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Trump’s Claims on the Economy and the Reality: A Comparison of Trump to Biden and Obama

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“We had the greatest economy in the history of the world.  We had never done anything like it. … Nobody had seen anything like it.”

Donald Trump, Republican National Convention, Milwaukee, July 18, 2024

A.  Introduction

Donald Trump is fond of asserting that the US “had the greatest economy in the history of the world” while he was president.  He claimed this when he accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention (as quoted above); he claimed it when he debated President Biden in June; and it is a standard line repeated at his campaign rallies.  He also asserts that this is all in sharp contrast to the economy he inherited from Obama and to where it is now under Biden.  In a June 22 speech, for example, Trump said “Under Biden, the economy is in ruins.”

These assertions of Trump are not new.  He was already repeatedly making this claim in 2018 – in the second year of his administration – asserting that the US was then enjoying “the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history” (or with similar wording).  And he repeated it.  The Washington Post Fact Checker recorded in their database that Trump made this claim in public fora at least 493 different times (from what they were able to find and verify) by the end of his term in January 2021.

Repetition does not make something true.  And numerous fact-checkers have shown that the assertion is certainly not true (see, for example, here, here, and here, and for the 2018 statements here).  But readers of this blog may nonetheless find a review of the actual data to be of interest, and in charts so that the extent to which Trump is simply making this up is clear.

The post will focus on Trump’s record compared to that of Obama’s second presidential term (immediately before Trump) and Biden’s presidential term (immediately after).  The post will also show that even if you just focus on the first three years of his presidential term – thus excluding the economic collapse in his fourth year during the Covid crisis – Trump’s record is nothing special.  The collapse in that fourth year was certainly severe, and with that included Trump’s record would have been one of the worst in US history.  But Covid would have been difficult to manage even by the most capable of administrations.  Trump’s was far from that, and that mismanagement had economic consequences, but Trump’s record is not exceptional even if you leave that fourth year out.

This post complements and basically updates a longer post on this blog from September 2020.  That post compared Trump’s economic record not only to that of Obama but also to that of American presidents going back to Nixon/Ford.  I will not repeat those comparisons here as they would not have changed.  I will focus this post on just a few of the key comparisons, adding in the record of Biden.

B.  The Record on Growth

The two charts at the top of this post show how Trump’s record compares to that of Obama and Biden in the two measures most commonly taken as indicators of economic performance – growth in national output (real GDP) and growth in total employment (jobs).  This section will focus on Trump’s not-so-special record on growth, while the section following will focus on employment.

Trump has repeatedly asserted that economic growth while he was president surpassed that of any in history.  This is not remotely true in comparison to growth under a number of post-World War II presidents.  (Quarterly GDP statistics only began in 1947 so older comparisons are more difficult, but there were certainly many other cases further back as well.)  Giving Trump the benefit of excluding the economic collapse in 2020 during the Covid crisis, real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.8% over the first three years of Trump’s presidential term.  But real GDP grew at an annual rate of 5.3% during the eight years of the Kennedy/Johnson presidency; at a rate of 3.7% during the Clinton presidency; 3.4% during Reagan; and 3.4% as well during the Carter presidency.  The 2.8% during the first three years of Trump is not so historic.  Carter’s economic record is often disparaged (inappropriately), but Carter’s record on GDP growth is significantly better than that of Trump – even when one leaves out the collapse in the fourth year of Trump’s presidency.

Nor is the Trump record on growth anything special compared to that of Biden or Obama.  As seen in the chart at the top of this post, growth under Biden over the first three years of his presidency matched what Trump bragged about for that period (it was in fact very slightly higher for Biden).  GDP growth then remained strong in the fourth year of Biden’s presidency instead of collapsing.  Growth in the Obama presidential term immediately preceding Trump was also similar:  sometimes a bit above and sometimes a bit below, and with no collapse in the fourth year.  It was also similar in Obama’s first term once he had turned around the economy from the economic and financial collapse he inherited from the last year of the Bush presidency.

Trump’s repeated assertion that “we had the greatest economy in the history of the world” was a result – he claimed – of the tax cuts that Republicans rammed through Congress (with debate blocked) in December 2017.  While the law did cut individual income tax rates to an extent (heavily weighted to benefit higher income groups), the centerpiece was a cut in the tax rate on corporate profits from 35% to just 21%.  The argument made was that this dramatic slashing of taxes on corporate profits would lead the companies to invest more, and that this spur to investment would lead to faster growth in GDP benefiting everyone.

That did not happen.  As we have already seen, real GDP did not grow faster under Trump than it had before (nor since under Biden).  Nor, as one can see in the chart at the top of this post, was there any acceleration in the pace of GDP growth starting in 2018 when the new tax law went into effect in the second year of his presidential term (i.e. starting in Quarter 5 in the charts).

The promised acceleration in growth was supposed to be a consequence of a sustained spur to greater private investment from the far lower taxes on corporate profits.  There is no evidence of that either:

The measure here is of fixed investment (i.e. excluding inventories), by the private sector (not government), in real terms (not nominal), and nonresidential (not in housing but rather in factories, machinery and equipment, office structures, and similar investments in support of production by private firms).

This private investment grew as fast or often faster under Obama (when the tax rate on corporate profits was 35%) as under Trump (when the tax rate was cut to just 21%).  Growth under Biden has also been similar, even though the tax rate on corporate profits remains at 21%.  This similar growth is, in fact, somewhat of a surprise, as the Fed raised interest rates sharply starting in March 2022 with the aim of slowing private investment and hence the economy in order to bring down inflation.

With the far lower corporate profit tax rates going into effect in the first quarter of 2018 and the Fed raising interest rates starting in the first quarter of 2022 – both cases in the fifth quarter of the Trump and Biden presidential terms respectively – a natural question is what happened to private investment in the periods following those changes?  Rebasing real private non-residential fixed investment to 100 in the fourth quarter of the presidential terms, one has:

The paths followed by private investment under Biden (facing the higher interest rates of the Fed) and under Trump (following corporate profit taxes being slashed) were largely the same – with the path under Biden often a bit higher.  They diverged only in the 12th quarter of each administration (the fourth quarter of 2019 for Trump, and the fourth quarter of 2023 for Biden).  Under Trump, private investment fell in that quarter – well before Covid appeared – and then collapsed once Covid did appear.  Under Biden, in contrast, it kept rising up until the most recent period for which we have data.

