Trump’s Economic Claims Are Overblown
And the rate of job growth during Mr. Trump’s first 19 months in office (194,000 jobs per month) is slightly less than the rate at which jobs were added during Mr. Obama’s final 19 months (205,000 per month). So the good news on jobs is the same good news Americans have been hearing for the last three years.
.. Over the first 18 months since Mr. Trump took office, real earnings, which reflect earnings after accounting for inflation, rose at an annual rate of just 0.3 percent.
.. Without these extraordinary interventions, the underlying rate of economic expansion in the second quarter of this year was about 2.7 percent.. Moreover, that 4.1 percent number isn’t heroic. During the Obama presidency, the economy produced four quarters of growth that were higher. And the consensus among private and government forecasters is that the G.D.P. growth rate is likely to ebb quickly, once tariffs are actually in effect and the tax cut gains are all realized. Goldman Sachs, for example, forecasts that the annualized growth rate will fall to 3.3 percent in the third quarter and then taper down to 1.5 percent by the end of 2019... the Trump administration’s policies have done little for the average worker. Mr. Trump’s tax cut delivered 84 percent of its benefits to business and to individuals with incomes above $75,000 a year.