Less than two and a half years ago, Donald Trump, and by extension the United States, was the world’s laughing stock. Today, the US is the undisputed, most powerful country in the world. Once again, the US is what former President Ronald Reagan called, “the shining city upon a hill.”
During the Trump years, the United States was regarded as a fading power bypassed by China and lagging behind Europe and the Pacific Rim countries. While Donald Trump catered to the world’s worst dictators, President Joe Biden has re-established the US as the leader of the world’s good guys. For example, Germany refused to provide modern tanks to Ukraine until the US lead by providing tanks first. Under Biden, the US is once again the world’s arsenal of democracy.
Joe Biden transformed the wretched economy Trump left behind into the world’s economic powerhouse.
- Trump is the only president, since employment records were first kept in the 1930’s, to have negative job growth during his term. Biden has created 11 million jobs since taking office. This is 1.5 million more jobs than before the pandemic. There has been a net gain of 740,000 manufacturing jobs during Biden’s term.
- Biden has almost halved Trump’s end of term unemployment rate.
- When Biden took office, there were more unemployed people than job openings. Now there are almost two job openings for every unemployed person.
- The duration of unemployment has dropped by half sine Biden took office.
- Trump had he lowest GDP increase during his term of any president since records were first kept in the 1930’s. Under Biden, inflation adjusted GDP growth is a total of 8 percent over the two years of Biden’s presidency, far above normal growth.
In addition:
- Biden lowered the 2020 Trump budget deficit of $3.1 trillion (an all-time record) down to $1.1 trillion in 2022.
- Biden cut federal government spending in 2022 by over $659 billion from Trump’s last year in office.
US Bureau of Economic Analysis, Table 3.2 Federal Government Current Expenditures and Receipts https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/?reqid=19&step=2&isuri=1&categories=survey#eyJhcHBpZCI6MTksInN0ZXBzIjpbMSwyLDMsM10sImRhdGEiOltbImNhdGVnb3JpZXMiLCJTdXJ2ZXkiXSxbIk5JUEFfVGFibGVfTGlzdCIsIjg3Il0sWyJGaXJzdF9ZZWFyIiwiMjAyMCJdLFsiTGFzdF9ZZWFyIiwiMjAyMiJdLFsiU2NhbGUiLCItOSJdLFsiU2VyaWVzIiwiQSJdXX0= Accessed 03/30/2023
All this is happening while China’s economy is floundering. Much of the difference is the two nations’ approach to COVID. Trump still hasn’t come to grips with how deadly and dangerous COVID is. Trump’s strategy of blaming Democrats and the media for COVID and eventually just hoping it would go away resulted in thousands of preventable deaths and devastated our economy. In contrast, China and other east Asian and Oceania counties followed strict COVID mitigation policies. Their economies continued growing.
The biggest reason for the US’s success
Biden came into office and quickly used the Defense Authorization Act to finally get hospitals desperately needed N95 masks and other protective clothing. Biden kicked Trump’s political hacks out of the Center for Disease Center and replaced them with professionals.
Most important, Biden took a no expense is too great approach to getting every person in the US that wanted the COVID vaccine vaccinated as fast as possible. The US vaccines are phenomenally effective and virtually eliminated COVID deaths in people that are fully vaccinated. What this did was to remove our fear of leaving our homes. This had far more to do with our economic resurgence than any of Biden’s economic policies.
At the same time, the more contagious COVID variants made the previously successful containment policies countries such as China implemented less effective. China’s Zero COVID policy involved quarantining vast sections of their country. After giving up on the Zero COVID policy, China is having major COVID outbreaks and deaths. It appears their vaccines and vaccination efforts are not as effective as the ones Joe Biden implemented. The net effect of all this is while the US economy is surging, China is in an economic retrenchment.
Why has the US regained its mojo?
The obvious difference between Biden and Trump is intelligence. I conservatively estimate Biden’s IQ is at least 50 points higher than Trump’s. The Baby Trump ballon in the above picture was a result of Trump not being bright enough to recognize the danger of climate change. Trump’s pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Accords directly impacted the Europeans in the photo.
Trump does not have the intelligence or common sense to differentiate between real threats like COVID and climate change and his crazy conspiracies.
However, there is more to all this than intelligence. Biden is famous for his verbal gaffes. Yet, you don’t see NATO leaders mocking Biden like they did Trump at the 2019 NATO Summit with imitations of Trump’s pompous wind-bagging. And, you certainly won’t see Europeans parading around inflatable Biden in diapers balloons.
The difference is that Joe Biden commands the kind of respect Trump can only fantasize about. Biden stands for democracy and freedom. That resonates with people everywhere.
In contrast to the pathological liar Trump, Joe Biden is a good person. Biden treats others with respect and has empathy for others.
A few caveats…
Trumpism is a cult where his followers look at Trump as a living God. For his followers, criticizing their true Messiah is heresy. Conversely, Biden supporters look at Biden as a good person that tries to do the best he can. But, Biden is human. He makes mistakes.
Republican economic failures over the past 40 years have shown you can’t build a solid, resilient economy on massive spending and huge deficits. I’ll be surprised if Biden can pull it off over the long term without a recession.
While Biden has lowered spending and deficits from Trump’s levels, that isn’t much to brag about. Biden and Democrats missed a generational chance to balance the federal budget. They should have increased tax rates on the rich back up to the US’s historical levels and stopped the massive accumulation of wealth in the upper one percent of our population. We’ve had over 40 years of welfare for the rich. It was time for that to to end. We won’t have another chance to balance the federal budget until Democrats again control the presidency, the Senate and the House.
Nevertheless…
The US is in a much better place than we were two and a half years ago. It is good to focus on Biden’s accomplishments and the how the rest of the world once again respects us. Considering what Trump left behind and where we are today, Joe Biden has truly “Made America Great Again!”
