Personally I find that one of the more subjective and to some extent ignorant discussions pertains to presidents and the economy. Economies, especially today with regard to the global economics, are very complex with so many moving parts. There are literally thousands and thousands of companies, large, medium and small, along with thousands of small businesses. There are many world players, there are currency markets, commodities markets, all having their own unique impact. Economies often ebb and flow and do so no matter who is sitting in the White House.
The only thing a president or government can do is implement policies that one hopes has positive effects on the economy. Sometimes policies can help many aspects of the economy, sometimes just particular economic niches, and sometimes have little or no positive impact. Sometimes policies can be negative as well, and to be frank there is a greater ability for the government to do more harm than good. But as far as I’m concerned the actual overall control a president can have over how the economy moves is relatively small.
“Goldman Sachs recently surveyed analysts who monitor 20 sectors of the economy about the impact of the trade war on each of those sectors. They found a lot of worry but not much change in hiring or investment. But the analysts expect profits to be squeezed in nearly half the sectors they cover, and that’s a reminder that things are a lot more complicated than they sometimes seem. There’s a simple-minded assertion that tariffs are fully and always passed along to consumers, but who bears the burden of tariffs? The country that exports or the country that imports, the consumer or the producer, depends on a whole lot of factors. Nonetheless, nothing we’ve seen so far adds up to anything like economic devastation.”
But we’ll have to wait and see how things shape out. I’m sure China doesn’t wan this either. The ironic thing about all this is that so many others have complained year after year about the US being taken advantage of or getting the short end of trade deals but no one ever does anything about it. And I’m not saying that Trump’s approach is the best way to do this but he is the first president I’m aware of to attempt to deal with this.
Congress has given a lot of power and authority to the executive branch. The presidents EPA can write rules and regulations that can target specific industries to benefit his friends and cronies, or harm his enemies. A President’s actions can cripple entire industries and significantly affect the economy.
A President using a compliant Chairman of the Federal Reserve and US Treasury, or his various executive branch agencies, along with his pen and phone, can undermine and slow our economy.
Just about everything has SOME effect. Maybe marginal. Maybe minuscule. Maybe significant. Maybe immediate. Maybe long-term. Maybe positive. Maybe negative. Often a combination of all these.
Most times we don’t see the true effect until the history books are written.
In the mean time, each initiative and action a president does constitutes the next political football, and often the ongoing social debate clouds visibility to the overall effect.
We can find benefits and we can fine liabilities caused by the tariffs.
We can also see how they effectively result in a tax on the consumers. (Or on the producers, if they eat the tariff costs.) That makes it an exercise in other-side-of-the-coin analysis, for the general alignment of pro- and anti-tariff sides are opposite the pro- and anti-tax-increase alignments.
Well, Obama was able to keep the economy below 3% growth for 8 years. I think the threat of a president who is a wannabe Communist Dictator, like Obama, can have a very dampening effect.
I remember when Obama won the election and the stock market took an immediate dive, while job loss sky rocketed before Obama took office, because markets operate on future prospects. Any smart businessman should have hunkered down for the Obama years, and many did.
I lived through the years of Democrat president Carter. When I graduated in 1980, job prospects were VERY bad. After Reagan got elected, there was so much prosperity that Upwardly Mobile was a term created to describe the economic prospects of anybody who wanted to put an effort into making their lives better.
Because I lived through the Carter years, I KNEW that Democrats were bad for the economy. The first 2 years of Bill Clinton were economically flat, until the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the 1st time in 40 years. Then the Republicans started to put forth legislation which really picked up the economy, like the rule that if you in a house for more than 2 years, you could sell it with no capital gains tax. That was a fabulous middle class tax cut, and the economic boom it caused made Clinton look like he knew how to run an economy, when he really didn’t do anything.
Trump has gotten rid of the bad NAFTA deal, opened up the petroleum industry, and MANY more things. The current good economy has EVERYTHING to do with the moves Trump has made.
Now that the Democrats have taken the House of Representatives, we should expect the economic gains to slow down since there will probably be ZERO legislation which is good for the economy. Even more so if the Democrats waste Trump’s time with a lot of accusations.
That’s right, it crashed way before the 2008 election, early enough to stabilize before the elections occurred. The it would start going up when McCain’s numbers got better, and it went down when Obama’s numbers got better. Then right after Obama won in early November, the nose dive occurred. Just now I checked the graph to verify this. I remember keeping track of this as the campaigns were going. It was obvious that smart businessmen were hunkering down after the election before the communist took office.