It is also worth noting that private investment during the similar period in Obama’s second term rose by even more than under Trump (and for a period faster than under Biden, although later it rose by more under Biden).  This was despite a tax rate on corporate profits that was still at 35% when Obama was in office.  There is no evidence the tax rate mattered.  And although not shown in the chart here, private investment rose by far more in the similar period during Obama’s first term (although from a low base following the 2008 economic collapse).

With similar growth in such investment in all three presidential terms (leaving out the collapse in 2020), the conclusion one can draw is that taxes at such rates on corporate profits simply do not have a meaningful impact on investment decisions.  Decisions on how much to invest and on what depend on other factors, with a tax rate on profits of 21% or of 35% not being central.  Nor did the Fed’s higher interest rates matter all that much to investment during Biden’s term.  With a strong economy under Biden, firms recognized that there were investment opportunities to exploit, and they did.

The far lower tax rate of 21% on corporate profits did, however, lead to a windfall gain for those who owned these companies.  Far less was paid in such taxes.  That is, the tax cuts did have distributional consequences.  But they did not spur private investment nor overall growth.  They did not lead to “the greatest economy in the history of the world”.

C.  The Record on Employment

As seen in the chart at the top of this post, growth in total employment was higher under Obama than it was under Trump, and has been far higher under Biden – even if you restrict the comparison to the first three years of the respective presidential terms.  In the face of this clear evidence in favor of Biden’s record, Trump has now started to assert that the growth in jobs under Biden was due to a “bounce back” in jobs following the collapse in the last year of his administration, or that they all went to new immigrants.  But neither is true.

First, as one can see in the chart there has been strong growth in the number employed not only early in Biden’s administration but on a sustained basis throughout.  And second, nor was the growth only in the employment of immigrants.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides figures from its Current Population Survey (CPS) of households on the employment of those who were born in the US (the native-born) and those born abroad (the foreign-born).  Leaving out the collapse in 2020, employment growth over the first three years of Trump’s presidential term of the native-born averaged 1.3% per year.  During the first three years of the Biden presidential term, employment growth of the native-born averaged 1.8% per year.  The growth in employment of the native-born was not zero under Biden – as Trump claims – but rather was faster under Biden than under Trump.  While there is a good deal of noise in the CPS figures (which will be discussed below), these numbers do not provide support for Trump’s assertion.

There has also been concern expressed in the media with what was interpreted as a “disappointing” growth in employment in July.  The BLS “Employment Situation” report for July, released on August 2, indicated that employment rose by an estimated 114,000 in the month.  This is a good deal below the average in the 12 months leading up to July of 209,300 per month.  But an increase of 114,000 net new jobs in the month is substantial.  While there will often be large month-to-month fluctuations, one should not expect more on average going forward.

With the economy basically at full employment (the recent uptick in the unemployment rate – to a still low 4.3% – will be discussed below), the number employed cannot grow on a sustained basis faster than the labor force does.  And the labor force will grow at a monthly pace dictated by growth in the adult civilian population (i.e. age 16 and over) and what share of that adult population chooses to participate in the labor force.  The labor force participation rate in July was 62.7% and has been trending downward over the past several decades.  While a number of factors are behind this, the primary one has been the aging of the population structure with the Baby Boom generation moving into their normal retirement years.

The BLS report (using figures obtained from the Census Bureau) indicates that the adult civilian population rose by an average of 136,800 per month in the 12 months leading up to July.  At a labor force participation rate of 62.7%, the labor force would thus have increased by 85,800 per month.  Without an increase in the labor force participation rate, employment cannot grow faster than this on a sustained basis going forward.

In the past 12 months, however, the BLS report for July indicates that the labor force in fact grew at an average pace of 109,700 per month.  How was this possible?  The reason is that although the labor force participation rate is on a long-term downward trend due to the aging population, there can be and have been fluctuations around this trend.  And a small fluctuation can have a significant effect.  The labor force participation rate one year ago in July 2023 was 62.6%, and thus the rate in fact rose by 0.1% from July 2023 to July 2024.  If the labor force participation rate in July 2023 had in fact been 62.7%, then the labor force in July 2023 would have been 167,410,000 rather than the actual 167,113,000, and the increase over the 12 months leading to July 2024 would have averaged 84,900.  Within round-off, this is the same as the 85,800 figure calculated in the preceding paragraph for a constant 62.7% labor force participation rate,  (With more significant digits, the labor force participation rates were 62.589% and 62.696% respectively, and a constant 62.696% participation rate would have yielded the 85,800 figure for labor force growth.)

We should therefore not expect, going forward, that monthly employment will increase on a sustained basis by more than about 90,000 or so, or even less.  It could be higher if the labor force participation rate increases (and a small change can have a major effect), but the trend over the past couple of decades has been downward – as noted already – due to the aging of the population.  How then, was it possible for employment to have gone up by an average of 209,300 per month over the past year?  And this was also a period where the estimated unemployment rate rose from 3.5% in July 2023 to 4.3% in July 2024, which “absorbed” a share of the increase in the labor force as well.

The reason for these not fully consistent numbers is that employment estimates come from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey of establishments where people are employed, while the labor force and unemployment estimates come from the different Current Population Survey (CPS) – a survey of households.  The CES is a survey of nonfarm employers in both the private and public sectors, and covers 119,000 different establishments at 629,000 different worksites each month.  The “sample” (if it can be called that) covers an estimated one-third of all employees.

