. . .. I spent a lifetime mostly on the engineering side of U.S. manufacturing and over the past four decades have watched what loss of our manufacturing base has done to the country and it's people. Donald Trump is the first president in that time who has done anything to reverse those losses. . .
We could look at the data: Manufacturing Sector: Real Output (OUTMS) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
Over the past 40 years, the most rapid growth in manufacturing output was under Clinton. Up about 50% under his tenure. So, that pretty much trashes the whole Trump worship. But, let's follow along.
There was growth, but at a lower rate, under Bush 2.0. Which ended in a crash - mainly because we let the finance sector hollow out real value add. Bush 2.0 ended up under water.
Note how our about-every-ten-year crashes are usually caused by our finance sector and how the middle class gets a little smaller and the banksters are litlle wealthier after each squeeze. Kind of like a python squeezing the life out of the economy. In the linked chart there's the Savings & Loan crisis. Took a bit of air out. Then the Dot.com bust. Hyping all those stocks. Then a whopper - the Great Recession. And now a pandemic Trump tried to dismiss, now takes no responsibility, and ends in printing trillions and giving it away. Want to know who's mostly going to get it? Look no further than Trump's Cabinet picks - finance, oil, pharma, real estate etc.
Manufacturing grew again under Obama, up around 10% under his watch. He did keep our auto industry, and talked about restoring manufacturing, but it was slow growth. Had it been Trump, though, this would have been the greatest recovery in the history of Western civilization.
Get past the recession and the rapid recovery bit and the trend line for Obama and Trump is essentially the same until about summer 2019 - when under Trump it went into recession. Check the chart.
There's a tiny pimple around when raw materials prices went crazy, upping prices and "output" the tiniest bit. Remember that?
There has actually been a far lower growth rate under Trump than Clinton, much lower growth than under Bush 2.0 in the go-go years (but note that crash), and even a bit worse than under Obama.
Then, look at the cost as Trump tried to game this, focusing mainly on propping up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He tried every trick in the book to juice the economy in the short turn, while most economists knew this could only lead to a deeper bust.
We added a trillion a year to the debt even after employment returned (that's normally when you stop borrowing).
We repatriated corporate cash with the only reinvestment pretty much being stock buybacks.
We trashed environmental regulations to add a bit to short-term profts. Someone else always pays for the clean up.
We pumped in defense money.
Jawboned interest rates to near zero.
All to see both the trade deficit increase under Trump and manufacturing in a recession by summer 2019. As has been discussed ad infinitum before - getting a level playing field with China could easily have been done by requiring them to comply with first world IP, labor, safety, and especially enviromental standards.
The big problem, of course, was that by focusing on juicing the Dow, we left ourselves making no infrastructure investment, hollowed out our healthcare (and pandemic response teams), trashed supply chains, and ultimately made the current crash far worse. It was the financial equivalent of an amphetamine high, followed inevitably by a crash.
When we're done, we will be around $10 trillion in the hole under Trump's watch.
Worse yet, I suspect very little of the debt giveaways will produce assets with a real return on investment. One can still go to National Parks and find structures built with Federal debt to employ people during the Depression.
The debt we incurred in WWII made the world a better place and brought us decades of later growth.
Look at Trump's Cabinet and the lobbyists who crafted and are crafting the trillion dollar give-aways to figure out who is going to be enriched.
What do you think the finance companies are going to create of enduring value? Derivatives on derivatives?
How about the pharma companies already using us as cash cows - at near 2x the average first world spend. Lots of bright people - many hoping to add value. But the overall system simply isn't aimed at health - but rather extracting wealth from the US economy. Trump has, of course, done nothing to advance the state of healthcare in the US.
The fossil fuels industry has already bought a retreat from climate accords and environmental regulation -- while soaking up investment tax breaks to take our natural gas, pump it to ports, liquify it, and send abroad to the highest payer. What will their enduring legacy be? Just a few more aircraft carriers to make the world safe for oil tankers? Denying climate effects all the way, as we add more trillions of cost to deal with spills, coastal infrastructure shattered, searing heat and wildfires in some places and more powerful storms and floods in others? Or - for the climate change deniers -- maybe just pulling us into another several trillion $$$ Middle East war?
As noted before, Trump cares about himself. Not you. Not me. He'd throw his brother under the bus if it served him. Huawei a threat? No problem about those sanctions Chairman Xi. or any of our tariffs, if you'll just fix my problem with farmers.
Really care about shipping jobs overseas? Not if it's Trump banded trinkets the Chinese are making. How about hiring illegals - them being all murderers and rapists? More than happy to have them build his properties, clean the rooms, carry your bags.
Looking ahead, the big issue is who will dominate the industries and jobs of the future? Given that we're gutting education and infrastructure and don't seem to have a clue where to invest in R&D -- it's no slam dunk it will once again be the U.S.