Spengler is right, but I suspect it is impossible to break the sustained illusion that everything good in today’s economy is President Obama’s doing.
PJM: Trump Deserves More Credit than He Gets for the Economy, but He Hasn’t Done Enough
Published
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
The only substantive constant has been deficit spending. And, of course, Trump, not Obama, will be blamed when the inevitable damages begin. At that point our only option will be to repudiate the debt by restoring full authority for monetary policy to its Constitutional home, the U.S. Treasury. But replacing our private currency with government money may be too much for the public to comprehend and accept.
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Trump is practicing economic malfeasance. In his lust to somehow outperform the economy he inherited – which, predictably, he has not been able to do – he his feeding a full employment economy on a diet of huge government deficit spending. This will not end well and that is not even counting the Trillions added to our national debt serving no useful purpose of any kind.
As a reminder Trump solemnly promised he would pay off the national debt within eight years. His policies have had the opposite effect of reversing the actual fiscal successes of his predecessor.
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RE: “Trump is practicing economic malfeasance.”
Is there something substantive you disagree with in Spengler’s analysis, or mine, or is it merely your purpose to sustain the unbreakable illusion I mentioned?
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Paul is right. And so is Spengler. Trump’s tax cuts were bought by American taxpayers. And larger
companies used that to return more money to major shareholders. Not illegal, but not in the best interests of international competition, especially with China.
Trump talks big, but still negotiates like a minor player in the real estate business. The global market is filled with experienced and ruthless capitalists. I think he out of his league.
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How is any one company’s international competitiveness in any way a president’s responsibility? On the contrary, if Spengler is right, as you admit, some part of small business’ exuberance in hiring new personnel reflects favorable foreign trade conditions.
I don’t think it is rational to blame Trump for whatever failures you seem to see in our economy.
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Your analysis? There is no possible argument against fantasy or wishful thinking. Trump gets no credit for anything because he has done nothing EXCEPT get us into a damaging trade war while funneling trillions of dollars of capital into the hands of people who can not invest any more if they wanted to – the economy is already at full employment and they were already sitting on a mountain of liquidity with no place to put it. That there has been some sort of economic miracle or even some sort of a turnaround on his watch is just another of his con man lies. We are STILL enjoying the Obama economy.
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No one is claiming an economic miracle here, only favorable circumstances for which the president deserves some credit.
You talk of trade war, but I see little evidence of that, only successes in closing our trade deficit. Do you suppose it is better to send our cash to other countries?
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Closing trade deficits? Not so much. The trade deficit has gone up both as gross dollars and percentage of GDP.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/trump-has-to-understand-trade-deficit-before-he-reduces-it
Good article that defines the pluses and minuses of trade deficits and dollar strength. It also points out that the simplistic rhetoric from Trump regarding the imbalance may be making things worse for the economy.
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Your claim that Trump has closed the trade deficit flies in the face of the reality that it is bigger than ever. How is it that Trump enthusiasts seem to base their enthusiasm on false or distorted evidence?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/03/13/donald-trump-vowed-fix-trade-deficits-record-high-editorials-debates/3083731002/
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RE: “The trade deficit has gone up both as gross dollars and percentage of GDP.”
Compared to what? Read the first paragraph at your Bloomberg link. It ends with the statement, “2018’s deficit of 4.3 percent of GDP was well short of 2006’s 6.1 percent.”
A lot depends on when the headlines are written (and the bias of the writer). Last month, for example, you might have seen this headline at CNN:
US trade deficit fell for the first time in five months. Tariffs could be why
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/06/business/trade-deficit-tariffs-commerce-data/index.html
There were others like it. In other words, the analysis is not as simple as “Trump Man Bad.” Notice the quotation by Larry Kudlow in your own link: “the U.S. is bound to have a trade deficit in goods with the rest of the world because we are growing much faster than they are growing and so we are buying more of their goods.”
My view is that tariffs are the only way to keep dollars from fleeing the country. We want them to stay here to grow our own economy. If you know of a better way to accomplish the same goal, I’m all ears.
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The CNN article was about 1 month last October/November.
“The U.S. trade deficit widened to USD 59.8 billion in December of 2018 from an upwardly revised USD 50.3 billion in the previous month and compared with market expectations of a USD 57.9 billion gap. It is the largest deficit since October of 2008 as exports declined for the third month and imports.”
The other reference was about 2006, 13 years, a near catastrophic recession and a good recovery ago.
The tax (tariff) increase paid by Americans does not seem to be affecting the trade deficit in any significant way.
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