"The greatest economy actually ever in history"

 "I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history," said Donald Trump in a February 9 interview with Larry Kudlow.

Actually ever in history. Oh my. Kudlow did not offer a peep of protest.

How great an economy is it? Consider that the jobs numbers for 2025, which were already dismal, have been revised down. Job creation is one of the hallmarks of a great economy. Trump created a scant 359,000 jobs total in his first twelve months (counting from February), for a monthly average of just 30,000. By contrast, Joe Biden created 15.4 million jobs, for a monthly average of 321,000. Biden created more than ten times as many jobs per month as Trump did last year in his "greatest economy actually ever," and Biden sustained it for four years.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

 

Whereas Trump spews endless absurdities and outright bullshit, which sycophants like Kudlow happily swallow in large quantities, Biden really did have the greatest single job creation term in all of U.S. history, at least in absolute numbers. Adjusted for population, Jimmy Carter was actually a little better. Yes, Jimmy Carter. Although most of us have long been trained to believe otherwise, Democratic administrations consistently have stronger economies than Republican ones.

Trump, in both his first term and now, has substantially under-performed all recent presidents except for George W. Bush, who had the bad fortune of recessions at each end of his eight years in office. He gets the blame for the second one, but not the first.

Job creation last year was stupendously weak. Here are some other presidential numbers, with monthly averages in parentheses. Clinton: 11.4 million (237,000) first term and 11.3 million (235,000) second term. Reagan: 7.4 million (154,000) and 10.8 million (225,000). Obama's second term: 10.4 million (216,000). Carter: 10.3 million (214,000). Trump's first 37 months: 6.7 million (180,000).

Obama's first term doesn't count, because he inherited George W. Bush's "Great Recession"—the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. The economy was in freefall and losing around 800,000 jobs per month when Obama was sworn in. Trump's first term monthly average in my account covers just his first 37 months. Fair person that I am, I do not ding Trump for the massive Covid job losses (almost 10 million net) that occurred at the end of his term.

Poor miserable George W. Bush created just 78,000 (1,625) jobs in his first term and 1.3 million (27,000) in his second.

When comparing with Biden, job numbers can and should be adjusted for differences in population, which are considerable over the interval we're discussing. Here are the adjusted rankings of monthly averages, normalized to Biden, best to worst, across administrations. Carter: 322,000. Biden: 321,000. Clinton: 297,000. Reagan: 266,000. Obama (second term): 226,000. Trump (first 37 months of first term) 183,000. Trump far under-performed all these presidents.

All raw jobs data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is authoritative. You can specify parameters to look at whatever years you want. The adjustments for population in this commentary are mine. 

When comparing the "greatest" economies ever, GDP growth is of course also relevant. Clinton, for example, had a run of multiple years above 4 percent. Official numbers aren't yet in, but GDP grew an estimated 2.3 percent in 2025. Not exactly the "greatest economy actually ever in history." Trump has never had a year of 3 percent GDP growth.

By the way, Trump's current nonsense about the greatness of his economy is similar to the hilarious absurdities from his first term, in which he claimed he himself had created an "economic miracle," when it fact he was just drafting on what he inherited from Obama. I am, however, happy to give Trump credit for not screwing up Obama's economy.

In the Kudlow interview, Trump said "We inherited a total mess from Biden, and not only the borders, but the economy, the inflation, the inflation was the worst ever in history, they say 48 years, but basically ever in history. And the prices were high, and you don't hear them use the word affordability anymore. They can't use it because we brought the prices down."

Yes, you do hear "them" use the word "affordability" still. And prices have not come down.

And only in Trump's deranged mind did he inherit a "total mess from Biden." On October 19, 2024, in the waning months of the Biden administration, The Economist produced a special issue on the U.S. economy, with the headline "The envy of the world."

"The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust," proclaimed one of the issue's headlines. Another was "American productivity still leads the world." A third was "What can stop the American economy now?"

That's the economy Trump inherited. Countries around the world were hit hard economically by the Covid pandemic, but the U.S. economy under Biden out-performed most of the world, including on inflation. It's no exaggeration to say the U.S. led the world in post-pandemic recovery.

Trump nonsensically said U.S. inflation under Biden was the "worst ever in history." Inflation hit around 18 percent in the World War I era. Shortly after World War II it was over 14 percent. Thanks to the 1970s oils shocks, it was over 13 percent at the end of the Carter administration and into the first part of the Reagan administration. U.S. inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in July 2022 under Biden, primarily as a consequence of Covid-era supply chain disruptions, and then fell by 6 points from that peak, all before Trump took office. Critics who blame the U.S.'s massive economic stimulus for the inflation spike need to explain why Covid-era inflation was a worldwide phenomenon, with the U.S. actually faring better than many advanced countries, most of which did not stimulate their economies the way the U.S. did. The 2024 Biden economy over which The Economist gushed is evidence that the U.S. threaded the Covid needle remarkably well.

