In Charts At The Data - Us Department Of The Treasury: Fill & Download for Free

[Adapted from Christopher Black's answer to What do business people think of Donald Trump?]Here is a graph (from the Dept. of Labor) of total private sector employment in the U.S., including all of Trump’s latest numbers through April 2019, with all axis labels removed. Point to where you think Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 first took effect, signaling a shift from the “terrible policies” of Barack Obama to the new era when the “greatest jobs producer God ever created” started waving his “magic wand?” Then read on.Although many Trump critics focus on his emotional immaturity and his ethical/legal struggles, I would like to focus on the things Trump himself claims are his greatest strengths: his business leadership and deal-making skills.I run my own business and have quite a few friends and relatives who have led companies, some big and some small. (Mine is small.) The hope of many business owners like me, and our millions of workers, was that Trump would put American businesses on an even stronger path than the “Obama trajectory.” He would turn around our trade deficit, balance the budget, boost GDP, create an infrastructure for prosperity, and be the world’s greatest job creator.[*Many say cutting regulations is also important. But only if it gives their particular business a competitive advantage. Oil companies hate regulations that impede drilling or encourage fuel-efficient cars, but love those that impede wind farm or solar development. When you hear someone say “regulations are killing us,” 95 times out of 100 he means he just wants more government handouts and tax breaks than his competitors. Smart regulations can actually boost growth if implemented correctly. More importantly, regulations are our major instrument of corporate accountability. In short, “number of regulations eliminated” cannot be an objective measure of success.]When assessing a president’s performance as a “national CEO,” the question is not so much “how strong is the economy right now?” (partisans will take credit or cast blame to make their side look good) but rather “how is the president dealing with any current crises and laying the groundwork for future prosperity?” But of course, we can only look at the data in retrospect. It’s best to look at them in context, to get beyond the partisan boasts and talking points. Here are the numbers:[From U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics][UPDATE AUGUST 2020]Where does it appear that the “Trump economic miracle” occurred? Are there clear inflection points in the data that signal that Trump’s “magic wand” has cast its spell? Under Trump, did the budget deficit come down? Did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 cause real wages to increase or GDP to accelerate? Did he “win the trade war?” Did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 nudge the employment line from the “Obama trajectory” even a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy bit?When you actually look at the numbers, it’s clear that Trump’s performance is middling or sub-par at best. The cherry-picked data he and his cheerleaders put out, when put into context, plainly don’t support their claim that he is a business genius who “turned around a mess [he] inherited.”In fact, the data show precisely the opposite. It appears that Trump inherited an economy with some decent momentum, all the more astonishing after the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009. (In Obama’s second term, GDP growth averaged +2.2% per year—not spectacular, but remarkably steady and far better than what economists had predicted following the Great Recession, and well above the 1.58% average GDP growth rate of the post-Depression “golden era” of 1945–1960.) Take the employment chart at the bottom, which is the first graph put into context. If Trump were “the greatest jobs producer God ever created,” we would see an inflection point in the graph somewhere in Trump’s first two years. In fact, there is an incredibly strong inflection point on this chart, but unfortunately it coincides almost perfectly with the day that Barack Obama signed the Recovery Act in February 2009, weeks after taking office. (To be fair, much of the change in the employment trend can also be attributed to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Bush in October 2008 and supported by both candidates for President, John McCain and Barack Obama. Senator Hillary Clinton also supported it. Bernie Sanders did not. TARP was the major driver of the huge budget deficits in 2009–2012, but it obviously succeeded in stopping the trend of enormous job losses, which was a much bigger problem.) Note that these are private, non-government jobs, so there’s no room for the “bigger government” counterargument. The unemployment rate has continued to decline under Trump, but only because the “Obama line” has continued.