YELLOW SPRINGS — Three months in and the economy is shrinking and with it Donald Trump’s approval rating on the economy.
A poll before last fall’s election found nearly 60% of Americans thought Trump would do a better job managing the economy than Kamala Harris. Now, as we careen through the third month of Trump 2.0, roughly 60% of Americans have soured on Trump’s handling of the economy.
This dramatic swing is easy enough to understand. We haven’t had economic policy so much as economic chaos. The completely erratic way Trump has announced tariffs has left everyone’s head spinning.
What’s surprising, really, is that anyone thought Trump would do a good job in the first place.
Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford. He writes from Yellow Springs, Ohio Courtesy of Steven Conn
It’s a testament to our shrinking attention spans that so many Americans seem to have forgotten the shambolic way he handled the economy last time around. Remember the first Trump trade war with China? The one that cost taxpayers $12 billion in agricultural bailouts?
In fact, the amnesia isn’t just about Trump. It fogs over our evaluation of all Republican presidents and we’ve been suffering from it for nearly a century.
A 2021 study by Princeton economists Mark Watson and Alan Blinder, found that Democratic presidents have been better for the economy than Republican ones. Jobs created? The top six administrations are all Democratic. Gross Domestic Product? The top four are Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, and Clinton.
Between 1933 and 2020, (so the GOP is getting a pass on Herbert Hoover in these statistics), economic growth has averaged 4.6% under Democrats as compared to 2.4% under Republicans. This period covers fourteen different presidents and guess who ranks dead last in many of these economic measures? You are correct: Tariff Guy.
Economic data are far easier to collect than they are to interpret so explaining this remarkably consistent pattern is tricky. There are doubtless several factors at play, but I’ll offer two: Democratic presidents have consistently recognized the role the Federal government plays in stimulating economic growth.
First, Democrats starting with FDR have made investing in infrastructure a priority. Roads and bridges, schools and hospitals – these are the things the private sector fails to invest in but are essential for the economy. Until 1980 this was a truism shared by both parties but Reagan gutted infrastructure investment with demonstrably bad results.
Second, Democratic presidents, learning the lessons of the Great Depression, have been quicker to respond aggressively to economic downturns. Republicans, on the other hand, have equivocated.
Hoover sat on his hands; so did both George Bushes in the face of their respective economic crises. Likewise, Trump was too slow to respond to the economic effects of COVID-19.
By contrast, since the 1980s, the GOP had pitted the government as the enemy of the market.
“Government is the problem,” Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural, ignoring decades of American history and economic data. Instead, he insisted that the private sector alone could solve all our problems, and that tax cuts and deregulation would stimulate unlimited economic growth.
The numbers, however, simply don’t bear those fantasies out.
2024 seems like a long time ago but it’s worth remembering that the economy Trump inherited was quite strong. Both Moody’s and Goldman Sachs issued reports last year arguing to keep Joe Biden’s economic policies in place. They both warned that tariff wars would wreck that economy.
That’s where we find ourselves now, and the historical evidence is clear. Since 1933 Democratic presidents have shepherded economic prosperity while Republican presidents have squandered it. Trump is simply following in a long GOP tradition.
Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford. He writes from Yellow Springs, Ohio
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