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A New York Times report published late last week summarized the Biden-era economy in a tidy paragraph. “President Trump inherited an economy that was, by most conventional measures, firing on all cylinders. Wages, consumer spending and corporate profits were rising. Unemployment was low. The inflation rate, though higher than normal, was falling.”
All of this was true. It was also a summary of recent history that Republicans are desperate to rewrite.
In his national address last week, for example, the president told a joint session of Congress, “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe.” Soon after, House Speaker Mike Johnson echoed the line, declaring soon after that the United States is “transitioning from Bidenomics and the terrible economy that was delivered by the last administration.”
Two days later, Republican Sen. Rick Scott told CNN that Trump entered the White House “with a crappy economy.”
It’s possible, if not likely, that there’s polling data to suggest GOP rhetoric reflects many Americans’ beliefs. But reality should have at least some bearing on the conversation.
In the last full month of his presidency, Joe Biden took a bow of sorts in a published piece for The American Prospect. “It is worth reviewing the facts on the U.S. economy that I am handing off to my successor,” the retiring Democrat wrote. “Unemployment has been at the lowest average rate of any administration in 50 years. We have created over 16 million new jobs, and more than 1.5 million of those are in manufacturing and construction. Inflation has been brought down close to 2 percent, the same level as right before the pandemic.
“Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation, and unions have won wage increases from 25 percent to 60 percent in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3 percent per year on average the last four years — faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high, and gas prices are around $3 per gallon.”
As regular readers know, there was no shortage of related headlines in closing weeks of 2024. A Wall Street Journal analysis described the state of the Biden-era economy as “remarkable,” which coincided with a Bloomberg analysis that said, “The nation is experiencing a dream combination of strong growth and low inflation.”
There was more where that came from. A month before Election Day 2024, The New York Times reported that the U.S. job market was “as healthy as it has ever been” — as in, in the history of the United States — and described economic growth as “robust.” A few days later, The Washington Post’s Heather Long explained in a column, “We are living through one of the best economic years of many people’s lifetimes.” The same day, Politico described the status quo as “a dream economy.”
The Economist, a leading British publication, also described the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world,” adding that the American economy “has left other rich countries in the dust.”
A variety of adjectives come to mind to describe such conditions. "Crappy" isn't one of them.
It reached the point that in the days leading up to the election, Trump actually started telling the electorate that he wanted credit for all the good economic news, despite the fact that he hadn’t been in office for nearly four years.
The House speaker last week said that we’re “transitioning” away from all of this. He neglected to explain why we’d want to. Similarly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC last week, “Could we be seeing that this economy that we inherited is starting to roll a bit? Sure.”
OK, but in what direction is it rolling? Away from a Biden-era economy that produced the lowest unemployment rate since before the moon landing?
Stepping back, it’s worth appreciating the recent pattern of events: In 2017, Trump inherited a healthy economy from a Democratic president and falsely told the public, “I inherited a mess.” In 2021, Trump bequeathed an actual mess for his Democratic successor and falsely told the public the conditions were “perfect.”
And with 2025 underway, amid talk of a possible recession, the pattern is holding: Trump inherited another healthy economy, which he’s again putting in jeopardy.
The problem isn’t just that Republicans are rewriting recent history, it’s also that they feel like they have to. The party seems to realize that the more the public knows the facts, the worse it will be for GOP officials and candidates.