[You can be forgiven for suspecting that the last graph was faked, or at least manipulated, to make Obama look good. After all, if Obama’s employment numbers were that good, with a classic inflection point at the very start of his tenure, followed by a rocket-like trajectory, why wasn’t he Tweet-bragging constantly about it? (Never mind. We all know the answer to that question.) If you doubt the numbers, check them yourself. Go to the US Department of Labor Statistics website (BLS Tools), go to the “Employment” section, click on “Data Finder,” check “All employees, thousands, total private, seasonally adjusted,” make the range 2004 to 2019, download the Excel data (.xlsx), and make your own line graph.]But what about the Dow and GDP? Business leaders and investors want to see real changes in productivity and growth. As I write this, Trump has just started his 27th month in office—24 of which were with full control of all three branches of government, a “blank check” for Republicans—which is plenty of time to let his economic policies take effect. The Dow has gained +34.2% in that time. That is great compared to the –22.1% change at Bush’s 27th month, but middling compared to Obama’s +60.1% growth at this point in his presidency. Trump bragged a great deal about the 81 all-time highs for the Dow during his first two years in office, but since the Dow grows at a fairly steady 6-8% per non-recession year, all-time highs are not unusual. For comparison, after digging the country out of the Great Recession in his first term, Obama saw 91 all-time highs in the first two years of his second term. Trump has touted the 3% GDP growth in 2018 as “unprecedented,” but this isn’t even close to true, as the graph indicates. It seems almost anemic compared to the eight Clinton years. Even George W. Bush had TWO years of greater than 3% GDP growth, and he had the worst economic performance of any president since Hoover.It’s interesting to compare Trump’s economic performance to that of Bill Clinton, since Trump spends so much time trashing the Clintons and spreading conspiracy theories about them and the many others on his “enemies list.” Take your favorite metric—GDP growth, stock market performance, budget deficits, productivity growth, profit growth, job creation, balance of trade—and compare Trump’s performance to Clinton’s over equal time intervals. It’s enlightening to do your own analysis and free yourself from the propaganda coming from the corporate media and the White House. And it’s easy. Use BLS Tools, BEA Data, or any other objective data site. (Just stay away from the White House’s communications team or any politically biased media source, like CNN or Fox.) Based on the data alone, which one would you say is a truly great “business leader?” It’s a much different story outside of Trump’s Twitter bubble. [If you don’t have the time, you can look at Bloomberg’s thorough 14-point analysis of the economic data of all U.S. Presidents going back to Jimmy Carter. (It started this “presidential index” before Trump took office, so they’re not cherry-picking data for or against Trump.) As of late January, Trump ranked 6th out of 7 Presidents in terms of economic performance, ahead only of George W. Bush. Even Carter is ahead of Trump. Clinton is first, followed by Barack Obama, followed by Ronald Reagan.]According to one World Bank economist, the Trump Administration is following almost precisely the policies of the George W. Bush administration—tax cuts, increased spending, and deregulation, that led to the same conditions that produced the Great Recession. The numbers and trends are eerily similar.Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised, given that Trump’s personal and corporate return on investment (ROI) has been far weaker than—in fact, less than than 1/3 as strong as— a passive investment in the S&P 500. In other words, Trump has not provided investors with any legitimate reason to invest in him rather than the cheapest generic stock fund. Recently his net worth has certainly increased, however, as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which by several analyses has netted the Trump family anywhere from $22.5 million to $1.1 billion, mostly through massive cuts to the Inheritance Tax. This is an enormous benefit only for the children of billionaires.Trump’s Productive ROI is probably so low because, unlike self-made billionaires, he never had to impress potential investors. When all your money is inherited (apparently, Trump started receiving his $480 million inheritance when he was only 3 years old), you don’t need a stellar business model. Of course, being an heir doesn’t automatically disqualify someone from being a great business leader. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Thomas Watson, Jr. also inherited large companies and enormous wealth from their fathers, but they also provided strong leadership for their companies and became great philanthropists. However, it doesn’t appear that Trump is on the same path, particularly since his family foundation was recently shut down due to campaign finance violations and self-dealing.Many of the habits that Trump acquired as a private CEO are troublesome when projected on a national scale. It’s alarming that Trump is working so hard to hide his taxes and make his finances above the law (and even more alarming that the Senate and courts may let him get away with it). Strong companies don’t hide their numbers unless they are cooking the books. It’s an even worse sign that not a single American bank has been willing to lend money to Trump for over a decade, and that the only bank that has funded Trump (Deutsche Bank) is a known epicenter for international money laundering. (A disreputable bank might lend money to someone