The CPS, in contrast, is a survey of about 60,000 households each month.  There will only generally be one or two members of the labor force in each household, so the share of the labor force covered will be far less than in the CES.  If each household had two members in the labor force, for example, the total of 120,000 would be only 0.07% of the labor force –  a sharp contrast to the one-third covered in the CES.  There is therefore much more statistical noise in the CPS data.  There are also definitional differences:  The CPS will include not only those employed on farms but also the self-employed and those employed in households.  Also, a person with two or more jobs will be counted as one person “employed” in the CPS.  The CES, in contrast, counts the employees of a firm, and the employers will not know if the individual may be working at a second job as well.  Thus a person working two jobs at two different firms will be counted as two “employees” in the CES.

These definitional differences are not major, however, and in part offset each other.  An earlier post on this blog looked at these differences in detail, and how, in an earlier period (2018/2019) there was a substantial deviation in the employment growth figures between the estimates in the CES and the CPS.  This was the case even with the figures adjusted (to the extent possible) to the same definition of “employment” in each.  There is a similar deviation between the employment estimates in the CES and in the CPS currently, with this accounting for a strong growth in employment as estimated by the CES (of 209,300 net new jobs each month over the past year) even though the labor force has grown -according to the CPS – by a more modest 109,700 per month over this period.

The labor market remains tight, however, even with the rise in the estimated unemployment rate to 4.3% in July:

The unemployment rate fell rapidly under Biden, following the chaos of 2020.  It was at a rate of 3.9% or less for over two years (27 months), despite the efforts by the Fed to slow the economy by raising interest rates.  The unemployment rate was also 3.9% or less for a period under Trump (for 20 months).  But as one sees in the chart, during the first three years of Trump’s term it basically followed the same downward path as it had under Obama.  It then shot up in March 2020 when the nation was caught unprepared for Covid.  As with the other key economic indicators (the growth in GDP, in employment, and in private investment), the paths followed by the economy during the first three years of Trump’s term were basically the same as – although usually not quite as good as – the paths set during Obama’s presidency.  They all then collapsed in Trump’s fourth year.

Any unemployment rate near 4%, and indeed near 5%, is traditionally seen as low.  Economists have defined the concept of the “Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment” (NAIRU) as the rate of unemployment that can be sustained without being so low that inflation will start to rise.  While one can question how robust this concept is (as will be discussed below), the NAIRU rate of unemployment has generally been estimated (for example by the staff at the Federal Reserve Board) to be between 5 and 6%.  An unemployment rate of 4.3% is well below this.  While the unemployment rate has gone up some in recent months, it is still extremely low.

D.  The Record on Real Living Standards

Ultimately, what matters is not the growth in overall output (GDP) or in employment, but rather in real living standards.  Many have asserted that because of recent inflation, living standards have gone down during Biden’s presidential term.  This is not true, as we will see below.  But first we will look at inflation.

Inflation rose significantly early in Biden’s presidential term.  The pace moderated in mid-2022, but until recently prices continued to rise:

Inflation was less during Trump’s term in office but was even lower under Obama.  Indeed, consumer price inflation has been low since around 1997, during Clinton’s presidency, until the jump in 2021.  Why did that happen?

The rise in 2021 can be attributed to both demand and supply factors.  On the demand side, both Trump and Biden supported and signed into law a series of genuinely huge fiscal packages to provide relief and support during the Covid crisis.  The packages were popular – especially the checks sent to most Americans (up to a relatively high income ceiling) that between the various packages totaled $3,200 per person.  But the overall cost for all the various programs supported was $5.7 trillion.  That is huge.  The funds were spent mostly over the two years of 2020 (under Trump) and 2021 (under Biden), and $5.7 trillion was the equivalent of 12.8% of GDP over those two years.  Or, as another comparison, the total paid in individual income taxes in the US in the single year of FY2023 was “only” $2.2 trillion.

While there was this very substantial income support provided through the series of Covid relief packages, households were limited in how much they could spend – out of both these income transfers and their regular incomes – in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic.  One went out only when necessary, and kept only to shopping that was necessary.  This carried over into early 2021.  But people could become more active as the Biden administration rolled out the massive vaccination campaign in the first half of 2021.  People then had a backlog of items to buy as well as the means to do so from what had been saved in 2020 and early 2021.  Demand rose sharply, and indeed Personal Consumption Expenditures in the GDP accounts rose by more in 2021 (by 8.4%) than in any year since 1946 (when it rose by 12.4%, and for similar reasons).

But at the same time, supply was constrained.  Supply chains had been sharply disrupted in 2020 worldwide due to Covid, and took some time to return to normal.  There was then the additional shock from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, leading oil and many other commodity prices to spike.

Supply chains did, however, return more or less to normal early in the summer of 2022.  And as they did, one saw a sudden and sharp reduction in pressures on prices, in particular on the prices of goods that can be traded:

This chart shows the annualized inflation rates for 6-month rolling periods (ending on the dates shown) for the overall CPI, for the shelter component of the CPI, and for the CPI excluding shelter.  The overall inflation rate rose from an annualized rate of 3.2% in the six months ending in January 2021 (the end of Trump’s term) to a peak of 10.4% in the six months ending in June 2022.  It then fell remarkably fast, to an annualized rate of just 2.6% in the six months ending in December 2022.

This sudden drop in the inflation rate is seen even more clearly in the CPI index of prices for everything but shelter:  The annualized rate fell from 12.4% in the first half of 2022 (the six months ending in June) to a negative 0.2% rate in the second half of 2022 (the six months ending in December).  Why?  There was not a sudden collapse in consumer or other demand.  Rather, supply chains finally normalized in the summer of 2022, and this shifted pricing behavior.  When markets are supply constrained (as they were with the supply chain problems), firms can and will raise prices as competitors cannot step in and supply what the purchaser wants – they are all supply constrained.  But as the supply chains normalized, pricing returned to its normal condition where higher demand can be met by higher production – whether by the firm itself or, if it is unwilling, by its competitors.  It is similar to a phase change in conditions.

