Trade Clears Globally Not Bilaterally
The first and perhaps most obvious problem with this approach is it assumes that trade clears bilaterally. This may have been largely true 150 years ago, when transportation costs were too high to allow production across many locations, but it has become less true over time. In the first chapter of our book, Trade Wars Are Class Wars, Klein and I discuss how the global collapse in transportation, communication, and travel costs beginning in the 1980s has made bilateral trade a mostly useless measurement. Imbalances in one country are far more likely to be transmitted to another country indirectly, through other parties, than directly through the bilateral account.
Even if we knew what to count and how to assess its employment impact, in other words, it would be meaningless to limit the discussion of the costs and benefits of trade with any one country solely to that bilateral trade account. To hammer this point home, my mentor at Columbia University, the late Michael Adler, once glared angrily at his students and warned that if any of them even mentioned bilateral trade they would immediately fail the class. Bilateral trade data convey very little about the overall trade relationship between two countries.
What We Dont Know
There are some caveats to keep in mind when assessing the data in the Trump Organizations financial disclosure forms.
First, the data is unaudited, self-reported data, meaning that readers have to take the companys word that its accurate.
Second, many of the numbers listed as income from certain assets seem, instead, to be the revenue from those businesses. This was confirmed when data from Trumps tax returns were released by The New York Times showing that many of the businesses have been losing money, including some of the largest revenue producers, such as Trump National Doral golf resort.
That being the case, the financial numbers dont show the amount of money that the former president actually took home as income. For example, in Trumps 2017 disclosure, he listed his income for the Trump National Doral golf resort as $75 million, which matches the revenue number reported to Miami-Dade County. Net operating income for the resort for that year was dramatically smaller at $4.3 million.
Getting a clear picture of the former presidents businesses is further complicated by the fact that income and asset values are listed in very wide ranges. For example, Mar-a-Lago Club is listed as having a value of over $50,000,000. The Trump National Golf Club in Charlotte is listed as worth between $5 million and $25 million.
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Allegations Of Business Links To Organized Crime
Trump maintained a connection with organized crime members to supply the concrete for Trump Tower. According to former New York mobster Michael Franzese, âthe mob controlled all the concrete business in the city of New York,â and that while Trump was not âin bed with the mob ⦠he certainly had a deal with us. ⦠he didnât have a choice.âMafia-connected union boss John Cody supplied Trump with concrete in exchange for giving his mistress a high-level apartment with a pool, which required extra structural reinforcement. Trump admitted in 2014 that he had âhad no choiceâ but to work with âconcrete guys who are mobbed up.â He further stated that âI donât like getting close to people like that, but they respected me.â
Trumpâs lawyer Roy Cohn represented several mobsters in the past such as Carmine Galante, John Gotti, Anthony Salerno, possibly also representing Paul Castellano and Vincent Gigante. Cohn allegedly used his underworld connection to help Trump build Trump Tower.
Journalists David Cay Johnston and Wayne Barrett, the latter of whom wrote an unauthorized 1992 Trump biography, have claimed that Trump and his companies did business with New York and Philadelphia families linked to the Italian-American Mafia. A reporter for The Washington Post writes, âhe was never accused of illegality, and observers of the time say that working with the mob-related figures and politicos came with the territory.â
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The Claim: Trump Is The Worst Jobs President In History
Millions of jobs were lost during Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a Nov. 1 Facebook post.
A chart posted to the Center for American Progress Action Fund page on Facebook showed negative job growth numbers for Trump compared with 12 of his predecessors. Trump is “the worst jobs president in history” with job losses totaling 4 million, according to the post’s caption.
Per the chart, Trump is the only president in the last 80 years to net job losses during his presidency. President George W. Bush is the runner-up with 1 million jobs added during his administration. Bush’s successor, Barack Obama, is credited with 12 million jobs.
The nation is in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, according to USA TODAY. But several factors are responsible for historically low job growth. Jesse Lee, senior adviser at CAP, said Trump’s performance on jobs performance was rated accordingly.
“Yes, there are always multiple intersecting factors responsible for any number of economic indicators across the globe,” Lee told USA TODAY. “Every president faces tests, and every president is judged by his reaction to them.”
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Tax Cut And Jobs Act Deregulation And National Debt
Even before the virus further exacerbated U.S. income inequality, some experts say Trumps economic policies favored the wealthy — and left the poor and middle class behind.
His Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017 provided major tax breaks to corporations and wealthy individuals. The policy, among other things, reduced the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Frankel called the policy “beyond ironic” for a president “who campaigned in 2016 on being the champion of the working man or working person and campaigned on ‘draining the swamp’ in Washington.”
Shierholz said this policy “absolutely increased inequality” and the “vast majority of the benefits of those tax cuts went to the already very wealthy.”
The economists also noted that the policy came at a time when unemployment was relatively low and the economy in good shape.
“That’s not the time to be giving away trillions of dollars to the wealthy,” Frankel said. “When you have a bad shock like the global financial crisis of 2008-09 or like the coronavirus crisis that we’re still going through — that’s the time to increase government spending and expansionary fiscal policy, but you lose the ability to do that if you gave it away.”
NYU’s Bowmaker noted that some “can make the case that the corporate tax rate was a little bit too high” and would welcome the tax cuts.
Despite his goal, the debt has ballooned under Trump. The total national debt has skyrocketed by more than $7 trillion during Trumps tenure.
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Trumped: The Donald Has Filed For Bankruptcy Multiple Times Whats His Strategy And What Can It Teach You
With a net worth in the billions of dollars, you would never have guessed it. But, lo and behold, Donald Trump has filed his businesses for bankruptcy four times since 1991. Was this a mistake? Did the billionaire Trump make a fatal error that caused his corporations to collapse? Just the opposite, in fact. Trump says that every bankruptcy filing was strategic. He even goes further to expand his strategy to the business community, in saying that every high-level business man should take advantageous of the laws, including the laws of bankruptcy. To understand Trumps decisions, we fist must understand the full situation behind his actions.
While Trumps businesses have filed for bankruptcy Trump himself has never filed for personal bankruptcy. From 1991 onward, four of his businesses have filed for Chapter 11 restructuring. For a more in depth look at Trumps bankruptcies, take a look at a review of his bankruptcies. On a high level, here is how the Chapter 11 filings turned out:
1. Trump Taj Mahal, 1991
Trump had initially financed the establishment by selling north of $1 billion of junk bonds, with a promised return of 14 percent interest. When the economy tanked, the Trumpt Taj Mahal was over $3 billion in dept. What Trump then did, to make amends with his lenders, was giving up half of his ownership state and selling his plane and yacht.
2. Plaza Hotel, 1992
3. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, 2004
What then, were the factors that enabled Trump to create his fortune?
A Timeline Of The President’s Policies
Kimberly Amadeo is an expert on U.S. and world economies and investing, with over 20 years of experience in economic analysis and business strategy. She is the President of the economic website World Money Watch. As a writer for The Balance, Kimberly provides insight on the state of the present-day economy, as well as past events that have had a lasting impact.
Erika Rasure, is the Founder of Crypto Goddess, the first learning community curated for women to learn how to invest their moneyand themselvesin crypto, blockchain, and the future of finance and digital assets. She is a financial therapist and is globally-recognized as a leading personal finance and cryptocurrency subject matter expert and educator.
Donald Trump promised to be the greatest job-producing president in U.S. history. During his 2016 campaign, he pledged to create 25 million jobs in the next 10 years. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were 3.1 million fewer jobs in December 2020 than in January 2017 when Trump took office.
If Donald Trump had been able to keep his campaign promise, he would have beaten the current record-holder, President Bill Clinton, who during his two terms.
To create those jobs, Trump told the Economic Club of New York he wanted to establish a national goal of 4% economic growth. Let’s look at the details of his policies and how they’ve worked during his term.
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He Must Be Convicted Its That Simple: Impeachment Managers Close Their Case
Van der Veen reiterated one of the defense teams central arguments: that a president no longer in office can not be impeached, a claim disputed by many constitutional scholars.
He also argued that Trumps due-process rights were violated and that his speech is protected under the First Amendment.
They have carried out a grossly unconstitutional effort to punish Mr. Trump for protected First Amendment speech. Its an egregious violation of his constitutional rights, he said. It is an unprecedented action with the potential to do grave and lasting damage to both the presidency, and the separation of powers and the future of democratic self government.
Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., had spent a good deal of his arguments this week claiming that as a president, not all of his words are, in fact, protected as free speech.
They present President Trump as merely, like a guy at a rally expressing a political opinion that we disagree with and now were trying to put him in jail for it, he said earlier this week. That has nothing to do with the reality of these charges or his constitutional offense.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney arrives at the Capitol for the fifth day of the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump on Saturday. Romney was one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict.hide caption
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How Much Influence Does The President Have On The Economy
Although presidential candidates usually make a lot of economic promises, their ability to fulfill them is somewhat limited. Much depends on factors outside of the president’s control, such as the state of the economy when they take office or national and global events that occur during their time in office. Presidents can impact the economy through things like budget decisions, tariffs, Federal Reserve appointments, and influencing Congress, but many of these policies have a delayed impact on the economy.