who doesn’t repay his loans because he gives them something more valuable. One theory is that, in this case, it is access to Russian oligarchs who need to offshore tens of billions in stolen cash.) It’s also a problem to have such a confirmed reputation for stiffing your own workers and subcontractors, and not just because bullying is such a bad leadership stance: it’s a clear sign that your cash flow is poor, which means that you don’t have a profitable business model.But maybe Trump is just not a numbers guy. Great CEOs can have different styles. Sometimes, vision and inspiration are better keys to long-term success than just a laser focus on profits and growth. If you can attract and inspire entrepreneurs now, perhaps you can ensure prosperity down the road. Unfortunately, Trump seems to have a great deal of difficulty getting America’s top CEOs to accept his leadership on his own Business Advisory Council. Apparently, he does not like to share the spotlight.As a result, he doesn’t appear to attract and keep the best people or to provide strong guidance for business leaders. His advisors seem to be chosen because he saw them on TV, rather than because they have any substantial expertise. Their predictions have so far been just more Trumpian exaggeration, and not the reliable estimates of the economic future that business leaders need to make decisions on capital investment and hiring.Perhaps most importantly, his vision for the nation is historically bleak. “Keep the foreigners out,” “my haters are losers,” “everybody’s after me,” “bring back coal,” and “no collusion” aren’t very inspiring rallying cries for American workers and entrepreneurs. Trump is not leading on the economic issues that voters care about most, such as long-term financial stability (rather than more reckless debt); a 21st century data and transportation infrastructure, an affordable first-class healthcare system, prosperity in the face of climate change, ensuring worker security in the face of accelerating automation, and expanding free trade (rather than destroying alliances and building walls).One of Trump’s biggest campaign promises was to “totally fix” the “disastrous trade imbalance” that was “costing us trillions,” and that his predecessors couldn’t handle because they were too “weak and stupid.” (Most economists and CEOs disagree that trade deficits are a bad thing, but let’s go with Trump on this one.) In January 2018, Trump started his tariff war (which exactly 0 out of 60 economists surveyed by Reuters agreed would “benefit the U.S. economy”) that he promised would be “so quick and easy to win.” It wasn’t. Actually, it’s much worse than that. It pushed our 2018 trade deficit to at an all-time high. (Before Trump took office, the all-time worst monthly trade deficit was $76 billion in July 2008, at the depths of the Great Recession. Under Trump’s “tariff war,” that record has now been broken FIVE TIMES.) In July 2018, Trump had to pay farmers $12 billion dollars out of the U.S. Treasury to make up for lost revenue. It’s an impressive failure by all measures, which probably explains why he’s not tweeting about it much anymore.Trump also promised to be a “great dealmaker,” as his TV persona suggested. Trump is actually correct (in my opinion) that Chinese currency manipulation, protectionism, and intellectual piracy are real problems for the world markets, and America should be spearheading the fight against them. But a dealmaker needs a plan, a backbone, a steady hand, and the skills to maximize leverage. A smart deal maker would have kept us in the TPP (instead of dumping it because—umm, globalism?) so that the U.S. would have a much stronger leveraging position against China. Instead, Trump gave control of the Asian markets to China and started a weak, stupid, and needlessly expensive tariff war. It’s like quitting the game, then trying to “win” by throwing rocks at the players. Trump’s personal weaknesses in these areas are apparent to anyone who observes how he reacts to even ordinary challenges. Those who work closely with him have noted that he has an extraordinarily fragile ego and pathetically short temper and attention span. He doesn’t do his homework and therefore is ill-prepared in negotiations to apply appropriate leverage or respond nimbly to setbacks. He is far too susceptible to flattery, so it’s easy for our adversaries to take advantage of him. Since he seems to take pride in reneging not only on contracts he signs with his business partners, but also on treaties signed by his predecessors, it’s unsurprising that our adversaries and friends alike regard Trump’s “deals” with contempt, and regard America as a less trustworthy partner.Trump oversells and underperforms. He tends to spin his deals and policies as “huge victories for America,” but at closer inspection (for instance Korea, China, Iran, the Paris Accords, and the TPP) they seem to be poorly developed plans that do little or nothing to make America great.It appears Trump was lying when he said he had a beautiful plan to replace Obamacare, and the “Infrastructure Week” Trump has promised repeatedly over his first two years in office (including this week again), has turned into a cruel Internet joke-meme.Top business leaders understand the value of promotion and even “showmanship,” but only when it’s accompanied by a grand strategy and hard work to build