, Columnist
Trump Flunked His Own Economics Test
Measured by the departing president’s favorite yardsticks, the U.S. economy didn’t boom especially loudly, even before the pandemic.
Not as advertised.
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Even before the Covid-19 pandemic devastated global growth in 2020, the U.S. economic boom that Donald Trump described in campaign pledges and presidential claims was mostly a mirage.
From trade deficits to manufacturing, coal-mining to oil and gas and auto industry jobs, Trump exits the White House close to the bottom among his six predecessors in the yardsticks of economic performance by which he proposed to be measured. Even the booming stock market, which Trump extolled as his unique accomplishment, remains a distant also-ran to equities under President Bill Clinton.