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Journalists didn't quite notice how badly Trump screwed up the economy. They say his employment numbers were almost as good as Obama's, that the public was in good spirits and the stock market was better. They must have been living under a rock. Employment numbers have been juggled for propaganda for decades, the public's mood will show anything pollsters want it to show and the stock market hasn't had a real relationship to the economy since the "irrational exuberance" of Greenspan's years. The stock market is nothing more than a gambling casino anymore. How could anyone miss that? The economy has been running on borrowed time for decades with no ability of politicians to fix the problem. The basic problem is a deficient ability to produce exportable value, which balloons the trade deficit. To assume Trump improved the trade deficit is like assuming the chicken ate the farmer for lunch. Trump couldn't have screwed up international trade more thoroughly. Putting tariffs on steel and aluminum made U.S. exports more expensive and less competitive, while the idiot president though it would cause U.S. industry to do more smelting—an impossibility. Trump's assumption that the U.S. was dealt with unfairly in trade deals was stupidity. The U.S. has been pushing its weight around for more than a century. Trump though the Europeans got a better deal on auto trade. He didn't know that the U.S. got exclusive exports of the cash-cow vehicles (pickups and four wheelers), while Europeans got stuck with small potato vehicles with razor thin margins. Then in retaliation to the anger, Trump slapped tariffs on critical European specialty products resulting in Europeans putting tariffs on U.S. specialty products. Regardless of who is ahead in the war, there is less exporting being done on both sides. That's not an improvement in the economy. The relationship to China went from small potatoes to large potatoes, as China switched to buying from every other source possible. They get much of their agricultural products from Brazil now except for their shortage of pork, which the U.S. is dumping on them, as prices go up for U.S. consumers. Not allowing specialists into the country is reducing the ability of the U.S. to increase it competitiveness, as is keeping out the low class immigrants who do work the U.S. workers cannot do. U.S. farm workers cannot migrate from location to location while sleeping five to a room in motels. For these reasons, the U.S. economy was shot before the pandemic. Most economists couldn't figure out how the economy was limping along. It was running on borrowed time and borrowed money. There is a bigotized undercurrent that always does want to see less available at more expense for the losers at the bottom of society. The bigotry of the Trumpers could hardly have been any different. Viewing the result as a good thing does not translate into a good economy. Corruption is always self-destructive.
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