Colossal Rebuilding Of The Military
Rebuilt the military and created the Sixth Branch, the United States Space Force.
- Completely rebuilt the United States military with over $2.2 trillion in defense spending, including $738 billion for 2020.
- Secured three pay raises for our service members and their families, including the largest raise in a decade.
- Established the Space Force, the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.
- Modernized and recapitalized our nuclear forces and missile defenses to ensure they continue to serve as a strong deterrent.
- Upgraded our cyber defenses by elevating the Cyber Command into a major warfighting command and by reducing burdensome procedural restrictions on cyber operations.
- Vetoed the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act, which failed to protect our national security, disrespected the history of our veterans and military, and contradicted our efforts to put America first.
Defeated terrorists, held leaders accountable for malign actions, and bolstered peace around the world.
Addressed gaps in Americans defense-industrial base, providing much-needed updates to improve the safety of our country.
Imbalances Are Transmitted Mainly Through The Capital Account
There is another compelling reason why bilateral trade data doesnt matter. The globalization of capital flows suggests that trade imbalances are more likely to be transmitted through the capital account than through the trade account. If China, for example, exports excess savings to the United States, U.S. attempts to reduce the bilateral trade deficit with China through tariffs are likely merely to reroute that deficit through other countries. At the end of the day, a reliance on tariffs leaves the overall U.S. deficit unchanged if Chinese capital flows to the United States are unchanged, even when the bilateral deficit with China appears on the surface to shift. That is why it is much more useful to focus on the capital account, and even then, the analysis must start with each countrys overall capital account, not just its bilateral capital account.
But things get even more complicated than that. The negative economic impact that these excess savings can have on the U.S. economy can manifest itself as either higher unemployment or higher debt . The actual impact depends on how domestic policies are designed to determine whether the United States chooses higher unemployment or higher debt.
The National Debt Increased By Almost 36% During Trump’s Tenure
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.
Republican candidate Donald Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign that he would eliminate the nations debt in eight years.
Instead, his budget estimates showed that he would actually add at least $8.3 trillion, increasing the U.S. debt to $28.5 trillion by 2025. But the national debt reached that figure much sooner. The national debt stood at $19.9 trillion when President Trump took office in January 2017, and it reached a high of $27 trillion in October 2020.
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Cbo Scoring Of The 2018 Budget
A budget document is a statement of goals and priorities, but requires separate legislation to achieve them. As of January 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the primary legislation passed that moved the budget closer to the priorities set by Trump.
Trump released his first budget, for FY2018, on May 23, 2017. It proposed unprecedented spending reductions across most of the federal government, totaling $4.5 trillion over ten years, including a 33% cut for the State Department, 31% for the EPA, 21% each for the Agriculture Department and Labor Department, and 18% for the Department of Health and Human Services, with single-digit increases for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. The Republican-controlled Congress promptly rejected the proposal. Instead, Congress pursued an alternative FY2018 budget linked to their tax reform agenda this budget was adopted in late 2017, after the 2018 fiscal year had begun. The budget agreement included a resolution specifically providing for $1.5 trillion in new budget deficits over ten years to accommodate the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that would be enacted weeks later.
The Congressional Budget Office reported its evaluation of President Trump’s FY2018 budget on July 13, 2017, including its effects over the 2018â2027 period.
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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American Exports Have Fallen Well Short Of Targets In The Deals First Year
DONALD TRUMP is rarely accused of subtlety. His bellicose approach to Chinas trade surplus and its unfair practices was no exception. Swingeing tariffs on Chinese goods did succeed in bringing China to the negotiating table. In January 2020 the two countries signed a phase-one trade deal. China agreed to raise its imports of a selection of American goods from $78bn in 2019 to $159bn in 2020, with yet more spending pledged in 2021. The president hailed this as a momentous steptoward a future of fair and reciprocal trade with China.
In reality, the deal was limited and trade disputes rumbled on regardless. Worse still, China has failed spectacularly to meet that $159bn commitment in the agreements first year, according to a new analysis by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think-tank in Washington, DC. In 2020 China spent only $94bn on the American goods covered by the deal. That is about as much as it did in 2017, before Mr Trump began his trade war . Granted, the numbers in 2020 may have been dampened by the covid-19 pandemic. But Chinas economy still recovered enough to grow by 2.3% last year. By June its total imports had regained pre-coronavirus levels.
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Tariffs Raise Prices And Reduce Economic Growth
Economists generally agree free trade increases the level of economic output and income, while conversely, trade barriers reduce economic output and income. Historical evidence shows tariffs raise prices and reduce available quantities of goods and services for U.S. businesses and consumers, which results in lower income, reduced employment, and lower economic output.
Tariffs could reduce U.S. output through a few channels. One possibility is a tariff may be passed on to producers and consumers in the form of higher prices. Tariffs can raise the cost of parts and materials, which would raise the price of goods using those inputs and reduce private sector output. This would result in lower incomes for both owners of capital and workers. Similarly, higher consumer prices due to tariffs would reduce the after-tax value of both labor and capital income. Because higher prices would reduce the return to labor and capital, they would incentivize Americans to work and invest less, leading to lower output.
