Let's be clear about the economy. In modern American history, we have evaluated the economy by several different metrics. The number of jobs created and the unemployment rate have been the most important metrics. We also look at the growth of the gross domestic product, the sum total value of all goods and services produced in a country, and inflation, the rate of the growth of prices year over year. Then we look at the stock market and any growth in wages. During the last three Republican administrations, the deficit and the unemployment rate both increased while the opposite happened under the last three Democratic administrations.
In January of 1989, President George Herbert Walker Bush was elected and he was given a deficit of $175 Billion and the unemployment rate was 5.3%. By January of 1993 when he left office and President Bill Clinton took office, the deficit had increased to $290 Billion and the unemployment rate reached 7.3%. Under President Bill Clinton 22 million jobs were created. It was a time of peace and prosperity. President Clinton had three consecutive budget surpluses during his last three years in office and the unemployment rate fell to 4.2%.
President George W Bush took office in January of 2001. President George W Bush accelerated a trend that began in the previous administration, the trend of financial deregulation. As a result, the financial sector failed and that hurt the broader economy. In the last three months of 2008 under President George W Bush we lost approximately 2.25 million jobs, the GDP shrank by 9.4% and the unemployment rate reached 7.8% and was continuing to climb. The deficit reached $ 1 Trillion. Simply because a new president is inaugurated doesn't mean the economy magically or automatically improves. The US economy is rather large and is, therefore, as nimble as the Titanic.
Democrats in Congress looked to President Obama for leadership and they passed his American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009. We see a continuation of the trends at the end of President Bush's second term in the first year under President Obama. The unemployment rate continued to climb, therefore, under President Obama in his first year in office. The unemployment rate reached its peak (or the nadir, the low point, for the economy overall) at 10.6% in February of 2010. From February of 2010 to January of 2017, 16.1 million jobs were created. Under the leadership of President Obama, we experienced the longest continuous period of peacetime, private sector job growth that this nation has ever known, 75 consecutive months of job growth. The deficit was cut from $1 Trillion under President Bush to $600 Billion and the unemployment rate fell from 10.6% to 4.7%, having fallen nearly six full percentage points which is unprecedented in modern American history. This is the very good economy that Donald Trump inherited. It was nothing like the utterly unrealistic demagoguery heard in his "American carnage" speeches. When we look at the data at the end of President Obama's second term and we look at the beginning of Donald Trump's time in office, we see a continuation of the effects of President Obama's economic policies. There were more jobs created in the last three years under President Obama than under the first three years under Donald Trump. Again, President Obama handed over to Donald Trump an economy that had created jobs for 75 consecutive months. That's the very good economy that Donald Trump INHERITED. You don't get credit for what you INHERIT. Donald Trump was given a very good economy; he didn't have to recover from a bad economy and build a new good economy on his own steam.
The pandemic would have been difficult for any president to manage and it would have created economic headwinds for any administration. Yet, Donald Trump made the pandemic much, much worse than it had to be. Donald Trump made choices that exacerbated the negative consequences of the pandemic such as disbanding the pandemic team and throwing away the pandemic playbook created under the Obama administration. Donald Trump minimized the pandemic and he did not consistently promote the safety measures recommended by the CDC such as wearing a mask or getting vaccinated. Donald Trump called the pandemic a Democratic Party hoax. Donald Trump said that the pandemic was disappearing 38 times from February of 2020 to October of 2020. Donald Trump said that nobody would talk about the pandemic after November 4th. Donald Trump admitted on Bob Woodward's tape that he, "loved to play it down." There is no difference in meaning between play it down and downplay it. While on a few occasions Donald Trump said something positive about wearing a mask, the fact is that when he spoke about wearing a mask, he consistently spoke negatively about wearing a mask or against it. COVID is a respiratory illness. We understand very well how respiratory illnesses such as COVID spread. The person who has COVID breathes out virus particles and another person breathes in the virus particles. Wearing a good mask properly prevents both of these events, albeit imperfectly. If you were vaccinated and then you caught COVID, then you are 53 times less likely to die from COVID than if you had caught COVID but you were not vaccinated.