Shelter is different.  It covers all living accommodations (whether owned or rented), and as has been discussed in earlier posts on this blog (see here and here), the cost of shelter is special in the way it is estimated for the CPI.  It is also important, with a weight of 36% in the overall CPI index (and 45% in the core CPI index, where the core index excludes food and energy).  The data for the shelter component of the CPI comes from changes observed in the rents paid by those who rent their accommodation, and rental contracts are normally set for a year.  Hence, rental rates (and therefore the prices of the shelter component of the CPI) respond only with a lag.  One can see that in the chart above, with the peak in the inflation rate for shelter well after the peak in the inflation rate for the rest of the CPI.

Since mid-2022, the rate of inflation as measured by the overall CPI has generally been in the range of 3 to 4% annualized.  Increases in the cost of shelter have kept it relatively high and above the Fed’s target of about 2% per annum.  But as seen in the chart, it has recently come down – falling to an annualized rate of 2.5% in the six months ending in July.  For everything but shelter, the rate in the six months ending in July was only 1.4%.

One question that some might raise is whether the very tight labor markets – with an unemployment rate that was 4% or less until two months ago – might have led to the inflation observed.  The answer is no.  As noted above, inflation in all but shelter fell suddenly in mid-2022, falling from a rate of 12.4% in the first half of the year to a negative 0.2% in the second half, even though the unemployment rate was extremely low at 4% or less throughout (and only 3.5 or 3.6% in all of the second half of 2022).  Unemployment has remained low since while inflation has come down.  If the cause was tight labor markets, then the rate of inflation would have gone up rather than down.

Similarly, inflation as measured by the CPI was not high in 2018 nor in 2019 when labor markets were almost as tight during Trump’s presidency – with overall inflation then between 2 and 3% on an annual basis.  Nor did inflation go up during the similarly tight labor market of 1999 and 2000 during the Clinton presidency:  CPI inflation was generally in the 1 1/2 to 3 1/2 % range during that period.  All this calls into question the NAIRU concept, with its estimate that an unemployment rate below somewhere in the 5 to 6% range will lead to pressures that will raise the rate of inflation.

Managing inflation coming out of the chaos of 2020 was certainly difficult.  Inflation spiked in most countries of the world following the Covid crisis, reaching a peak in 2022.  But the rate of inflation has since come down as supply conditions normalized.  That does not mean that the absolute level of prices came down, only that they were no longer increasing at some high rate.  Wages and other sources of income will then adjust to the new price levels, and what matters in the end is whether real levels of consumption improve or not.  And they have:

The chart shows the paths followed for per capita real levels of personal consumption expenditures, as measured in the GDP accounts, during the presidential terms of Trump, Biden, and the second term of Obama.  The path followed under Trump was basically the same as that followed under Obama – until the collapse in the last year of Trump’s term.  The path followed under Biden has been substantially higher than either.  It was boosted in his first year as the successful vaccination campaign allowed people to return to their normal lives.  They could then purchase items with not only their then current incomes, but also with the savings they had built up in 2020.  But even if one excludes that first year, the growth under Biden has been similar to that under Obama and under Trump up to the collapse in Trump’s fourth year.

Once again, there is no basis for Trump’s claim of the “greatest economy”.

E.  Summary and Conclusion

The economy during Trump’s presidency was certainly not “the greatest in the history of the world”.  Nor was it even if you leave out the disastrous fourth year of his presidency.  Covid would have been difficult to manage even by the most capable of administrations, and Trump’s was far from that.  Instead of preparing for the shock this highly contagious disease would bring, Trump’s response was to insist – repeatedly – “it’s going to go away”.

Trump’s economic record was certainly nothing special.  Real GDP grew as fast or faster under Obama and Biden as it had under Trump.  Trump insisted that growth would be – and was – spurred by the tax cuts that he signed into law in late 2017 that slashed the tax on corporate profits.  But there is no indication of this in the data.  Nor is there even any indication that private investment rose as a result of the lower taxes.

Employment has grown far faster under Biden than it had under Trump, and also grew faster in Obama’s second term – even leaving out Trump’s disastrous fourth year.  Unemployment fell during the first three years of Trump’s term in office (before sky-rocketing in his fourth year), but here it just followed a very similar path to that under Obama.  For this, as with GDP and employment growth, perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Trump’s first three years in office was that he did not mess up the path that had been set under Obama.  And unemployment has been even lower under Biden.

Inflation was certainly higher in 2021 as the US came out of the Covid crisis.  Supply chains were still snarled, but there was pent-up demand from consumers who had had to avoid shopping in 2020 due to Covid and who also benefited from a truly huge set of Covid relief packages passed under both Trump and Biden.  Supply chains then normalized in mid-2022, sharply reducing pricing pressures for goods other than shelter.  Due in part to lags in how rental rates for housing are set (as they are normally fixed for a year) and then estimated by the BLS, the cost of the shelter component of the CPI came down more slowly than the cost of the rest of the CPI.  This kept inflation as measured higher than what the Fed aims for, although recently (in the last half year) it has come down again.  Most anticipate that the Fed will soon start to cut interest rates from their current high levels.  The inflationary episode resulting from the Covid crisis appears to be coming to an end.

There is thus no justification for the claim by Trump that “we had the greatest economy in the history of the world”.  Yet he has repeatedly asserted it, both now and when he was president.  Why?  Stephanie Grisham, who served in the Trump administration as press secretary and in other senior positions, and who had been – by her own description – personally close to Trump, explained it well in a speech she made on August 20 to the Democratic National Convention.  She noted that Trump used to tell her:  “It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie.  Say it enough, and people will believe you.”

Many do appear to believe that the economy was exceptionally strong when Trump was president:  that it was “the greatest in history”.  But that is certainly not true.  Facts matter; reality matters; and a president needs to know that they matter.

How Fast is GDP Growing?: A Curiosum

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A.  How Fast is GDP Growing?

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released today its first estimate (what it calls it’s Advance Estimate) for the growth of GDP and its components for the third quarter of 2019.  Most of it looked basically as one would expect, with an estimate of real GDP growth of 1.9% in the quarter, or about the same as the 2.0% growth rate of the second quarter.  There has been a continued slowdown in private investment (which I will discuss below), but this has been offset by an expansion in government spending under Trump, coupled with steady growth in personal consumption expenditures (as one would expect with an economy now at full employment).

