How is Trump not making America great again? He has created 400,000 manufacturing jobs, gotten us to 4.2% economic growth, and attempted to stop an influx of immigrants who are making the US a Third World country.
Alex Denethorn, British, but heavily interested in US Politics
Has he, indeed?
Well, let’s go through your question, shall we? First up, Job creation:
As you’ll note, that’s down considerably compared to Obama - and dropped by a full 1.1 million in Trump’s second year. So, yes, jobs are being created, but at a far lower rate than we’ve seen since the recession ended. This is bearing in mind that one of the Trump Tax Cut’s primary aims was to create growth in industry.
Doesn’t seem to have had quite the effect you’re aiming for there!
How about Economic Growth?:
It’s not bad, but you’ll note that it’s a far cry from Obama’s highest numbers, and relatively consistent with the economic growth seen prior to the 2016 election. This is bearing in mind that Obama inherited a nation in recession, while Trump inherited an economy from Obama that was doing pretty damn well.
Now let’s take this onboard:
Yes, they were higher under Obama, but again, Obama was pulling the United States out of a deep economic recession, and that naturally requires higher levels of spending, to give the economy something to work with. That’s a means of stimulating growth.
Now ask yourself: why is the deficit increasing in a time of economic prosperity? Why are the government borrowing more when the economy is in a period of growth? Wouldn’t that be the best time to reduce the deficit and perhaps pay off some of the national debt? Which, by the way, currently looks like this:
Which, if you’re curious, stands the US with a national debt of $23 trillion dollars. Considering the national GDP is only at $21.6 trillion, you can see why that might be problematic.
Do also note this:
The US being in recession during Obama’s tenure required heavy accumulation of debt to stimulate the economy - what’s Trump’s excuse?
As for your last point, stopping immigration, let’s have a look at that:
Yeah, not so much, really.
Here’s the thing: Trump has campaigned on being the anti-immigration President, but his signature approach to dealing with this has been internment (which keeps immigrants on the US side of the border) and the wall, which experts have comprehensively observed as being utterly nonsensical, since a) it can be sliced through, b) most immigrants crossing the border either fly over or enter via legal checkpoints, and c) it doesn’t do anything to tackle the fact that immigrants come to the US to find work, and Americans frequently employ them as a source of cheap labour.
So, put another way, Trump hasn’t actually done anything overly productive with respects to immigration. He’s simply campaigned that the other side are worse at it - and as you can see, that’s just not the case.
Is Trump making America great again? Clearly not: what positives you are seeing are mostly holdovers from the past administration. Growth has slowed, and although the GDP is still reasonably high, that’s largely being inflated by exorbitant levels of borrowing on the part of the Federal Government - at a time when it should be paying down debt rather than increasing it.
So…less making it great and more spending it into a bottomless hole.
Edit:
It occurs to me I didn’t cover the “…immigrants who are making the US a Third World Country” bit. I’ll just leave these here:
The Economic Benefits of Immigration
Immigrants Contribute Greatly to U.S. Economy, Despite Administration’s “Public Charge” Rule Rationale
4 myths about how immigrants affect the U.S. economy
How immigrants are enriching our economy and society
Put another way: there’s no evidence to support that particular claim. If the US is turning into a third-world country, it’s got nothing to do with immigrants. Pretty sure it might have something to do with this level of wealth inequality, though:
We can’t blame that on immigrants, however! |
