"You traitors spend 8 freaking years obstructing & hating Obama"
8 years obstructing, 12 years hating.
==
|
Dow wipes out gains under Trump’s presidency, still slightly positive since his election
PUBLISHED WED, MAR 18 202012:39 PM EDTUPDATED 8 MIN AGO
Thomas Franck @TOMWFRANCK
KEY POINTS
The Dow’s drop pushed the 30-stock index below the level where it closed on Jan. 19, 2017, the day before Trump took office.The sell-off may prove a tough blow to Trump, who has used the Dow as a proxy for the success of his economic agenda.Trump tweeted on Dec. 23 that the Dow was up 55% since his election and promised — less than three months before the market entered a bear market — that “the best is yet to come.”
U.S. President Donald Trump listens while Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, not pictured, speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images
President Donald Trump has long touted market gains under his administration as an endorsement of his economic policies and, on multiple occasions, trumpeted the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s gains under his tenure.
But the Dow’s 1,500-point, 7% drop on Wednesday pushed the 30-stock index below the level where it closed the day before Trump took office in January 2017 as part of a historic market sell-off that’s wiped out years of gains in a matter of weeks.
That is, the Dow is now below where it was when he took office more than three years ago.
The index, however, is still more than 1,000 points, or 7%, above where it closed the night of the 2016 presidential election as investors bought in anticipation of his business-friendly policies.
The Dow was last at 19,725 below its close on Jan. 19, 2017, the eve of Trump’s inauguration.
Stocks have plunged since mid-February as the novel coronavirus and efforts to contain its spread worry investors that the disease could tip the economy into a recession. The S&P 500 was more than 25% below its February high by Tuesday’s close while the Dow was off its own record by more than 28%.
A price war between OPEC and its oil-producing allies has also whacked energy equities and crude.
The recent stock market decline may prove a tough blow to President Trump, who has throughout his time in office used the Dow as a proxy for the success of his economic agenda.
Trump tweeted on Dec. 23, for example, that the Dow was up 55% since his election and promised — less than three months before stocks entered a bear market — that “the best is yet to come.”
Donald J. Trump
?@realDonaldTrump
NASDAQ UP 72.2% SINCE OUR GREAT 2016 ELECTION VICTORY! DOW UP 55.8%. The best is yet to come!
88.9K
6:58 PM - Dec 23, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
26.1K people are talking about this
But Trump’s fixation on day-by-day stock market is hardly new: Less than one month into his presidency he told his Twitter followers that equities had reached a new all-time high.
“Stock market hits new high with longest winning streak in decades,” he wrote on Feb. 16, 2017. “Great level of confidence and optimism - even before tax plan rollout!”
Donald J. Trump
?@realDonaldTrump
Stock market hits new high with longest winning streak in decades. Great level of confidence and optimism - even before tax plan rollout!
114K
6:34 AM - Feb 16, 2017
Twitter Ads info and privacy
36K people are talking about this
To be sure, the Dow is still about 1,400 points above where it traded the night before Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton as the president has achieved a lot of what he promised during his campaign. The Dow would need to fall nearly 1,400 points, another 7%, to erase all of its gains since his election. The Dow is up 7.6% since his election.
Even though Trump wasn’t in charge yet, investors snapped up stocks between Election Day 2016 and his inauguration as the promise of corporate tax cuts and regulation rollback was enough for Wall Street to bet on U.S. profit growth.
The president has largely come through on his promises to lower the corporate tax rate and ease regulations on many of the nation’s largest companies. Trump and Republican lawmakers passed the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in late 2017 that cut the rate U.S. corporations pay to 21% from 35%.
Numerous American companies have cited the tax legislation for repatriating overseas cash, returning employment and factories to the U.S. and better-than-expected earnings throughout 2018. It also stoked a historic surge in stock buybacks for much of the president’s term as the largest companies in the U.S. return cash to stakeholders.
The Trump administration has also rolled back key Obama-era environmental regulations, including the Water of the United States rule or WOTUS.
In a move representative of regulatory easing throughout his time in office, the president issued an executive order in the second month of his term directing federal agencies to reconsider the Clean Water Rule at the urging of some of the nation’s largest farmers.
The Trump administration in September announced it had successfully repealed the rule, which had placed limits on chemical use near streams and wetlands. |