But there was a surprise on the last page of the report, in Appendix Table A.  This table provides growth rates of some miscellaneous aggregates that contribute to GDP growth, as well as their contribution to overall GDP growth.  One line shown is for “motor vehicle output”.  What is surprising is that the growth rate shown, at an annualized rate, is an astounding 32.6%!  The table also indicates that real GDP excluding motor vehicle output would have grown at just 1.2% in the quarter.  (I get 1.14% using the underlying, non-rounded, numbers, but these are close.)  The difference is shown in the chart above.

Some points should be noted.  While all these figures provided by the BEA are shown at annualized growth rates, one needs to keep in mind that the underlying figures are for growth in just one quarter.  Hence the quarterly growth will be roughly one-quarter of the annual rate, plus the effects of compounding.  For the motor vehicle output numbers, the estimated growth in the quarter was 7.3%, which if compounded over four quarters would yield the 32.6% annualized rate.  One should also note that the quarterly output figures of this sector are quite volatile historically, and while there has not been a change as large as the 32.6% since 2009/10 (at the time of the economic downturn and recovery) there have been a few quarters when it was in the 20s.

But what appears especially odd, but also possibly interesting to those trying to understand how the GDP accounts are estimated, is why there should have been such a tremendously high growth in the sector, of 32.6%, when the workers at General Motors were on strike for half of September (starting on September 15).  GM is the largest car manufacturer in the US, its production plummeted during the strike, yet the GDP figures indicate that motor vehicle output not only soared in the quarter, but by itself raised overall GDP growth to 1.9% from a 1.2% rate had the sector been flat.

This is now speculation on my part, but I suspect the reason stems from the warning the BEA regularly provides that the initial GDP estimates that are issued just one month after the end of the quarter being covered, really are preliminary and partial.  The BEA receives data on the economy from numerous sources, and a substantial share of that data is incomplete just one month following the end of a quarter.  For motor vehicle production, I would not be surprised if the BEA might only be receiving data for two months (July and August in this case), in time for this initial estimate.  They would then estimate the third month based on past patterns and seasonality.

But because of the strike, past patterns will be misleading.  Production at GM may have been ramped up in July and August in anticipation of the strike, and a mechanical extrapolation of this into September, while normally fine, might have been especially misleading this time.

I stress that this is speculation on my part.  Revised estimates of GDP growth in the third quarter, based on more complete data, will be issued in late November and then again, with even more data, in late December.  We will see what these estimates say.  I would not be surprised if the growth figure for GDP is revised substantially downwards.

B.  Growth in Nonresidential Private Fixed Investment

The figures released by the BEA today also include its estimates for private fixed investment.  The nonresidential portion of this is basically business investment, and it is interesting to track what it has been doing over the last few years.  The argument made for the Trump/Republican tax cuts pushed through Congress in December 2017 were that they would spur business investment.  Corporate profit taxes were basically cut in half.

But the figures show no spur in business investment following their taxes being slashed.  Nonresidential private fixed investment was growing at a relatively high rate already in the fourth quarter of 2017 (similar to rates seen between mid-2013 and mid-2014, and there even was growth of 11.2% in the second quarter of 2014).  This continued through the first half of 2018.  But growth since has fallen steadily, and is now even negative, with a decline of 3.0% in the third quarter of 2019:

There is no indication here that slashing corporate profit taxes (and other business taxes) led to greater business investment.

The Growing Fiscal Deficit, the Keynesian Stimulus Policies of Trump, and the FY20/21 Budget Agreement

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A.  The Growing Fiscal Deficit Under Trump

Donald Trump, when campaigning for office, promised that he would “quickly” drive down the fiscal deficit to zero.  Few serious analysts believed that he would get it all the way to zero during his term in office, but many assumed that he would at least try to reduce the deficit by some amount.  And this clearly should have been possible, had he sought to do so, when Republicans were in full control of both the House and the Senate, as well as the presidency.

That has not happened.  The deficit has grown markedly, despite the economy being at full employment, and is expected to top $1 trillion this year, reaching over 5% of GDP.  This is unprecedented in peacetime.  Never before in US history, other than during World War II, has the federal deficit hit 5% of GDP with the economy at full employment.  Indeed, the fiscal deficit has never even reached 4% of GDP at a time of full employment (other than, again, World War II).

The chart at the top of this post shows what has happened.  The deficit is the difference between what the government spends (shown as the line in blue) and the revenues it receives (the line in green).  The deficit grew markedly following the financial and economic collapse in the last year of the Bush administration.  A combination of higher government spending and lower taxes (lower both because the economy was depressed but also from legislated tax cuts) were then necessary to stabilize the economy.  As the economy recovered the fiscal deficit then narrowed.  But it is now widening again, and as noted above, is expected to top $1 trillion dollars in FY2019 (which ends on September 30).

More precisely, the US Treasury publishes monthly a detailed report on what the federal government received in revenues and what was spent in outlays for that month and for up to that point in the fiscal year.  See here for the June report, and here for previous monthly reports.  It includes a forecast of what will be received and spent for the fiscal year as a whole, and hence what the deficit will be, based on the budget report released each spring, usually in March.  For FY2019, the forecast was of a deficit of $1.092 trillion.  But these are forecasts, and comparing the forecasts made to the actuals realized over the last three fiscal years (FY2016 to18), government outlays were on average overestimated by 2.0% and government revenues by 2.2%.  These are similar, and scaling the forecasts of government outlays and government revenues down by these ratios, the deficit would end up at $1.075 trillion.  I used these scaled figures in the chart above.

The widening in the deficit in recent years is evident.  The interesting question is why.  For this one needs counterfactuals, of what the figures would have been if some alternative decisions had been made.

