People might forget, but part of his platform was supercharging the economy (really, the stock market) past the moderate, but steady and unexciting post-financial-crisis growth of the Obama era.
To continue the automotive analogy, supercharging an engine with major fragilities usually sets it up for a reckoning, just waiting for a trigger.
Covid-19 is just a particularly powerful trigger since it is globally correlated, and also has its primary effects at the local level. It would have shocked any economy, Obama's or Trump's, but there is much farther to fall in the latter's, because of the huge market rallies and the expectations that drove and emerged from it.
He said a lot of things... often contradictory. And his growth rate hasn't been particularly different than Obama's despite the super stimulus of deficit spending during a non-recession. Maybe it was the trade war or maybe there's just a limit to giving corporations huge tax cuts when they're already awash in abundant profits and capital.
Agreed, but massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are something he campaigned on and delivered on, like it or not (I surely didn't like it).
> And his growth rate hasn't been particularly different than Obama's despite the super stimulus of deficit spending during a non-recession.
On main street and the overall economy, sure, the growth rate hasn't been much better, and wealth and income inequality haven't reduced [1], although they didn't reduce under Obama either.
On Wall St however, growth has been blockbuster since his election (S&P up more than 30%) with investors reaping the rewards of stock buybacks and lower overall taxes. A good deal of this rise was right after his election, on the expectation of the tax cuts that eventually passed. The stock market is what crashed. Main street might follow, we'll see.
> Maybe it was the trade war or maybe there's just a limit to giving corporations huge tax cuts when they're already awash in abundant profits and capital.
I think we're in agreement here. The massive tax cuts to corps and wealthy people are what juiced the market and set expectations sky high. The trade war probably didn't help either.
To continue the automotive analogy, supercharging an engine with major fragilities usually sets it up for a reckoning, just waiting for a trigger.
Covid-19 is just a particularly powerful trigger since it is globally correlated, and also has its primary effects at the local level. It would have shocked any economy, Obama's or Trump's, but there is much farther to fall in the latter's, because of the huge market rallies and the expectations that drove and emerged from it.