The Republican primaries are under way and – not surprisingly – the candidates have been ganging up on Bidenomics. Spoiler alert: they don’t like it. Fact check: they are wrong.
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To a man – and one woman – the Republican candidates all say that the US economy is bad and that Americans are struggling financially. They’re warning about sky-high deficits, over-the-top government spending and a potentially catastrophic level of national debt. They point out that interest rates are at a 20-year high and the costs of core things like food, gas and housing are significantly more than they were just a few years ago. They point to a downturn in manufacturing and falling small business confidence.
“Bidenomics is crushing American families,” said the Republican candidate Nikki Haley. “We’re paying more for gas, groceries and other basic necessities.”
“I’ll rip up Bidenomics on day one of my presidency,” the Florida governor and presidential challenger Ron DeSantis warned.
Yes, prices and rates are up. But really? Is the economy so bad? I’m a Republican and a small business owner with hundreds of clients in many industries and honestly the economy isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s been really, really good.
Just ask Donald Trump, who implicitly admitted this when he recently said he hoped for a “crash” and that it would “be in the next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover”.
If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers.
Last quarter’s gross domestic product showed growth of 5.2%. That’s a number that dwarfs all other pre-Covid recovery numbers in recent memory. Unemployment is at a record low. Each month the economy is adding hundreds of thousands of new jobs. There are millions of more open jobs available today compared with 2019.
Yes, prices are higher, but inflation is down from a 9% annual rate to about 3%, so whatever the Federal Reserve did to offset the treasury’s spending on fiscal programs seems to be working. The stock market is near all-time highs, as is household wealth. Credit card delinquency rates are lower than they’ve been for the past 30 years as are delinquencies on all loans across the banking system. Holiday retail sales were strong and online sales boomed. Plenty of capital is available for businesses that need it and corporations have more cash on hand than in any year before the pandemic.
I speak to dozens of industry associations each year and here’s what I’m hearing: just about everyone had a good 2023. The CEOs of our major banks reported strong earnings, after taking into consideration special assessments and one-time charges. Retailers and restaurants have recovered from the pandemic. Convention traffic in Vegas is back to normal. There are almost as many travelers through the airports as there were before Covid. Businesses in the service industries recorded their 12th consecutive month of growth.