By December of 2021 the vaccines created by the private sector had been available for almost a full year. Yet by December of 2021, only 60% of Republicans had been vaccinated compared to 91% of Democrats. This is a reflection of the difference in messages about COVID and CDC recommended safety measures from the leaders of the two different major political parties. If you were a Trump supporter and he told you that COVID was a Democratic Party hoax that was disappearing and you believed what Donald Trump said, then why would you get vaccinated or wear a mask? Thus, the low percentage of Republican voters who wore vaccinated is on Donald Trump. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both leveled with the American public about the serious threat that COVID posed, and they both strongly recommended that the American people implement the safety measures recommended by the CDC. Hence, our poor COVID results are on Donald Trump. If we had the same COVID death rate as other similarly situated nations in the G7, then we would have lost 400,000 fewer Americans to COVID. If we had the same COVID death rate as Canada, then we would have lost 600,000 fewer Americans to COVID. We make up four percent of the world's population. Therefore, we should make up four percent of the world's COVID deaths. Instead, we are vastly overrepresented with twenty five percent of the world's COVID deaths despite the fact that we are only four percent of the world's population.
Twenty five percent of the national debt or $8 Trillion of the national debt accumulated from 1789 to January of 2021accrued under Donald Trump from January of 2017 to January of 2021. Because Donald Trump didn't even attempt to limit the harm done by COVID and because his choices made COVID much, much worse than it had to be, he does not get a free pass on the 2020 economy. The deficit increased under Donald Trump from $600 Billion under President Obama to $2.8 Trillion in the last year of Donald Trump's first term. The unemployment rate increased from 4.7% under President Obama to 6.3% when Donald Trump left office. Donald Trump lost ten million jobs in 2020 and he lost three million jobs over his entire term. The pandemic caused inflation by damaging supply chains which resulted in lower supply while demand remained unchanged. When demand is unchanged but supply significantly drops, then inflation occurs. We see empty store shelves in 2020, a consequence of the damage done to supply chains and this meant that supply was low. Since lower supply with unchanged demand caused inflation and we saw lower supply under Donald Trump, then if Donald Trump had been president in 2021, we would have seen inflation under Donald Trump as well. After losing a free and fair 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump attempted a coup by various methods including inciting an armed insurrection. When Donald Trump left office, we were losing three thousand Americans a day to COVID.
Almost all economists agree that the overwhelming majority of the cause for inflation was COVID. Policymakers had one tool to attempt to lower inflation and that one tool was to get COVID under control. Donald Trump made it much harder to get COVID under control. Therefore, Donald Trump made it much, much harder to bring inflation down. President Biden and Vice President Harris, again, leveled with the American people and told them the truth that COVID was a serious threat to their lives and they both promoted the safety measures recommended by the CDC including wearing a good mask properly and getting vaccinated. For most of the period from 2021 onward, the rate of inflation in the United States was lower than it was in most other G7 nations. The gross domestic product grew by 2.3% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and by 2.8% last year. The normal rate of inflation, the goal for the rate of inflation for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is two percent. The rate of inflation has been just above our normal rate of two percent. From just before the pandemic to now, real GDP grew by 9.4% in the United States, twice as fast the growth rate seen in the second best G7 nation, Canada, at 4.7%. Wages have been growing faster than inflation for more than a year. The Wall Street Journal admitted that "our economy is the envy of the world". The unemployment rate fell from 6.3% under Donald Trump to 4.2% when President Biden left office. Under President Biden, sixteen million jobs were created, a record for job creation in one term.
Since 1989, 51 million jobs have been created in the United States. 50 million of those 51 million private sector jobs created were produced under Democratic administrations. Democratic presidents have proven to manage the economy much better than Republican presidents since 1989.
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