The 2019 Economic Boom is STILL a Strong Case for Trump’s Re-Election

Ask voters what is their top issue during this election year, and the unsurprising answer is all about their pocketbooks and bank accounts. In fact, voters in key swing states rank the economy as a tipping point in deciding the outcome of the next presidential election.

As the economy rebounds from the coronavirus slump, the balance sheet of household wealth as published by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System hit a record high. American households saw their collective net worth climb nearly 7% to $119 trillion during the April-June 2020 quarter.

That rebound follows an astonishing record-setting economy in 2019. It points to President Trump’s effective economic policies and supports President Trump’s claims that 2019 was the strongest economy ever.

What happened was a perfect convergence of increasing incomes and plummeting poverty levels. Those gains were across the board. Women, Asians, Hispanics, and African Americans witnessed rising incomes at a faster rate than the national average. Hispanic and Black poverty rates hit record lows.

As some insist that racism and misogyny are endemic in the American economic system, the numbers provide solid evidence to the contrary. The Census Bureau reports that Blacks have seen their incomes rise by $5,322 under President Trump. Women’s incomes went up by $3,029 in his first three years in office. For everyone else, median household incomes rose more than $6,000. That’s twice the amount of the gain during the previous 16 years under Presidents Obama and Bush.

Those numbers were no fluke. President Trump deserves the credit. He reduced taxes, cleared out crippling business regulations, and help rejuvenate the American labor market. With his America First policies the Trump Administration saw a record number of new positions as employers began to compete for workers by offering higher wages.

The Obama-Biden years, on the other hand, saw extensive unemployment payments with new regulations like ObamaCare. Those policies put the brakes on economic growth and slowed recovery from the 2009 great recession.

So, in the upcoming election, Joe Biden seems to be making a case that recovering from the coronavirus pandemic can be through higher taxation with double that amount in new spending. He wants to roll back the 2017 Trump tax act, a plan that resulted in the aforementioned historic economic growth.

As the election nears, Democrats are downplaying the tax hike chatter. If you earn less than $400,000 a year, they claim, your taxes won’t go up. But savvy voters know better. There are other ways to raise taxes and the cost of living for everyone. Just lowering exemptions or taking away deductions has the same effect. Restore the small business tax to its pre-Trump level, and jobs go away.

So, President Trump can make a good argument: just look at the record. Undoubtedly, he and his supporters won’t let swing state voters forget 2019 and its astonishing numbers. He is smart enough to put the real evidence before the voters: We had a booming economy before the pandemic, and we have the fundamentals in place for an even stronger recovery.