For government revenues (taxes of various kinds), the curve in orange show what they would have been had taxes remained at the same shares of the relevant income (depending on the tax) as they were in FY2016.  Specifically, individual income taxes were kept at a constant share of personal income (as defined and estimated in the National Income and Product Accounts, or NIPA accounts, assembled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, of the US Department of Commerce); corporate profit taxes were kept at a constant share of corporate profits (as estimated in the NIPA accounts); payroll taxes (primarily Social Security taxes) were kept at a constant share of compensation of employees (again from the NIPA accounts); and all other taxes were kept at a constant share of GDP.  The NIPA accounts (often referred to as the GDP accounts) are available through the second quarter of CY2019, and hence are not yet available for the final quarter of FY2019 (which ends September 30, and hence includes the third quarter of CY2019).  For this, I extrapolated the final quarter’s figures based on what growth had been over the preceding four quarters.

Note also that the base year here (FY2016) already shows a flattening in tax revenues.  If I had used the tax shares of FY2015 as a base for the comparison, the tax losses in the years since then would have been even greater.  Various factors account for the flattening of tax revenues in FY2016, including (according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office) passage by Congress of Public Law 114-113 in December 2015, that allowed for a more rapid acceleration of depreciation allowances for investment by businesses.  This had the effect of reducing corporate profit taxes substantially in FY2016.

Had taxes remained at the shares of the relevant income as they were in FY2016, tax revenues would have grown, following the path of the orange curve.  Instead, they were flat in nominal dollar amount (the green curve), indicating they were falling in real terms as well as a share of income.  The largest loss in revenues stemmed from the major tax cut pushed through Congress in December 2017, which took effect on January 1, 2018.  Hence it applied over three of the four quarters in FY2018, and for all of FY2019.

An increase in government spending is also now leading, in FY2019, to a widening of the deficit.  Again, one needs to define a counterfactual for the comparison.  For this I assumed that government spending during Trump’s term in office so far would have grown at the same rate as it had during Obama’s eight years in office (the rate of increase from FY2008 to 16).  That rate of increase during Obama’s two terms was 3.2% a year (in nominal terms), and was substantially less than during Bush’s two terms (which was a 6.6% rate of growth per year).

The rate of growth in government spending in the first two years of Trump’s term (FY2017 and 2018) then almost exactly matched the rate of growth under Obama.  But this has now changed sharply in FY19, with government spending expected to jump by 8.0% in just one year.

The fiscal deficit is then the difference, as noted above, between the two curves for spending and revenues.  Its change over time may be clearer in a chart of just the deficit itself:

The curve in black shows what the deficit has been, and what is expected for FY2019.  The deficit narrowed to $442 billion in FY2015, and then started to widen.  Primarily due to flat tax revenues in FY2016 (spending was following the path it had been following before, after several years of suppression), the deficit grew in FY2016.  And it then continued to grow until at least through FY2019.  The curve in red shows what the deficit would have been had government spending continued to grow under Trump at the pace it had under Obama.  This would have made essentially no difference in FY2017 and FY2018, but would have reduced the deficit in FY2019 from the expected $1,075 billion to $877 billion instead.  Not a small deficit by any means, but not as high.

But more important has been the contribution to the higher deficit from tax cuts.  The combined effect is shown in the curve in blue in the chart.  The deficit would have stabilized and in fact reduced by a bit.  For FY2019, the deficit would have been $528 billion, or a reasonable 2.5% of GDP.  Instead, at an expected $1,075 billion, it will be over twice as high.  And it is a consequence of Trump’s policies.

B.  Have the Tax Cuts Led to Higher Growth?

The Trump administration claimed that the tax cuts (and specifically the major cuts passed in December 2017) would lead to such a more rapid pace of GDP growth that they would “pay for themselves”.  This clearly has not happened – tax revenues have fallen in real terms (they were flat in nominal terms).  But a less extreme argument was that the tax cuts, and in particular the extremely sharp cut in corporate profit taxes, would lead to a spurt of new corporate investment in equipment, which would raise productivity and hence GDP.  See, for example, the analysis issued by the White House Council of Economic Advisors in October 2017.

But this has not happened either.  Growth in private investment in equipment has in fact declined since the first quarter of 2018 (when the law went into effect):

The curve in blue shows the quarter to quarter changes (at an annual rate), while the curve in red smooths this out by showing the change over the same quarter of a year earlier.  There is a good deal of volatility in the quarter to quarter figures, while the year on year changes show perhaps some trends that last perhaps two years or so, but with no evidence that the tax cut led to a spurt in such investment.  The growth has in fact slowed.

Such investment is in fact driven largely by more fundamental factors, not by taxes.  There was a sharp fall in 2008 as a result of the broad economic and financial collapse at the end of the Bush administration, it then bounced back in 2009/10, and has fluctuated since driven by various industry factors.  For example, oil prices as well as agricultural prices both fell sharply in 2015, and the NIPA accounts indicate that equipment investment in just these two sectors reduced private investment in equipment by more than 2% points from what the total would have been in 2015.  This continued into 2016, with a reduction of a further 1.3% points.  What matters are the fundamentals.  Taxes are secondary, at best.

What about GDP itself?:

Here again there is quarter to quarter volatility, but no evidence that the tax cuts have spurred GDP growth.  Over the past three years, real GDP growth on a quarter to quarter basis peaked in the fourth quarter of 2017, before the tax cuts went into effect, and has declined modestly since then.  And that peak in the fourth quarter of 2017 was not anything special:  GDP grew at a substantially faster pace in the second and third quarters of 2014, and the year on year rate in early 2015 was higher than anything reached in 2017-19.  Rather, what we see in real GDP growth since late 2009 is significant quarter to quarter volatility, but around an average pace of about 2.3% a year.  There is no evidence that the late 2017 tax cut has raised this.

The argument that tax cuts will spur private investment, and hence productivity and hence GDP, is a supply-side argument.  There is no evidence in the numbers to support this.  But there may also be a demand-side argument, which is basically Keynesian.  The argument would be that tax cuts lead to higher (after-tax) incomes, and that these higher incomes led to higher consumption expenditures by households.  There might be some basis to this, to the extent that a portion of the tax cuts went to low and middle-income households who will spend more upon receiving it.  But since the tax cut law passed in December 2017 went primarily to the rich, whose consumption is not constrained by their current income flows (they save the excess), the impact of the tax cuts on household consumption would be weak.  It still, however, might be something.