Alternatively, the U.S. dollar may appreciate in response to tariffs, offsetting the potential price increase on U.S. consumers. The more valuable dollar, however, would make it more difficult for exporters to sell their goods on the global market, resulting in lower revenues for exporters. This would also result in lower U.S. output and incomes for both workers and owners of capital, reducing incentives for work and investment and leading to a smaller economy.
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Asylum Seekers And Refugees
In 2018, the Trump administration increased the requirements for the refugee-screening process. As a result, only 22,491 refugees were resettled that year, the lowest figure since 1980. He ordered that asylum seekers stay in Mexico while waiting for the asylum process to begin their hearings.
Via a memorandum to the Secretary of State, for fiscal year 2019, President Trump authorized 30,000 refugees to be admitted to the U.S. At the end of the year, 29,916 refugees were admitted from Africa, East Asia, Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Near East and South Asia regions.
Fact Check: Trumps Claims On The Economy
In an appearance at the Economic Club of New York, the president overstated some of the economys gains on his watch, understated others and often cited inaccurate statistics.
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The United States economy is slowing and wage growth has slipped, but household incomes are rising and the unemployment rate is at a half-century low. This is the complicated and somewhat contradictory state of the American economy that President Trump painted over with a big smiley face at the Economic Club of New York on Tuesday.
In remarks and a question-and-answer session, Mr. Trump continued to portray himself as a savior of what had been a moribund economy, trumpeting job gains and increased worker pay on his watch. To support his claims, he unleashed a flurry of economic statistics. Some were accurate, some were misleading and some appear nowhere close to the truth.
Here are some of the presidents claims.
What the president said
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Donald Trump Said During The First Us Presidential Debate With Joe Biden That His Administration Built The Greatest Economy In History A Statement He Has Often Made To Support His Case For A Second Term In The White House
The presidents record on the economy has been diminished by the devastating fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. Polls, however, tend to remain positive for him when voters are asked who they trust more to create jobs and economic growth.
This sentiment stems from Trumps career as a businessman, an early tax cut he signed as president and a strong stock market, which — on paper at least — boosts retirement savings. Regardless, Trumps messaging on the economy is prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.
AFP Fact Check examines the numbers.
Did Trump create the greatest economy?
Gross domestic product and job numbers are the main measures of US economic health. Trump has touted both, as well as chart-topping stock prices, as proof of his success. But his claims are misleading.
In Trumps favor, US unemployment hit a 50-year low of 3.5 percent in December 2019. In January this year, however, before states imposed lockdowns to try and contain the coronavirus, the Labor Department issued an update that was less positive revised numbers showed job growth slowed significantly in the first three years of Trumps presidency.
Some 6.5 million jobs were added between 2017 and 2019 — 2.109m, 2.314m and 2.096m. This compared to more than eight million jobs — 3.004m, 2.72m and 2.345m — in the three prior years, under Barack Obama.
The pandemic has upended the job market.
Gross Domestic Product
The stock market
In Trumps single term as president the Dow Jones grew 56 percent.
Which President Increased The National Debt Most
Presidents Obama and Trump both increased the debt by nearly $9 trillion during their respective times in office. Trump did this in four years, while Obama did it over eight years. In terms of proportion, Franklin Roosevelt oversaw the largest percentage increase in the national debt during his three-plus terms in office.
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Investing In Americas Workers And Families
Affordable and high-quality Child Care for American workers and their families.
- Doubled the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child and expanded the eligibility for receiving the credit.
- Nearly 40 million families benefitted from the child tax credit , receiving an average benefit of $2,200 totaling credits of approximately $88 billion.
- Signed the largest-ever increase in Child Care and Development Block Grants expanding access to quality, affordable child care for more than 800,000 low-income families.
- Secured an additional $3.5 billion in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to help families and first responders with child care needs.
- Signed into law 12-weeks of paid parental leave for Federal workers.
- Signed into law a provision that enables new parents to withdraw up to $5,000 from their retirement accounts without penalty when they give birth to or adopt a child.
Advanced apprenticeship career pathways to good-paying jobs.
- Expanded apprenticeships to more than 850,000 and established the new Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship programs in new and emerging fields.
- Established the National Council for the American Worker and the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board.
- Over 460 companies have signed the Pledge to Americas Workers, committing to provide more than 16 million job and training opportunities.
- Signed an executive order that directs the Federal government to replace outdated degree-based hiring with skills-based hiring.
Three Years Of Slashing Critical Safety Nets
The failures of the Trump administrations approach did not begin when the pandemic started. Each of the administrations four budget proposals has recommended slashing funding for the Center for Disease Control . In 2018, the CDC cut its epidemic prevention activities, which help train front-line workers in outbreak detection and work to strengthen laboratory and emergency response systems in countries where disease risks are greatest, by 80 percent moreover, it significantly scaled back its focus on emerging infectious diseases in several of the worlds hot spots, including China. Despite from the CDC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services , and the National Security Council to increase funding in the fiscal year 2020 budget, the Trump administration proposed a 12 percent cut to the HHS and a 10 percent cut to the CDC. Even now, amid one of the worst public health crises in recent American history, the acting director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget has doubled down on the White Houses FY 2021 proposed budget cuts of $1.2 billion to the CDC and $35 million to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund.
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