Tracking economic trends from Biden to Trump

All right, as we transition from the Biden administration to the second Trump administration, one of the things I am committed to doing, and am genuinely interested in doing, is saying, here are the economic indicators and numbers at the end of Joe Biden’s presidency and at the start of Donald Trump’s second term, and let’s actually track and see where things go. Why is this so critical and important? Donald Trump ran for multiple years on inflation and prices are too high. I’m going to bring them down. Job growth under Biden isn’t very good. I’m going to accelerate GDP growth under Biden is no good. I’m going to increase it. Wage growth under Biden isn’t good. I’m going to increase it. And on and on. A gas prices are too expensive. I’m going to bring them down. As we transition from Biden to Trump, we will be making a note of exactly where these numbers are, and then quarterly. You know, some of this data is monthly. Some of it is quarterly, like GDP, quarterly. Over the next years, we’re going to be able to see here’s where Joe Biden left off, and here is where we are today, and it is just going to be objective data. Now, I’m sure some of you suspect that it’s not quite so simple. And of course, you’re correct, and I will tell you many of the reasons why one of the moves that the Maga right loves to employ is when numbers are convenient, they accept the source, and when numbers are inconvenient, they reject the source, even when the source is The same. For example, when it comes to employment numbers, we are always talking about the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same one that reported unemployment numbers under Reagan and Bush and Clinton. When the numbers are useful to them, they say, here they are. And when the numbers are not useful to them, they say they aren’t measuring it correctly. It’s biased, et cetera, et cetera. When it comes to every single one of these metrics, they can always argue don’t trust the source, or here’s why it’s not the right metric, or here’s why it doesn’t matter, because I just feel that something else is the truth. I’m not going to let that stop me from using these accepted economic indicators to evaluate how the economy is doing, but we have to be ready for the fact that that is something that they are going to do. Secondly, many of the claims or promises that have been made by this administration, if they incoming administration, if they succeed, would be signs of trouble for the country. I’ll give you an example. When they’ve talked about getting gas prices back down to a buck 50 a gallon. When they talk about the actual price of groceries is too high, we’re going to lower it. In absolute terms, price declines of the sort that they are promising a 50% decline in energy prices. These are price declines that we would only ever see in a disastrous economic situation. It would be worse than the Great Recession of 2008

to see some of these prices decline by as much as they claim they are going to decline. And if it happens, it will be a sign that other things are going very, very wrong. Why is this? Because deflation of that sort is either a sign that something is already very bad or a cause of things being very bad. I’ve explained this before, and it’s quite simple. If you are in a deflationary spiral, you expect stuff to get cheaper. If you wait, if you expect stuff to get cheaper, if you wait, you don’t buy it. Now, of course, this doesn’t apply to things like food and necessities, but to things like cars, electronics, travel services of different kinds. If you’re in a deflationary spiral, the likes of which Trump and Vance say they want, you would go, Oh, I should wait a month, because it’ll be cheaper next month. And if the deflationary spiral continues, you would say, let me Wait. Wait another month, because it’ll be even cheaper. If you do that, the economy grinds to a halt. All of the businesses that sell stuff say, everybody’s waiting to buy I’ve got to start laying people off. And now the people you lay off don’t have the money with which to buy things, so it hurts even more businesses. So I don’t know whether Trump understands this or gets it, but all of the bluster about we’re going to bring energy prices down 50% we’re going to bring gas down to 150 we’re going to bring grocery prices down. I don’t believe they are going to do it. If they do, I don’t think it will be something to cheer about. It will almost certainly go hand in hand with a very serious recession. So my plan is we’re going to monitor the numbers. I am as objective as possible with these economic numbers. Yes, I’m against the death penalty, yes, I’m pro choice. But when we talk about economic numbers, it’s there in the data, and we will.

See whether any of the promises that Trump and Vance made during the campaign come true, and we will evaluate together. What do you expect? Where do you expect unemployment to be a year from now? Where do you expect inflation to be a year from now? Let me know.