the product. So far, Trump doesn’t seem to have any great economic product and no grand strategy. Many of us were willing to give him a chance, but at this point we shouldn’t be surprised that the Trump White House is following the dismal trajectories of Trump Airlines, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage, and the Trump Taj Majal. All glitter, no substance, and WAY too much fraud and debt. We can only hope that he doesn’t bankrupt America like he bankrupted those companies. [Update August 2020: Hope is lost.]The ultimate measure of any President who considers himself a “leader of the national brand” is the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. Ever since Trump took office, the U.S. has fallen below all of our chief competitors for the first time since George W. Bush left office. This means less influence, less investment, less credibility, and less power.If a CEO of a Fortune 500 company had this kind of record after 3 years, he would almost certainly be fired by the board. Trump’s inability to keep the US at the top of the Nation Brands Index hurts every company in America that depends on imports, exports, overseas sales, or foreign investment, which is almost all of them.Business leaders would also love for Trump to get the crushing national debt under control, because it puts severe limits on our ability to grow in the future and to deal effectively with any downturns or recessions. (Debt control, at least in theory, is the reason that so many business people are Republican in the first place.) Unfortunately, Trump is heading fast in the opposite direction. He’s racking up record debt, but building very little prosperity-creating infrastructure. [Update August 2020: It’s gotten much worse with the pandemic, and Trump has no viable plan.]In fact, the deficit problem is even worse for Trump than the graph above indicates. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the 2019 deficit will exceed $900 billion, and will exceed $1 trillion for every year beyond 2022. It’s one thing to run budget deficits during a recession to counter the collapse in global demand (as in World War II, when U.S. deficit spending helped extract us from the Great Depression), but in times of relative prosperity, it is reckless and puts future prosperity at risk. [Update August 2020: The U.S. is now racking up debt even faster. As with the Taj Mahal or Trump university, the Trumps and Kushners seem to be maneuvering to extract as much wealth as they can before the collapse.]Trump seems to be more interested in strong-arming the Fed to goose his short-term numbers than he is in planning for long-term prosperity. (The “Taj Mahal Plan.”) In order to safeguard economic stability, the Fed must stay free from political meddling. Trump’s nominations of Herman Cain and the Stephen Moore to the Fed show that either he prefers political cheerleaders to qualified economic leaders, or that the qualified candidates don’t want to work with his administration.This is the kind of destabilizing behavior that creates bubbles and crashes.Even though a majority of the CEOs I know are Republicans, many admit (reluctantly) that Obama did a much better job of promoting the American brand, strengthening trade relations with other nations, maintaining the stability of governance that businesses need to grow, building infrastructure, and, despite some policy disagreements (primarily about particular trade deals and domestic spending), leading us out of a deep recession with a steady hand, all while Trump was sniping at him from Trump Tower. By all relevant accounts, it doesn’t seem that Trump knows as much as he claims about tax policy, trade policy, budgeting, brand-building, or—most surprisingly—deal-making.Now that he’s in office, we can see how he operates, and we’re not impressed. Thankfully, most American corporations are not run “the Trump way.”

Historians, scholars,journalists,and informed observers understand that new Presidents inherit the budget appropriations proposed and approved by the previous President.A new President takes office in late January but he bound,by law, to execute the budget he inherits until his own budget takes effect 9 months later. Therefore,the only rational way to tally debt is by the budgets a President proposes and approves.Bush inherited a large budget surplus and a national debt of over 5 trillion. On the date his first budget took effect,the debt was 5.8 trillion. On the last day of his 8th budget, the debt was 12.8 trillion, a rise of about 110%, exceeded only by Reagan, who had tripled the debt.When the first Obama budget took effect, therefore,the debt was 12.8 trillion,and today it is about 18.2 trillion,a rise of about 45%. The essential figure is not the size of the debt but its ratio to the GDP. A person who makes 20K a yr with a 20K debt is heavily burdened. A millionaire with a 20K debt feels nothing.Some argue the last Bush budgets were controlled by the Democratic Congress, but this is not true. In 2008, Bush asked for 3.1 trillion to spend and he was granted exactly 3.1 trillion. His rosy predictions of government revenue and underestimation of the cost in both lost revenue and increased govt welfare overhead led to the largest deficit in US history.Obama was able to get 200 billion, during the period of the last Bush budget, to jumpstart his stimulus