Trump or Biden? It won’t matter a bit for the US economy

If I were American and forced to choose between Biden and Trump, I’d probably vote for Trump as he enrages all the right people. But he won’t make any difference to the US economy.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the stage a the conclusion of a campaign rally at the Forum River Centre.

Regardless of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins the US presidential election in November, the losing team should console itself that not much will change.

The media and political classes in the US are working themselves into a lather of tribal hate as the Democrat incumbent and Republican former president clinch their parties’ nomination for the election. Both sides should chill out. If the differences in style between the two candidates are great, in substance they are not – especially based on their economic and fiscal record, which is where governments make the biggest impact.

A second Trump presidency likely would mirror his and Biden’s first terms, with reckless fiscal and monetary spending, populist boondoggles and hoping the system didn’t come crashing down.

“The real Trumpian legacy is not a strong economy or a robust investment cycle but just a further slide into the abyss of profligate monetary and fiscal policies which will eventually bring capitalist prosperity to an abrupt end,” David Stockman, a former director of Ronald Reagan’s budget office, writes in his latest book, Trump’s War on Capitalism.

“Trump-O-Nomics wasn’t even a policy but just a slogan encompassing a dog’s breakfast of populistic Trade Wars and Border Wars,” Stockman writes.

The former president has done an extraordinary job in making Americans nostalgic for his MAGA economy, but the average monthly increase in jobs under Trump’s administration – excluding the months after February 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit – was 145,000, 33 per cent lower than under Barack Obama, Stockman finds.

To the extent Trump’s economy was booming, let’s consider some of the reasons. Trump’s only significant legislative achievement was a 2017 tax cut that in effect lavished wealth on older, higher-income earners, paid for with money borrowed from future generations who had no say in the matter.

Few Americans realise the great inflation of the past two years that has slashed living standards stemmed from a toxic mix of voodoo science and economics – lockdowns and money printing – that was endorsed and promoted during the Trump presidency.

President Joe Biden

Indeed, most of Biden’s so-called American Rescue Plan (worth $US1.9 trillion) was blamed by Republicans for causing the inflation that took off the following year. Yet this was not only smaller than Trump’s earlier Covid stimulus package but also largely advocated by Trump in the lead-up to the November 2020 election.

Every year from 2017 when Trump took over from Obama, his administration increased the federal deficit significantly, ultim­ately adding more to US debt than all former US presidents combined before Barack Obama, according to Stockman.

“That’s just unforgivable madness under any circumstance, but flat out beyond the pale for any politician elected on the Republican ticket,” Stockman writes.

And the pandemic is no excuse. Sweden’s public debt declined in 2020 and far fewer people died proportionately than in the US. In short, Trump could’ve prevented the wholesale trashing of the US constitution, including the economy and personal freedom, that began in March 2020.

It was Republican Georgia and Florida that first pushed back on the Covid madness – not Trump. Biden’s signature legislation, the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure law, which essentially was populist gold-plating of infrastructure and construction with borrowed money, was an idea advocated by Trump in office.

In foreign policy, Trump did not withdraw the US from NATO despite all the bravado about doing so, and he won’t be able to in the future after congress passed a law last year explicitly preventing the president from doing so.

Barack Obama

Trump often says he presided over no new wars or foreign interventions under his watch but Jimmy Carter – hardly a man who inspired fear – could make the same boast. While president in 2018 Trump described the $US716bn defence budget as “crazy” – as in too large – before promptly approving a huge increase in spending to $US750bn, putting it on track to increase to $US850bn under his successor.

What about the great bonfire of regulations that Trump likes to talk about? True, he withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord, a largely symbolic gesture, but he barely lifted a finger to tear up the glut of ridiculous federal regulations that have accumulated through the years. The Trump administration’s much vaunted reforms to shower heads and washing machines entailed tweaks to existing regulations (most subsequently reversed) rather than scrapping the regulations in their entirety. For all the talk of “draining the swamp”, Trump didn’t abolish a single federal agency.

The so-called energy independence the US reached briefly during the Trump administration was at least as much to do with technological and economic factors, namely the shale gas revolution, as any conscious decision by the White House. For all the bluster about taking on the so-called deep state, Trump couldn’t even pardon Julian Assange or release the final batch of records relating to John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Julian Assange

An intelligent alien from outer space, unable to understand any human language, would find it hard to detect there had (apparently) been a colossal ideological shift in US government at some point between 2016 and 2024.

If I were American and forced to choose between Biden and Trump, I’d probably vote for Trump as he enrages all the right people, is likelier to pick judges who believe in the US constitution, and probably is less likely to flirt with nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. But you’d be naive to expect any fundamental shift in economic policy, shrinkage in the “swamp” or diminution in power of corporate interests that have become more powerful than at any time since the early 20th century.

The only candidate running for president who is a genuine challenger to the status quo is Robert F. Kennedy, which explains why he’s shunned by mainstream media outlets. They know Trump is not a threat to democracy but a ratings bonanza.