But this still did not lead to a more rapid pace of GDP growth, as we saw above.  Why?  One needs to recognize that GDP is a measure of production in the domestic economy (GDP is Gross Domestic Product), and not of demand.  GDP is commonly measured by adding up the components of demand, with any increase or decrease in the stock of inventories then added (or subtracted, if negative) to tell us what production must have been.  But this is being done because the data is better (and more quickly available) for the components of GDP demand.  One must not forget that GDP is still an estimate of production, and not of total domestic demand.

And what the economy can produce when at full employment is constrained by whatever capacity was at that point in time.  The rate of unemployment has fallen steadily since hitting its peak in 2009 during the downturn:

Aside from the “squiggles” in these monthly figures (the data are obtained from household surveys, and will be noisy), unemployment fell at a remarkably steady pace since 2009.  One can also not discern any sharp change in that pace before and after January 2017, when Trump took office.  But the rate of unemployment is now leveling off, as it must, since there will always be some degree of frictional unemployment when an economy is at “full employment”.

With the economy at full employment, growth will now be constrained by the pace of growth of the labor force (about 0.5% a year) plus the growth in productivity of the average labor force member (which analysts, such as at the Congressional Budget Office, put at about 1.5% a year in the long term, and a bit less over the next decade).  That is, growth in GDP capacity will be 2% a year, or less, on average.

In such situations, Keynesian demand expansion will not raise the growth in GDP beyond that 2% rate.  There will of course be quarter to quarter fluctuations (GDP growth estimates are volatile), but on average over time, one should not expect growth in excess of this.

But growth can be less.  In a downturn, such as that suffered in 2008/09, GDP growth can drop well below capacity.  Unemployment soars, and Keynesian demand stimulus is needed to stabilize the economy and return it to a growth path.  Tax cuts (when focused on low and middle income households) can be stimulative.  But especially stimulative in such circumstances is direct government spending, as such spending leads directly to people being hired and put to work.

Thus the expansion in government spending in 2008/09 (see the chart at the top of this post) was exactly what was needed in those circumstances.  The mistake then was to hold government spending flat in nominal terms (and hence falling in real terms) between 2009 and 2014, even though unemployment, while falling, was still relatively high.  That cut-back in government spending was unprecedented in a period of recovery from a downturn (over at least the past half-century in the US).  And an earlier post on this blog estimated that had government spending been allowed to increase at the same pace as it had under Reagan following the 1982 downturn, the US economy would have fully recovered by 2012.

But the economy is now at full employment.  In these circumstances, extra demand stimulus will not increase production (as production is limited by capacity), but will rather spill over into a drawdown in inventories (in the short term, but there is only so much in inventories that one can draw down) or an increase in the trade deficit (more imports to satisfy the domestic demand, or exports diverted to meet the domestic demand).  One saw this in the initial estimates for the GDP figures for the second quarter of 2019.  GDP is estimated to have grown at a 2.1% rate.  But the domestic final demand components grew at a pace that, by themselves, would have accounted for a 3.6% point increase in GDP.  The difference was accounted for by a drawdown in inventories (accounting for 0.7% points of GDP) and an increase in the trade deficit (accounting for a further reduction of 0.8% points of GDP).  But these are just one quarter of figures, they are volatile, and it remains to be seen whether this will continue.

It is conceivable that domestic demand might fall back to grow in line with capacity.  But this then brings up what should be considered the second arm of Trump’s Keynesian stimulus program.  While tax cuts led to growing deficits in FY2017 and 18, we are now seeing in FY2019, in addition to the tax cuts, an extraordinary growth in government spending.  Based on US Treasury forecasts for FY2019 (as adjusted above), federal government spending this fiscal year is expected to grow by 8.0%.  This will add to domestic demand growth.  And there has not been such growth in government spending during a time of full employment since George H. W. Bush was president.

C.  The Impact of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019

Just before leaving for its summer recess, the House and the Senate in late July both passed an important bill setting the budget parameters for fiscal years 2020 and 2021.  Trump signed it into law on August 2.  It was needed as, under the budget sequester process forced on Obama in 2011, there would have otherwise been sharp cutbacks in the discretionary budgets for what government is allowed to spend (other than for programs such as Social Security or Medicare, where spending follows the terms of the programs as established, or for what is spent on interest on the public debt).  The sequesters would have set sharp cuts in government spending in fiscal years 2020 and 2021, and if allowed, such sudden cuts could have pushed the US economy into a recession.

The impact is clear on a chart:

The figures are derived from the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the impact on government spending from the lifting of the caps.  Without the change in the spending caps, discretionary spending would have been sharply reduced.  At the new caps, spending will increase at a similar pace as it had before.

Note the sharp contrast with the cut-backs in discretionary budget outlays from FY2011 to FY2015.  Unemployment was high then, and the economy struggled to recover from the 2008/09 downturn while confronting these contractionary headwinds.  But the economy is now at full employment, and the extra stimulus on demand from such spending will not, in itself and in the near term, lead to an increase in capacity, and hence not lead to a faster rate of growth than what we have seen in recent years.

But I should hasten to add that lifting the spending caps was not a mistake.  Government spending has been kept too limited for too long – there are urgent public needs (just look at the condition of our roads).  And a sharp and sudden cut in spending could have pushed the economy into a recession, as noted above.

More fundamentally, keeping up a “high pressure” economy is not necessarily a mistake.  One will of course need to monitor what is happening to inventories and the trade deficit, but the pressure on the labor market from a low unemployment rate has been bringing into the labor force workers who had previously been marginalized out of it.  And while there is little evidence as yet that it has spurred higher wages, continued pressure to secure workers should at some point lead to this.  What one does not want would be to reach the point where this leads to higher inflation.  But there is no evidence that we are near that now.  Indeed, the Fed decided on July 31 to reduce interest rates (for the first time since 2008, in part out of concern that inflation has been too low.