Trump lied (of course) when he said he "brought the prices down." By the time Trump took office annual inflation was already down to 3 percent, so he didn't even reduce inflation by much, let alone prices. (They aren't the same thing.) As always, Trump is a leech and a parasite, continually taking credit for the accomplishments of others.

Inflation is currently 2.4 percent. Inflation fell by 0.6 points during Trump's first year thanks not to his administration but to ongoing efforts of the Federal Reserve, which had been battling the problem for some years by holding interest rates high. Trump actually fought the Fed repeatedly on this, including with insults, trying to get it to cut interest rates dramatically to juice the economy for political effect. The very deep cuts Trump wanted (and still does) would have been inflationary.

And Trump is simply wrong about prices. Although inflation has come down substantially, mostly under Biden, prices have not, and will not, despite Trump's previous campaign promises. Higher prices are here to stay. That's just how it works, people. Once prices are raised across the economy, that becomes the new baseline level. (Some prices, such as energy, normally tend to fluctuate, for a variety of reasons. And egg prices rise during outbreaks of avian influenza, and fall after flocks are rebuilt. Set those aside.) The question is, will prices stabilize at their new higher level (in which case inflation comes down), or will they keep going up even more (in which case inflation continues)?

That said, prices would be a bit lower now but for Trump's tariffs. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs themselves have resulted in a 1.2 percent price increase. Whether the tariffs will embed persistently higher inflation over the longer term, or cause just a one-time price increase, is a matter of economic inquiry. The Fed is currently trying to figure that out. The Yale Budget Lab projects tariffs will shave 0.6 points off GDP in 2026, and for the economy to be persistently 0.3 percent smaller as a result. The initial price rise averages amounts to around $1,700 per household over a year, and is projected to settle at $1,292 per household. Importantly, tariffs represent a highly regressive tax on consumers, which means they affect poor households much more than rich ones as a fraction of their incomes. And by the way, The New York Fed reports that 90 percent of the cost of tariffs is being paid by U.S. companies and consumers, which flatly contradicts what Trump has always claimed.

And indeed, this is a rich person's economy. The stock market is at record highs. GDP growth is substantially being driven by construction of AI data centers, which are also driving up electricity prices. Their construction sucks huge amounts of resources, such skilled tradespersons, away from other parts of the economy, which could result in a reduction in broader infrastructure investment. It remains to be seen if AI is a sustainable boom, or something with darker portent. If AI doesn't produce increases in productivity and profit sufficient to justify the enormous amounts of money being pumped in, the boom could turn to serious bust.

Apart from AI data centers, which are a thing unto themselves, Trump told Kudlow "they're building all these factories all over the country" and that "construction jobs are way up."

And yet, according to Deloitte Insights,

In 2025, the engineering and construction industry’s early growth momentum was increasingly tested by emerging challenges as the year progressed: Real value added climbed to US$890 billion in the second quarter—a 1% increase year over year—while real gross output reached US$1.732 trillion, reflecting a 0.6% fall. By July, total construction spending declined almost 3% year over year, primarily driven by downturns in commercial (–8.2%) and manufacturing (–7%) construction. At the same time, firms grappled with persistent inflation, elevated interest rates, tariff uncertainty, acute labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and material price spikes, contributing to tightened margins and stretched schedules.

So much for Trump's claim that "we're building a record number [of factories] in history. There's never been anything like it." With Trump, everything he's associated with is the greatest "in history." Do his worshipful followers never tire of this?

Note too that manufacturing jobs declined significantly, month after month, through all of 2025.

So here we are in the midst of Trump's "greatest economy in history." Job creation is abysmal. Inflation is slightly elevated but inching closer to normal thanks to a Federal Reserve at which Trump constantly snipes. Prices remain high, and that won't change. Tariffs create an economic drag and hurt poor people the most. Affordability is still a concern, as a trip to the grocery store will readily confirm. Manufacturing jobs have been declining. Outside AI, construction is unimpressive. Not only is the economy not "the greatest," but it might not even be all that good. In that regard time will tell as the AI surge plays out.

Which makes me wonder: How stupid do you have to be to actually swallow Trump's absurdities? The answer: Very. Which doesn't mean there aren't literally millions who qualify. And if you do recognize how buffoonish and self-aggrandizing Trump is, but shrug it off, what does that say about your standards for the presidency? Millions surely do know better but somehow can't summon a basic modicum of embarrassment at what their president is feeding them. Larry Kudlow himself happily played along. According to the transcript, one of his most common rejoinders to Trump's nonsense was "Mm-hmm." I would note that Kudlow has lived in his own special reality for all the decades I've been observing him.

All that said, the public does seem to be catching on, at least on some things. Trump unsurprisingly insisted that he's "popular," but the polls tell a very different story. The latest polls show Trump's approval rating sinking well into the 30s (Pew and Quinnipiac 37 percent, AP-NORC 36 percent). 

You'd think the president who gave us the greatest economy in history would get more respect.

 

Copyright (C) 2026 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved 

The latest from Does It Hurt To Think? is here

The complete archive is here