program....so,to be fair, we can reduce the final Bush debt to 12.6 trillion,still well over 100% of where he started. And so Obama debt rises from 12.6 to 18.2 trillion,most likely 19 trillion by time his last budget expires....arise of about 50%.In more than doubling the debt, Bush actually lost private sector jobs (Clinton has added 23 million); and in raising the debt 50%, Obama will have added about 12 million jobs. Very important is what you get for what you spend!A clear way to understand the Bush and Obama performances is to compare debt to GDP ratios. It is a fact that since the end of WWII, all Republican Presidents have seen an increase in the debt burden, and all Democrats have seen a decrease. How about Bush and Obama?A chart at Change in Debt as a Percentage of GDP by President(Page on politicsthatworks.com)shows the change in debt by President since Eisenhower. It shows that under Bush,the ratio rose to 28%,while under Obama,it has fallen to just under 20%."Republican presidents after Eisenhower have increased the federal debt as a percentage of gross domestic product by a total of 60%. Democratic presidents have reduced the debt as a percentage of GDP by a total of 9%.President Obama is the only Democratic President during whose time in office the debt has risen relative to GDP. The data extends to the end of FY2014 (September 2014). President Obama's bar will almost certainly drop by the end of his presidency, as GDP growth is relatively high and the deficit is relatively low. 2/5ths of the increase during President Obama's presidency occurred during the first year while the country was still in the midst of the Great Recession."During Obama's first year,the negative GDP was all under the Bush budget,which lasted thru Sept. 2001. This increase,by all rights, is a result of theBush budget, and the first month of the first Obama budget,both GDP job growth turned positive.The Dailysignal reports: "The Department of Treasury last week released the numbers for fiscal year 2015, announcing a $44-billion drop in the deficit from the year before. The deficit stands at $439 billion, which is 2.5 percent of gross domestic product."Obama inherited a deficit of 1.4 trillion (of which .2 trillion was his contribution), which has been steadily reduced to the 2015 figure of 439 billion. TheBush ratio was a deficit of 1.2 trillion with a negative 5.4% decline in GDP in the first quarter of 2009. Since then, the deficit has declined by 2/3 with steady, if modest growth in GDP since late 2009, when the 1st Obama budget took effect.Clearly, Bush,who started with inherited surpluses, increased the debt by over 50% more than Obama,while being the first President ever to lose private sector jobs.Obama,who started with 800,000 job losses a month (reduced govt revenue and increased welfare costs),Beware of those who attempt to blame Obama for the 8th Bush budget,which Bush proposed and approved before Obama had even declared his intention to run for office.This is dishonest bookkeeping. It is how cheats cook the books. Don't be fooled again.I am a critic of Obama, not a Democrat,but facts are facts,and dishonesty is dishonesty.

In fact, the May 2019 numbers are actually significantly less than half that, at 75,000. Pretty dismal. Even worse, the March and April numbers were revised DOWN by 75,000, so the net gains this month are almost precisely zero. Turns out Trump’s instability is bad for long term growth.From Christopher Black's answer to Speaking completely objectively, is Trump a good president based on only what he has done in the office?Here is a graph (from the Dept. of Labor) of total private sector employment in the U.S., including all of Trump’s latest numbers through April 2019, with all axis labels removed. At what point do you think Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was passed, signaling a shift from the “terrible policies” of Barack Obama to the new era when the “greatest jobs producer God ever created” started waving his “magic wand?” Hold your finger there. Then read on.Although many Trump critics focus on his emotional immaturity and his ethical/legal struggles, I would like to focus on the things Trump himself claims are his greatest strengths: his economic leadership and deal-making skills.I run my own business and have quite a few friends and relatives who have led companies, some big and some small. (Mine is small.) The hope of many business owners like me, and our millions of workers, was that Trump would put American businesses on an even stronger path than the “Obama trajectory.” He would turn around our trade deficit, balance the budget, boost GDP, create an infrastructure for prosperity, and be the world’s greatest job creator.