D.  Summary, Implications, and Conclusion

Trump campaigned on the promise that he would bring down the government deficit – indeed bring it down to zero.  The opposite has happened.  The deficit has grown sharply, and is expected to reach over $1 trillion this fiscal year, or over 5% of GDP.  This is unprecedented in the US in a time of full employment, other than during World War II.

The increase in the deficit is primarily due to the tax cuts he championed, supplemented (in FY2019) by a sharp rise in government spending.  Without such tax cuts, and with government spending growth the same as it had been under Obama, the deficit in FY2019 would have been $530 billion.  It is instead forecast to be double that (a forecast $1.075 trillion).

The tax cuts were justified by the administration by arguing that they would spur investment and hence growth.  That has not happened.  Growth in private investment in equipment has slowed since the major tax cuts of December 2017 were passed.  So has the pace of GDP growth.

This should not be surprising.  Taxes have at best a marginal effect on investment decisions.  The decision to invest is driven primarily by more fundamental considerations, including whether the extra capacity is needed given demand for the products, by the technologies available, and so on.

But tax cuts (to the extent they go to low and middle income households), and even more so direct government spending, can spur demand in the economy.  At times of less than full employment, this can lead to a higher GDP in standard Keynesian fashion.  But when the economy is at full employment, the constraint is not aggregate demand but rather production capacity.  And that is set by the available labor force and how much each worker can produce (their productivity).  The economy can then grow only as fast as the labor force and productivity grow, and most estimates put that at about 2% or less per year in the US right now.

The spur to demand can, however, act to keep the economy from falling back into a recession.  With the chaos being created in the markets by the trade wars Trump has launched, this is not a small consideration.  Indeed, the Fed, in announcing its July 31 cut in interest rates, indicated that in addition to inflation tracking below its target rate of 2%, concerns regarding “global developments” (interpreted as especially trade issues) was a factor in making the cut.

There are also advantages to keeping high pressure on the labor markets, as it draws in labor that was previously marginalized, and should at some point lead to higher wages.  As long as inflation remains modest (and as noted, it is currently below what the Fed considers desirable), all this sounds like a good situation.  The fiscal policies are therefore providing support to help ensure the economy does not fall back into recession despite the chaos of the trade wars and other concerns, while keeping positive pressure in the labor markets.  Trump should certainly thank Nancy Pelosi for the increases in the government spending caps under the recently approved budget agreement, as this will provide significant, and possibly critical, support to the economy in the period leading up to the 2020 election.

So what is there not to like?

The high fiscal deficit at a time of full employment is not to like.  As noted above, a fiscal deficit of more than 5% of GDP during a time of full employment is unprecedented (other than during World War II).  Unemployment was similarly low in the final few years of the Clinton presidency, but the economy then had fiscal surpluses (reaching 2.3% of GDP in FY2000) as well as a public debt that was falling in dollar amount (and even more so as a share of GDP).

The problem with a fiscal deficit of 5% of GDP with the economy at full employment is that when the economy next goes into a recession (and there eventually always has been a recession), the fiscal deficit will rise (and will need to rise) from this already high base.  The fiscal deficit rose by close to 9 percentage points of GDP between FY2007 and FY2009.  A similar economic downturn starting from a base where the deficit is already 5% of GDP would thus raise the fiscal deficit to 14% of GDP.   And that would certainly lead conservatives to argue, as they did in 2009, that the nation cannot respond to the economic downturn with the increase in government spending that would be required to stabilize and then bring down unemployment.

Is a recession imminent?  No one really knows, but the current economic expansion, that began five months after Obama took office, is now the longest on record in the US – 121 months as of July.  It has just beaten the 120 month expansion during the 1990s, mostly when Clinton was in office.  Of more concern to many analysts is that long-term interest rates (such as on 10-year US Treasury bonds) are now lower than short-term interest rates on otherwise similar US Treasury obligations.  This is termed an “inverted yield curve”, as the yield curve (a plot of interest rates against the term of the bond) will normally be upward sloping.  Longer-term loans normally have to pay a higher interest rate than shorter ones.  But right now, 10-year US Treasury bonds are being sold in the market at a lower interest rate than the interest rate demanded on short-term obligations.  This only makes sense if those in the market expect a downturn (forcing a reduction in interest rates) at some point in the next few years.

The concern is that in every single one of the seven economic recessions since the mid-1960s, the yield curve became inverted prior to that downturn.  While this was typically two or three years before the downturn (and in the case leading up to the 1970 recession, about four years before), in no case was there an inverted yield curve without a subsequent downturn within that time frame.  Some argue that “this time is different”, and perhaps it will be.  But an inverted yield curve has been 100% accurate so far in predicting an imminent recession.

The extremely high fiscal deficit under Trump at a time of full employment is therefore leaving the US economy vulnerable when the next recession occurs.  And a growing public debt (it will reach $16.8 trillion, or 79% of GDP, by September 30 of this year, in terms of debt held by the public) cannot keep growing forever.

What then to do?  A sharp cut in government spending might well bring on the downturn that we are seeking to avoid.  Plus government spending is critically needed in a range of areas.  But raising taxes, and specifically raising taxes on the well-off who benefited disproportionately in the series of tax cuts by Reagan, Bush II, and then Trump, would have the effect of raising revenue without causing a contractionary impulse.  The well-off are not constrained in what they spend on consumption by their incomes – they consume what they wish and save the residual.

The impact on the deficit and hence on the debt could also be significant.  While now a bit dated, an analysis on this blog from September 2013 (using Congressional Budget Office figures) found that simply reversing in full the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 would lead the public debt to GDP ratio to fall and fall sharply (by about half in 25 years).  The Trump tax cuts of December 2017 have now made things worse, but a good first step would be to reverse these.

It was the Bush and now Trump tax cuts that have put the fiscal accounts on an unsustainable trajectory.  As was noted above, the fiscal accounts were in surplus at the end of the Clinton administration.  But we now have a large and unprecedented deficit even when the economy is at full employment.  In a situation like this, one would think it should be clear to acknowledge the mistake, and revert to what had worked well before.

Managing the fiscal accounts in a responsible way is certainly possible.  But they have been terribly mismanaged by this administration.