Previewing Donald Trump’s “Economic Speech”

This afternoon, Donald Trump will take his fourth attempt at delivering a speech on the economy in the last seven days.

Last week, Trump promised to focus on the economy in remarks given in Asheville, North Carolina, which devolved into a rambling, unhinged, insult and grievance-filled disaster.

The next day, Trump struggled to focus on the economy in a speech outside his private golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Instead, he repeated lies about the 2020 election, criticized the press, attacked workers, lobbed more personal attacks against Kamala Harris, and discussed revenge against his political rivals if he wins in November.

Over the weekend, Trump held a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, that was also supposed to focus on the economy. Rally-goers were seen leaving the event early after being treated to more of the same odd, rambling, incoherent, slurring, insult-filled remarks they’d heard earlier in the week.

Trump is too undisciplined to think he’ll finally focus and nail this afternoon’s speech on the economy without reverting to the classic, angry, name-calling, unhinged bully we’ve seen on the campaign time and time again.

Today, we’ll likely see him repeat lies about the 2020 election, go on angry rants about no longer running against President Biden, and more unhinged behavior of a historically elderly presidential candidate extremely frustrated with the state of his campaign.

We watch everything Donald Trump says and does, so we know he will touch on economic ideas, but they’ll be lies about his first term record on the economy and dangerous inflationary proposals economic experts say will hike taxes on working families by thousands of dollars each year.

Previewing Donald Trump’s lies about the economy: 

• Trump will claim he had the best economy at the end of his first term in office.
  • Fact: Trump left office with a -.5 percent job growth rate.
  • Fact: Trump became the first president since Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression to depart office with fewer jobs in the country than when he entered.
  • Fact: Trump has the worst employment record in modern American presidential history. 
• Trump will claim he gave the largest tax cuts to the middle class and will extend those tax cuts in a second term to spur economic growth.
  • Fact: Trump’s tax cuts almost entirely benefitted the ultra-wealthy. 
  • Fact: Trump’s tax plan reduced tax savings for middle-class and working families.
  • Fact: Trump’s tax plan gave a $1.35 trillion handout to big corporations. 
• Trump will claim his trade war was good for the country and that issuing tariffs is a sign of strength that only taxes another country without impacting American consumers.
  • Fact: Trump’s trade war put the American manufacturing industry into a recession. 
  • Fact: Trump’s trade war caused the steel industry to shed jobs. At the end of his first term, the industry employed almost 2,000 fewer workers than it did when Trump took office.
  • Fact: Trump’s tariffs cost American companies $46 billion between 2018 and 2020. 
  • Fact: Under the Trump administration the trade deficit was the worst in U.S. history. 
  • Fact: Trump’s plan to issue 20% tariffs will cost American households thousands each year. 
• Trump will claim he brought energy and consumer prices down.
  • Fact: In the last three months of the Trump Administration, oil prices rose by 32%.
  • Fact: Under Trump, the consumer price index of major appliances rose 10%.
  • Fact: American consumers paid more for homes, luggage, spirits, and food due to Trump’s trade war.
• Trump will claim the Biden-Harris economic recovery from his disastrous COVID economy was fueled by undocumented immigrants creating 100% of all new net jobs growth.
  • Fact: According to economic analysis, the economy has added about 230,000 jobs each month this fiscal year. Immigrant workers would account for just under half of that growth.
• Trump will claim wages went up, poverty was at a record low, and unemployment was at a record low during his first term in office.
  • Fact: Under Trump, the poverty rate rose 1% for the first time after five years of declines. 
  • Fact: Unemployment rose by 1.6% under Trump.
  • Fact: Trump had the highest unemployment rate preceding a presidential election since the government began tracking the data. 
  • Fact: Wages declined under Trump. 
• Trump will claim he never touched Social Security or Medicare during his first term in office and that his proposal to end taxation on Social Security benefits won’t damage the program for future generations.
  • Fact: Trump’s 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 budgets each proposed billions of dollars in cuts to Social Security programs.
  • Fact: In both 2019 and 2020, Trump proposed budgets that included hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare.
  • Fact: Experts say that Trump’s proposal to end taxation of Social Security would worsen the federal deficit and increase the program’s shortfall by 25%. 

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Published: Aug 19, 2024