‘Bull—-‘: JD Vance is called out for spreading American economy misinformation online
On the campaign trail to the 2024 election, the economy was a significant talking point for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. And by “talking” I mean “spreading misinformation.” It hasn’t stopped.
Soon-to-be Vice President J.D. Vance was called out on X for spreading “bullshit” about the United States Economy under Trump, and by extension, sitting President Joe Biden. Paired with a picture of Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump watching footage of the New York Stock Exchange, Vance posted that Trump is poised to “lead a great American comeback” for the American economy.
Trump and his allies have frequently used the economy as a club to bash the Biden administration over the head. Trump has said that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are responsible for the “worst inflation in American history,” a claim that has been proven to be false. While inflation did indeed rise under the first years of the Biden administration, experts believe that it was a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, not a result of Biden’s economic policy.
In the years following the pandemic, the American economy has stabilized significantly. According to an analysis by economic experts at BBC, inflation spiked at around 9% during the first half of the pandemic – a trend that was shared by many other Western countries in 2021 and 2022 due to global supply chain issues caused by Covid. Inflation then petered off, and is currently hovering at around 3%. The Biden administration has seen inflation drop by a full 6%.
Biden was also responsible for an explosion of jobs, around 16 million – more than double the amount of jobs that were added when Trump was in office. Biden claims that this figure represents the “fastest job growth at any point of any president in all of American history.” Unlike many of the claims that Trump and Vance make about the U.S. economy, this one is true – according to data collected on the matter since 1939. According to Professor Mark Strain, an economist at Georgetown University, President Biden’s American Rescue Plan “played a major role in the speed and aggressiveness of the labour market recovery.” While Strain concludes that “many of the jobs would have come back if Trump had won in 2020” due to a weakening pandemic, Biden’s polices accounted for significant, history making job growth.
If these figures are to be considered, Trump is indeed set to inherit a booming United States economy, despite what he and his supporters would have the American people believe. However, many of Trump’s policy plans could cause major economic stagnation, reversing the upward trends that the United States currently enjoys. Trump’s “mass deportation” plan to forcibly remove tens of millions of undocumented migrants from U.S. soil will be one of the worst offenders. According to the American Immigration Council, Trump’s plan could come with a “devastating cost” to the American economy, causing inflation to skyrocket while simultaneously kneecapping industries that depend significantly upon migrant work.
Trump’s tax and tariff polices will also likely spell economic woe for the average American. According to the analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Trump’s tax plan will cause a tax hike for 95% of Americans, save for its 5% richest, with the bottom 20% of earners seeing the highest percentage of tax increase. Trump’s tariff plan meanwhile has caused corporate executives to warn consumers of a price of goods increase across multiple retail chains.
Trump is inheriting a booming economy, and J.D. Vance should be prepared for him to squander it.
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