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Donald Trump. Photo from whitehouse.gov.
In a statement on the Republican Party of Wisconsin website, Chair Brian Schimming accuses Kamala Harris of “expecting us to ignore what our bank statements and monthly budgets make clear: that we were better off four years ago under Trump.”
Weekly Deaths from Covid
This is a version of a question made famous by Ronald Reagan in a debate with President Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” For many viewers, the answer was No and Reagan went on to win the election. Ever since this question has been popular among Republican politicians.
The trouble with Schimming’s statement is that four years ago puts us squarely in October 2020—and squarely in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the graph below shows, in the week of Oct. 3, 2020, COVID killed 4,240 residents of the United States. This compares to 679 COVID deaths during the week of Oct. 5, 2024.
The 4,240 COVID deaths represent something of a valley between two peaks in 2020. In October 2020, COVID deaths were about to take off, hitting a peak of 25,974 deaths on Jan 9, 2021, towards the end of Trump’s term.
The next graph shows the overall pattern of these deaths, appearing to be slowing down, only to peak again.
Weekly Deaths from COVID
Needless to say, a variety of economic measures reacted to this. For instance, the unemployment rate had hit 14.8% nationally and 14.0% in Wisconsin in the previous April. By October, the rates had dropped to 7.8% and 5.8%.
Although Trump was not responsible for the COVID pandemic, he, and the people who worked for him were responsible for mounting an effective response. They fell short in many ways.
The problem started years before COVID-19 appeared. Experts within and outside the government were warning that the question was not whether but when the next disease would strike. Reflecting the realization that an effective to biological threats required nation among many federal and state agencies, the Obama administration built on Bush administration plans to create a “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents.”
The Trump Administration shelved the playbook and, in 2018, terminated the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. Thus, when COVID hit, the government had no map for who needed to do what. Yet Trump insisted: “Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this before.”
Early on, Trump minimized the danger posed by COVID. Talking to reporters in February, Trump declared: “We have it very much under control in this country … Very interestingly, we’ve had no deaths.”
Worried about the next election, Trump downplayed the seriousness of the virus. Recently, he claimed:
I had the country going, just prior to COVID coming in, at a level that nobody had ever seen. And even if you go all four years, it was so good that even with that terrible interruption that destroyed the world, we had the greatest four years. The economy was so great. The job numbers were the best ever, et cetera.
The next chart shows the growth of jobs by president since Truman. Job growth under Democratic presidents is shown in blue, under Republicans in red. I split the Trump results in two: Trump1 shows the results for Trump’s first three years. Trump 2 shows the job loss during his final year.
The chart shows moderate job growth during Trump’s first three years, continuing a trend established by the Obama administration. This was more than offset by job loss in 2020, for a Trump net of -1,856,000. Dropping Trump’s job record for 2020 leaves a respectful jobs record, exceeding all Republicans other than Reagan and Nixon, but falling below that of most Democratic administrations. That is hardly the “greatest economy in the history of the world.”
Growth in Jobs by President
In 2021, PolitiFact: decided to investigate Trump’s claim. Its conclusion? “No, Donald Trump didn’t lead ‘greatest economy in the history of the world.’”
The strongest evidence in favor of the claim, PolitFact concluded, is the unemployment rate. The chart below shows US unemployment since 1948 (in yellow) and Wisconsin unemployment since 1976 (in green). The dotted yellow and green lines show the smallest national and state unemployment rates since 1976. To find an unemployment rate smaller than that found in Trump’s first three years, one would have to go back to the 1950s.
Interestingly, the lowest Wisconsin unemployment rate occurred during the Biden administration, not Trump’s.
US and Wisconsin unemployment rates
As to job growth, we have already seen that, even excluding 2020, most of the Democratic presidents had better results than Trump. It also pointed to other factors that suggest the Trump record fell short:
Growth in GDP was only “so-so.”
The federal deficit grew under Trump
Wage increases were modest compared to the 1960s.
Low interest rates came from the Federal Reserve, a sign that the Fed considered the economy shaky.
Even if one ignores the mismanagement of the COVID challenge the Trump record on the economy falls far short of leading to the “greatest economy in the history of the world.” Because of Trump’s intransigence on COVID, unemployment rates in his final year soared to historic levels.