[*Many say cutting regulations is also important. But only if it gives their particular business a competitive advantage. Oil companies hate regulations that impede drilling or encourage fuel-efficient cars, but love those that impede wind farm or solar development. The “all regulations are bad” mantra makes as much sense as the commissioner of Major League Baseball saying he’ll “eliminate two rules for every new one” instead of encouraging teams to just play by the rules. Sure, get rid of inefficient or unfair regulations, but smart regulations can actually boost growth if implemented correctly. More importantly, regulations are our major instrument of corporate accountability. In short, “number of regulations eliminated” cannot be an objective measure of success.]When assessing a president’s performance as a “national CEO,” the question is not so much “how strong is the economy right now?” (partisans will take credit or cast blame to make their side look good) but rather “how is the president dealing with any current crises and laying the groundwork for future prosperity?” But of course, we can only look at the data in retrospect. It’s best to look at them in context, to get beyond the partisan boasts and talking points. Here are the numbers:[From U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics]Where does it appear that the “Trump economic miracle” occurred? Are there clear inflection points in the data that signal that Trump’s “magic wand” has cast its spell? Under Trump, did the budget deficit come down? Did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 cause real wages to increase, hiring to speed up, or GDP to accelerate? Did he “win the trade war?”When you actually look at the numbers, it’s clear that Trump’s performance is middling or slightly sub-par at best. The cherry-picked data he and his cheerleaders put out, when put into context, plainly don’t support their claim that he is a business genius who “turned around a mess [he] inherited.”In fact, the data show precisely the opposite. It appears that Trump inherited an economy with some decent momentum, all the more astonishing after the “Great Recession” of 2007–2009. (In Obama’s second term, GDP growth averaged +2.2% per year—not spectacular, but remarkably steady and far better than what economists had predicted following the Great Recession, and well above the 1.58% average GDP growth rate of the post-Depression “golden era” of 1945–1960.) Take the employment chart at the bottom, which is the first graph put into context. If Trump were “the greatest jobs producer God ever created,” we would see an inflection point in the graph somewhere in Trump’s first two years. In fact, there is an incredibly strong inflection point on this chart, but unfortunately it coincides almost perfectly with the day that Barack Obama signed the Recovery Act in February 2009, weeks after taking office. (To be fair, much of the change in the employment trend can also be attributed to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) passed by Bush in October 2008 and supported by both candidates for President, John McCain and Barack Obama. Senator Hillary Clinton also supported it. Bernie Sanders did not. TARP was the major driver of the huge budget deficits in 2009–2012, but it obviously succeeded in stopping the trend of enormous job losses, which was a much bigger problem.) Note that these are private, non-government jobs, so there’s no room for the “bigger government” counterargument. The unemployment rate has continued to decline under Trump, but only because the “Obama line” has continued.[You can be forgiven for suspecting that the last graph was faked, or at least manipulated, to make Obama look good. After all, if Obama’s employment numbers were that good, with a classic inflection point at the very start of his tenure, followed by a rocket-like trajectory, why wasn’t he Tweet-bragging constantly about it? (Never mind. We all know the answer to that question.) If you doubt the numbers, check them yourself. Go to the US Department of Labor Statistics website (BLS Tools), go to the “Employment” section, click on “Data Finder,” check “All employees, thousands, total private, seasonally adjusted,” make the range 2004 to 2019, download the Excel data (.xlsx), and make your own line graph.]But what about the Dow and GDP? Business leaders and investors want to see real changes in productivity and growth. As I write this, Trump has just started his 27th month in office—24 of which were with full control of all three branches of government, a “blank check” for Republicans—which is plenty of time to let his economic policies take effect. The Dow has gained +34.2% in that time. That is great compared to the –22.1% change at Bush’s 27th month, but middling compared to Obama’s +60.1% growth at this point in his presidency. Trump bragged a great deal about the 81 all-time highs for the Dow during his first two years in office, but since the Dow grows at a fairly steady 6-8% per non-recession year, all-time highs are not unusual. For comparison, after digging the country out of the Great Recession in his first term, Obama saw 91 all-time highs in the first two years of his second term. Trump has touted the 3% GDP growth in 2018 as “unprecedented,” but this isn’t even close to true, as the graph indicates. It seems almost anemic compared to the eight Clinton years. Even George W. Bush had TWO years of greater than 3% GDP growth, and he had the worst economic performance of any president since Hoover.It’s interesting to compare Trump’s economic performance to that of Bill Clinton, since Trump spends so much time trashing the Clintons and spreading conspiracy theories about them and the many others on his “enemies list.” Take your favorite metric—GDP growth, stock market performance, budget deficits, productivity growth, profit growth, job creation, balance of trade—and compare Trump’s performance to Clinton’s over equal time intervals. It’s enlightening to do your own analysis and free yourself