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(CNN)President Donald Trump still can't accept the numbers measuring his loss to Joe Biden: more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes.
But another set of numbers adds insult to his psychological injury. They show that -- notwithstanding lies as promiscuous as the ones he tells about election fraud -- Trump will leave office in January with a historically bad record on the economy.
That sounds discordant since many Americans believe the economic fable that Trump has repeated relentlessly throughout his term. But placing his bottom-line results alongside those of his predecessors paints a deeply unflattering portrait.
Alone among the 13 presidents since World War Two, Trump will exit the White House with fewer Americans employed than when he started. He will have overseen punier growth in economic output than any of the previous 12 presidents.
His throwback "America First" agenda has failed to restore the old economic engine that powered an earlier era's prosperity. On Trump's watch, industrial production has fallen. The Federal Reserve says the manufacturing sector fell into recession in 2019 even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Last week was the 38th in a row in which at least 700,000 Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits.
Holiday-season lines at food banks dramatize the scale of human suffering. More abstract measures, such as the US trade deficit and ratio of government debt to the size of the economy, have also worsened during Trump's term.
"Trump's economic record ranks near or at the bottom compared with other presidents," concludes Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi, who compared the economic results of all presidents from the last 70 years. "The economy under his watch has performed very poorly."
To be sure, the deadliest public health pandemic in a century has devastated economic activity during this last year of the President's term. But responding to unexpected catastrophe -- from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to civil unrest to financial crises -- represents a big part of the job. And, as Zandi notes, Trump's bungled coronavirus response has exacerbated and extended damage to jobs and output.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/politics/trump-economy-record/index.html
But another set of numbers adds insult to his psychological injury. They show that -- notwithstanding lies as promiscuous as the ones he tells about election fraud -- Trump will leave office in January with a historically bad record on the economy.
That sounds discordant since many Americans believe the economic fable that Trump has repeated relentlessly throughout his term. But placing his bottom-line results alongside those of his predecessors paints a deeply unflattering portrait.
Alone among the 13 presidents since World War Two, Trump will exit the White House with fewer Americans employed than when he started. He will have overseen punier growth in economic output than any of the previous 12 presidents.
His throwback "America First" agenda has failed to restore the old economic engine that powered an earlier era's prosperity. On Trump's watch, industrial production has fallen. The Federal Reserve says the manufacturing sector fell into recession in 2019 even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Last week was the 38th in a row in which at least 700,000 Americans filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits.
Holiday-season lines at food banks dramatize the scale of human suffering. More abstract measures, such as the US trade deficit and ratio of government debt to the size of the economy, have also worsened during Trump's term.
"Trump's economic record ranks near or at the bottom compared with other presidents," concludes Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi, who compared the economic results of all presidents from the last 70 years. "The economy under his watch has performed very poorly."
To be sure, the deadliest public health pandemic in a century has devastated economic activity during this last year of the President's term. But responding to unexpected catastrophe -- from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to civil unrest to financial crises -- represents a big part of the job. And, as Zandi notes, Trump's bungled coronavirus response has exacerbated and extended damage to jobs and output.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/13/politics/trump-economy-record/index.html
