…is today’s Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers, which was issued along with the Economic Report of the President. The vicissitudes of the various campaigns come and go, but the administration’s excellent record on the economy remains the most important factor in the election. To Democrats, the message is: read it and weep.
The CEA report is long, 435 pages with appendices. But the most important points can be summarized in a few graphs. The unemployment rate is a flawed but important metric. This shows how unemployment has declined, contrary to what was predicted by the Congressional Budget Office prior to the 2016 election:
Productivity is the driver of wealth. It has accelerated since President Trump took office, and especially since Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act:
This is key: real disposable personal income, which is what most people experience more than anything, is rising rapidly and exceeding pre-election projections:
There is much more, including international comparisons. The U.S., under President Trump, leads the world in economic growth:
The CEA report addresses the fact that the Trump administration has massively benefited minorities, including African-Americans. This chart shows the labor force participation rate for blacks; the red line is is adjusted to account for age:
There is much more at the link. Ultimately, though, what matters is not economists’ charts and graphs, but voters’ own perception of how things are going. Happily, this is hard to spin. People generally know whether they are better off or worse off. And Barack Obama’s poking his head out of his burrow after three years and claiming credit for the Trump administration’s accomplishments isn’t going to fool anyone who isn’t already a die-hard partisan.
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