from the propaganda coming from the corporate media and the White House. And it’s easy. Use BLS Tools, BEA Data, or any other objective data site. (Just stay away from the White House’s communications team or any politically biased media source, like CNN or Fox.) Based on the data alone, which one would you say is a truly great “business leader?” It’s a much different story outside of Trump’s Twitter bubble. [If you don’t have the time, you can look at Bloomberg’s thorough 14-point analysis of the economic data of all U.S. Presidents going back to Jimmy Carter. (It started this “presidential index” before Trump took office, so they’re not cherry-picking data for or against Trump.) As of late January, Trump ranked 6th out of 7 Presidents in terms of economic performance, ahead only of George W. Bush. Even Carter is ahead of Trump. Clinton is first, followed by Barack Obama, followed by Ronald Reagan.]According to one World Bank economist, the Trump Administration is following almost precisely the policies of the George W. Bush administration—tax cuts, increased spending, and deregulation, that led to the same conditions that produced the Great Recession. The numbers and trends are eerily similar.Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised, given that Trump’s personal and corporate return on investment (ROI) has been far weaker than—in fact, less than than 1/3 as strong as— a passive investment in the S&P 500. In other words, Trump has not provided investors with any legitimate reason to invest in him rather than the cheapest generic stock fund. Recently his net worth has certainly increased, however, as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which by several analyses has netted the Trump family anywhere from $22.5 million to $1.1 billion, mostly through massive cuts to the Inheritance Tax. This is an enormous benefit only for the children of billionaires.Trump’s Productive ROI is probably so low because, unlike self-made billionaires, he never had to impress potential investors. When all your money is inherited (apparently, Trump started receiving his $480 million inheritance when he was only 3 years old), you don’t need a stellar business model. Of course, being an heir doesn’t automatically disqualify someone from being a great business leader. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Thomas Watson, Jr. also inherited large companies and enormous wealth from their fathers, but they also provided strong leadership for their companies and became great philanthropists. However, it doesn’t appear that Trump is on the same path, particularly since his family foundation was recently shut down due to campaign finance violations and self-dealing.Many of the habits that Trump acquired as a private CEO are troublesome when projected on a national scale. It’s alarming that Trump is working so hard to hide his taxes and make his finances above the law (and even more alarming that the Senate and courts may let him get away with it). Strong companies don’t hide their numbers unless they are cooking the books. It’s an even worse sign that not a single American bank has been willing to lend money to Trump for over a decade, and that the only bank that has funded Trump (Deutsche Bank) is a known epicenter for international money laundering. (A disreputable bank might lend money to someone who doesn’t repay his loans because he gives them something more valuable. One theory is that, in this case, it is access to Russian oligarchs who need to offshore tens of billions in stolen cash.) It’s also a problem to have such a confirmed reputation for stiffing your own workers and subcontractors, and not just because bullying is such a bad leadership stance: it’s a clear sign that your cash flow is poor, which means that you don’t have a profitable business model.But maybe Trump is just not a numbers guy. Great CEOs can have different styles. Sometimes, vision and inspiration are better keys to long-term success than just a laser focus on profits and growth. If you can attract and inspire entrepreneurs now, perhaps you can ensure prosperity down the road. Unfortunately, Trump seems to have a great deal of difficulty getting America’s top CEOs to accept his leadership on his own Business Advisory Council. Apparently, he does not like to share the spotlight.As a result, he doesn’t appear to attract and keep the best people or to provide strong guidance for business leaders. His advisors seem to be chosen because he saw them on TV, rather than because they have any substantial expertise. Their predictions have so far been just more Trumpian exaggeration, and not the reliable estimates of the economic future that business leaders need to make decisions on capital investment and hiring.Perhaps most importantly, his vision for the nation is historically bleak. “Keep the foreigners out,” “my haters are losers,” “everybody’s after me,” “bring back coal,” and “no collusion” aren’t very inspiring rallying cries for American workers and entrepreneurs. Trump is not leading on the economic issues that voters care about most, such as long-term financial stability (rather than more reckless debt); a 21st century data and transportation infrastructure, an affordable first-class healthcare system, prosperity in the face of climate change, ensuring worker security in the face of accelerating automation, and