It's the economy, stupid. So said James Carville when he was advising Bill Clinton in his 1992 presidential campaign, and the phrase is as true now as it was 32 years ago. Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris this week for the same reason he lost to Joe Biden in 2020: millions of Americans were unhappy about the economic record of the incumbent party. Two out of three voters this week thought the US economy was on the wrong track - and that spelt trouble for Harris.
The question is whether they will feel different at the end of Trump's second term in the White House when it ends in 2029. Looking at some of the policies proposed by the president elect, it is by no means certain that they will.
Trump is not a man to undersell himself and during the campaign he said he had created in his first term the "greatest economy in the history of our country".
While clearly hyperbole, Trump's record in the first three years of his presidency was impressive. The US economy grew strongly, inflation averaged around 2%, 6.7m jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.
Then, in the fourth year of his presidency the economy was hit by Covid 19. A deep recession in 2020 pulled down the average growth rate to 2.3% across Trump's first term. So what is Trump proposing for the economy now?
This story is from the November 09, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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This story is from the November 09, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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