Former President Donald Trump said he aims to avoid a first year akin to President Herbert Hoover’s—during which the stock markets crashed, marking the onset of the 1929 Great Depression—should he win a second term in November.
“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did … It’s just running off the fumes,” President Trump said in a Jan. 8 interview with Lou Dobbs. “And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be [is] Herbert Hoover.”
President Trump’s remarks followed President Joe Biden’s comparison of him to Hoover at a Boston campaign reception last month.
“In the four years, Donald Trump was president, and he’s the only president other than Herbert Hoover who actually lost jobs in a four-year period. And that’s why I often think of him as Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump,” the president stated.
The GOP candidate’s statements on the U.S. economy follow recent projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which predicted U.S. GDP growth to slow down in 2024 and then to recover the next year.
GDP “falls from 2.5 percent in 2023 to 1.5 percent in 2024 as consumer spending weakens and investment in private nonresidential structures contracts. In 2025, real GDP growth rises to 2.2 percent, supported by lower interest rates and improved financial conditions,” the CBO said in a report last month.
It expects the unemployment rate to rise from 3.9 percent in Q4 2023, to 4.4 percent in Q4 2024, remaining near that level through 2025.
“Compared with its February 2023 projections, CBO’s current projections exhibit weaker growth, lower unemployment, and higher interest rates in 2024 and 2025.”
Experts are also warning that 2024 may be bumpy, with some expecting a recession. “While so far economic growth has held up well and inflation has been coming down, there is a high risk that we will experience an economic recession before the 2024 election,” Desmond Lachman, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Epoch Times last month.
The U.S. economy is yet to see “the full effects of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy tightening, and there are major problems in the commercial real estate space that could trigger another regional banking sector crisis.”
Meanwhile, a significant share of Americans are unhappy about how President Biden has handled the economy.
A CNN poll from last month found that more than 4 in 10 Americans were worried that rising costs could push them out of their communities. President Biden began 2023 with a job approval rating of 45 percent, which fell to 37 percent in the December poll, with 63 percent disapproving of him.
Americans Struggling
For the first three quarters of 2023, U.S. GDP registered positive growth rates, with the 4.9 percent growth of Q3 being the strongest since the fourth quarter of 2021.
However, the stronger GDP numbers “belie economic reality,” Michael Wilkerson, the founder of Stormwall Advisors, wrote in a Dec. 12 commentary for The Epoch Times. He points out that many Americans feel “worse off” despite the U.S. economy officially registering growth rates.
“The answer is that Americans’ rapidly shrinking wallets—i.e., their diminished purchasing power—result from inflation,” he writes. “Since 2020, Americans have lost nearly 20 percent of their purchasing power. In other words, what then cost $1 now costs $1.21.”
A Bankrate survey last month found that 59 percent of Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that “I/my household feel like the U.S. economy is currently in a recession.”
“Americans may be disputing the economy’s strong appearance on paper because 2 in 3 (or 66 percent) say the economic environment has negatively affected their finances, a share that jumps to 85 percent for the Americans who say they feel the economy is in a recession,” Bankrate said.
A Bankrate report from last November found that 50 percent of Americans felt their overall financial situation was worse at the time compared to three years ago in November 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A large part of that is because inflation is eroding Americans’ safety nets. More than 4 in 5 Americans (81 percent) say they did not increase their emergency savings” in 2023. “Two-thirds of them (66 percent) say economic factors such as inflation, rising interest rates or a change in their employment status or income were among the reasons why.”
In a Newsmax interview last month, Forbes magazine Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes predicted increased consumer turbulence in 2024. “The consumers are not going to forget that prices are higher today than when Joe Biden took office.”
He claimed that the U.S. Fed is “trying to help Joe Biden” ahead of the presidential election through its monetary tightening. “But I don’t think it’s gonna work” for the economy, he added.
From The Epoch Times
