2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Realities of the Trump Economy

It was far from the low-cost fantasy some voters recall

Vanessa Gallman
5 min readSep 25, 2024

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Photo by Scottsdale Mint on Unsplash

The perception that former president Donald Trump’s tenure was great for the economy is aided by two developments: one a fortunate matter of timing; the other just simple self-promotion.

Understanding that would help voters better view the challenges of managing the economy as well as reject misguided thinking that returning Trump to office would automatically repeat a time of low inflation while erasing his mistakes.

Trump’s primary pitch is that he built “the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history” and he can do it again. Yet he was fortunate to suceed President Barack Obama, who successfully led the recovery from the 2008 Great Recession, a financial crisis began under President George W. Bush that displaced close to 10 million Americans with mass unemployment and mortgage foreclosures.

Economic indicators from Obama’s second term in office to the first three years of Trump’s time before the pandemic hit, show a continuation of positive economic trends, not a dramatic increase. Average quarterly economic growth under Trump, 2.5 percent, was almost exactly what it was under Obama at 2.4 percent. On average, there were more jobs added monthly in…

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Vanessa Gallman

Experienced journalist, educator and retired opinion-page editor with occasional musings