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Trumps Jobs Record Fell Short Of Promises Even Before The Virus
When Donald Trump ran for president, he boasted he would be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.
Now, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump heads into the November election on track to be the first U.S. leader since World War II to oversee a net loss of jobs during a four-year term.
The virus upended one of the nation’s strongest jobs markets in decades and triggered the sharpest recession since at least the 1940s. As a result, since Trumps inauguration, the nation has shed a net 4.7 million positions as of August and more than 13 million people are unemployed, the rough equivalent of the combined populations of New York City, Chicago and Houston.
But even before COVID-19, Trumps job gains were nearly keeping up with the pace during former President Barack Obamas second term. And he was falling short of his 2016 campaign pledge to create 25 million jobs over the next decade.
On Friday, the Labor Department is scheduled to provide its last big look at employment before the Nov. 3 election. Economists project an 850,000 gain in nonfarm payrolls in September and expect the unemployment rate to notch down to 8.2% which would mark a moderating rebound and leave jobs still almost 11 million short of the pre-crisis level.
For Trump, his record on the economy ranges from the quality of jobs created to the impact of policies he enacted on taxes and trade.
Joe Biden: ‘the Three Months Before I Got Here Our Country Was Creating Roughly 60000 Jobs A Month We’ve Been Creating On Average 500000 Jobs Per Month’
This is true, although the latest job numbers for April were less than predicted, when just 266,000 jobs were added.
The economy has continued to bounce back from the pandemic under President Biden. More than 530,000 jobs were added in February and 770,000 in March.
In the final few months of the Trump presidency, job growth was around 63,000 a month, on average.
The economy gained millions of jobs in Mr Trump’s final nine months in office following the initial Covid crash – peaking at almost five million in June.
But towards the end of his tenure, job growth dipped as infections rose again and some states re-imposed Covid restrictions.
Economists expected this number to rise again in April after a huge stimulus package, proposed by President Biden, was passed by the US Congress in March.
There are still more than eight million fewer jobs in the US than when the pandemic began.
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Oil Production And Imports
The increase in crude oil production that began under Obama continued under Trump, soaring to new record highs before COVID-19 contributed to a decline in 2020.
The 4.1 billion barrels produced last year were still more than in any year other than 2019, when nearly 4.5 billion barrels were produced, according to the Energy Information Administration. Even with the down year, crude oil production was up 27.6% in 2020 compared with 2016.
Increased domestic production under Trump led to fewer annual crude oil imports, which were down 25% in 2020 from four years earlier. The total number of imported crude oil barrels in 2020 2.15 billion was the lowest total since 1991.
However, while the U.S.again became a net exporter of petroleum products last year, it remained a net importer of crude oil, specifically, the EIA said.
Editors note: In January, we plan to publish our first quarterly report on President Joe Biden.
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There Are 3 Million Fewer Jobs Now Than When Trump Took Office
When President Trump took office in January 2017, there were 145.6 million Americans at work.
In his 2017 inaugural address, the new president promised more. We will bring back our jobs, he said.
Four years later and about to leave office unable to get a handle on an ongoing pandemic, Trump has not delivered on his promise.
Fridays jobs report showed the employment rolls last month included a workforce of 142.6 million total non-farm, seasonally adjusted, workers. Decembers disappointing data finalized what has long been expected: fewer people will be employed in America when Trump leaves office than when he arrived.
Just before the coronavirus hit the U.S. early last year, Trump was on pace for a sizable jobs gain for his term. He was overseeing an economy with 152.4 million non-farm jobs. The pandemic then cut more than 9.8 million jobs from those levels. The net effect is employment rolls down about 3 million people from when he took office.
A Yahoo Finance analysis from September found that a range of other countries have also lost jobs over the last four years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting recession.
In Trumps case, the cause of a job loss begins and ends with the pandemic.
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George W Bush : 57 Million
President Bush created 5.7 million jobs, a 4.2% increase. He struggled with two recessions. He lost 3 million jobs in 2008, his last year in office.
The job gains occurred before that, as he recovered from the 2001 recession. He responded to it with stimulus checks and the Bush tax cuts. He was helped by low-interest rates from the Fed’s expansive monetary policy.
