Far-left Democrats and their friends in the establishment media have been praying for an economic downturn in hopes it would upend the Trump Administration. The COVID-19 pandemic is precisely what they wanted, but President Donald Trump’s leadership and America First policies are likely to make the economy rebound quickly and better than ever.
With the economy almost entirely shuttered, unemployment claims skyrocketed above 3.3 million in recent weeks. That figure shatters the previous jobless claims filings of 695,000 in October 1982. Things are bad, very bad, and that has naysayers comparing the pandemic’s impact to the Great Depression.
“This is an economic tsunami,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi reportedly said. “We’re about to see dizzying decline in economic activity. There’s no analogue to it in the modern era.”
Even usually reliable media outlets such as Forbes are deploying scare tactics with bullet points that state the following.
- It took the United States more than three years to recover after the devastating stock market crash of 1929.
- During the depths of the Great Depression, in 1931, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost a little over 30 percent over the course of one month, according to data from Morningstar Direct.
But these feelings of fear and dread — except for extremist Democrats who may be quietly celebrating — deliberately fails to account for the fact that the unemployment rate had not risen above 4 percent since 2018. Before the virus made landfall in the U.S., the Trump Administration’s largest problem was retraining Americans to take advantage of a competitive job market. The country was considered at full employment with millions of unfilled positions.
One might ask if Obama waved his infamous magic wand and made these jobs disappear? No, the jobs are there, and the great American worker is poised to return.
The stock market already went vertical on news of the $2 trillion stimulus package, and government loans will buoy vital infrastructure industries such as airlines. Just as the stock market crash appeared unprecedented in a good economy, Wall Street investors are monitoring the rebound, and retirement packages are poised to soar, perhaps to new peaks.
The same cannot be said of rival China. With its vast, polluting manufacturing base shuttered, there is no viable rebound solution. Businesses cannot effectively pivot by borrowing from the government because the communists have linked state and industry as one. While the America First policies and trade war elevated the America base, China has been slipping steadily.
“Even before COVID-19’s unexpected emergence, China had been in the throes of a structural slowdown in its economic growth. Over the past decade, China’s GDP growth, according to government figures, has gradually moderated from above 10 percent in 2010, to below 8 percent in 2015 before hitting 6.6 percent in 2018 and softening further to 6.1 percent in 2019 — the slowest in three decades,” according to Market Watch. One should also keep in mind that the state-run media in China tends to inflate figures to make them appear rosy.
Moving forward, once the COVID-19 outbreak gets under control, jobs are waiting, stocks are expected to continue to rise, and the U.S. manufacturing base could make substantial gains over China. Lawmakers are calling for a return to Made in USA medical supplies and prescription drugs. The days of relying on foreigners appear to be coming to a close. The U.S. economy will be stronger over the long haul.
