinton Administration. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Slate’s Jordan Weissman, noted: “Things have not worked out quite as the 42^nd president hoped. Normalizing trade with China set our rival on a path to becoming the industrial powerhouse the world knows today, decimating American factory towns in the process and upending old assumptions about how trade effects the economy. Thanks to a growing body of academic research, we’re only just now beginning to understand the extent of the economic fallout…”

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In October, Forbes noted that “Comparing the last 21 months of the Obama administration with the first 21 months of Trump’s, shows that under Trump’s watch, more than 10 times the number of manufacturing jobs were added.”

The extraordinary rise of the U.S. economy is continuing. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Current-dollar personal income increased $147.2 billion in the first quarter. Disposable personal income increased $116.0 billion, or 3.0 percent, in the first quarter. Personal saving was $1.11 trillion in the first quarter, compared with $1.07 trillion in the fourth quarter.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Total nonfarm payroll employment in March rose by 196,000 jobs (see figure), beating market expectations (175,000). The month of March continued the longest streak of growth on record (102 months). Job gains in February were revised up by 13,000, and January jobs were revised up by 1,000 for a cumulative increase of 14,000 jobs.

The White House notes that “In total, the economy has added over 5.5 million jobs since President Donald J. Trump was elected. The March jobs report reflects a sharp rebound in job growth… Since the President was elected, job gains have surpassed 100,000 jobs in 26 of the 28 months. The average jobs growth in the past 12 months is a robust 211,000 jobs and jobs growth in the past 6 months has averaged 207,000 jobs. Both the 12-month and 6-month averages remain above the 2017 average of 179,000 jobs gained per month…Since the President’s election, the manufacturing industry has added 480,000 jobs and 209,000 jobs in the past 12 months. The report indicates that strong jobs growth is being coupled with wage growth. Nominal average hourly earnings rose by 3.2 percent over the past 12 months, marking the 8^th straight month that that year-over-year wage gains were at or above 3 percent. Prior to 2018, nominal average hourly wage gains had not reached 3 percent since April 2009. Taking inflation into account, there is evidence that real wages are also growing. Based on the most recent Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index data from January, inflation in the past year was 1.4 percent, and based on the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) price data from February, the inflation in the past year was 1.5 percent.”

A particularly unique accomplishment: black and Latino unemployment is at an historic, all-time low.

Great news, all around. Just don’t expect to read much about it in the media.

Chart: White House graphic

Quick Analysis

“Innocent Explanations” for Biden’s Willful Retention of Classified Materials?

“Down is up, up is down. Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good. The times are changing. This is what Oz has come to.” Danielle Paige, Wicked As we have discussed, the Report issued by Special Counsel Robert Hur states “[o]ur investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” Nonetheless, Hur concludes that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” In our last article, we examined one of the grounds for Hur’s decision not to recommend prosecution of Joe Biden; his finding that “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Today, we analyze Hur’s decision to exonerate Biden despite the evidence for the President’s willful retention of classified materials while not in office. As described in Chapter 11 of the Report, “[i]n a recorded conversation on February 16, 2017, at Mr. Biden’s rental home in Virginia, Mr. Biden told Mark Zwonitzer (a writer working with Biden) that Mr. Biden had ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs.’ According to what Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer, ‘all the classified stuff’ related to President Obama’s 2009 decision to surge American troops to Afghanistan, and to a pivotal moment when Mr. Biden sent President Obama his handwritten Thanksgiving memo opposing the troop surge. Photos of the Virginia home show that the lowest level ‘downstairs’-where Mr. Biden told Zwonitzer he had ‘just found all the classified stuff’-included rooms that Mr. Biden used as work and storage spaces.” (Citations omitted.) Hur goes on to claim that “Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at the Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after.” Hur justifies this amazing assertion with his finding that “Mr. Biden’s memory…appeared to have significant limitations…[i]n his interview with our office, Mr. Biden…did not remember when he was vice president [and forgot]…when his son Beau died.” Hur admits that the “best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden’s possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017. when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material.” However, in addition to the ludicrous “maybe he forgot” defense, Hur finds further reasons to decline to prosecute Biden for this allegation. According to Hur, “[w]hen Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter about finding ”all the classified stuff downstairs,’ his tone was matter-of-fact. For a person who had viewed classified documents nearly every day for eight years as vice president, including regularly in his home, finding classified documents at home less than a month after leaving office could have been an unremarkable and forgettable event.” Hur continues in this nonsensical vein; “Another viable defense is that Mr. Biden might not have retained the classified Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home at all. They could have been stored, by mistake and without his knowledge, at his Delaware home since the time he was vice president, as were other classified documents recovered during our investigation. This would rebut charges that he willfully retained the documents in Virginia.” But didn’t Biden himself say to Zwonitzer that he found the “classified stuff” in the basement of that same Virginia home? Hur has a preposterous answer for that question; “[J]urors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence…no witness, photo, email, text message, or any other evidence conclusively places the Afghanistan documents at the Virginia home in 2017.” As if this analysis wasn’t incredible enough, Hur adds that “[i]n addition to this shortage of evidence, there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute. When Mr. Biden told his ghostwriter he ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs,’ he could have been referring to something other than the Afghanistan documents.” The report concludes tomorrow Illustration: Pixabay

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