expanding free trade (rather than destroying alliances and building walls).One of Trump’s biggest campaign promises was to “totally fix” the “disastrous trade imbalance” that was “costing us trillions,” and that his predecessors couldn’t handle because they were too “weak and stupid.” (Most economists and CEOs disagree that trade deficits are a bad thing, but let’s go with Trump on this one.) In January 2018, Trump started his tariff war (which exactly 0 out of 60 economists surveyed by Reuters agreed would “benefit the U.S. economy”) that he promised would be “so quick and easy to win.” It wasn’t. Actually, it’s much worse than that. It pushed our 2018 trade deficit to at an all-time high. (Before Trump took office, the all-time worst monthly trade deficit was $76 billion in July 2008, at the depths of the Great Recession. Under Trump’s “tariff war,” that record has now been broken FIVE TIMES.) In July 2018, Trump had to pay farmers $12 billion dollars out of the U.S. Treasury to make up for lost revenue. It’s an impressive failure by all measures, which probably explains why he’s not tweeting about it much anymore.Trump also promised to be a “great dealmaker,” as his TV persona suggested. Trump is actually correct (in my opinion) that Chinese currency manipulation, protectionism, and intellectual piracy are real problems for the world markets, and America should be spearheading the fight against them. But a dealmaker needs a plan, a backbone, a steady hand, and the skills to maximize leverage. A smart deal maker would have kept us in the TPP (instead of dumping it because—umm, globalism?) so that the U.S. would have a much stronger leveraging position against China. Instead, Trump gave control of the Asian markets to China and started a weak, stupid, and needlessly expensive tariff war. It’s like quitting the game, then trying to “win” by throwing rocks at the players. Trump’s personal weaknesses in these areas are apparent to anyone who observes how he reacts to even ordinary challenges. Those who work closely with him have noted that he has an extraordinarily fragile ego and pathetically short temper and attention span. He doesn’t do his homework and therefore is ill-prepared in negotiations to apply appropriate leverage or respond nimbly to setbacks. He is far too susceptible to flattery, so it’s easy for our adversaries to take advantage of him. Since he seems to take pride in reneging not only on contracts he signs with his business partners, but also on treaties signed by his predecessors, it’s unsurprising that our adversaries and friends alike regard Trump’s “deals” with contempt, and regard America as a less trustworthy partner.Trump oversells and underperforms. He tends to spin his deals and policies as “huge victories for America,” but at closer inspection (for instance Korea, China, Iran, the ,Paris Accords, and the TPP) they seem to be poorly developed plans that do little or nothing to make America great.It appears Trump was lying when he said he had a beautiful plan to replace Obamacare, and the “Infrastructure Week” Trump has promised repeatedly over his first two years in office (including this week again), has turned into a cruel Internet joke-meme.Top business leaders understand the value of promotion and even “showmanship,” but only when it’s accompanied by a grand strategy and hard work to build the product. So far, Trump doesn’t seem to have any great economic product and no grand strategy. Many of us were willing to give him a chance, but at this point we shouldn’t be surprised that the Trump White House is following the dismal trajectories of Trump Airlines, Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage, and the Trump Taj Majal. All glitter, no substance, and way too much fraud. We can only hope that he doesn’t bankrupt America like he bankrupted those companies.The ultimate measure of any President who considers himself a “leader of the national brand” is the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. Ever since Trump took office, the U.S. has fallen below all of our chief competitors for the first time since George W. Bush left office. This means less influence, less investment, less credibility, and less power.If a CEO of a Fortune 500 company had this kind of record after 2 years, he would almost certainly be fired by the board. Trump’s inability to keep the US at the top of the Nation Brands Index hurts every company in America that depends on imports, exports, overseas sales, or foreign investment, which is almost all of them.Business leaders would also love for Trump to get the crushing national debt under control, because it puts severe limits on our ability to grow in the future and to deal effectively with any downturns or recessions. (Debt control, at least in theory, is the reason that so many business people are Republican in the first place.) Unfortunately, Trump is heading fast in the opposite direction. He’s racking up record debt, but building very little prosperity-creating infrastructure.In fact, the deficit problem is even worse for Trump than the graph above indicates. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that the 2019 deficit will exceed $900 billion, and will exceed $1 trillion for every year beyond 2022. It’s one thing to run budget deficits during a recession to counter the collapse in global demand (as in World War II, when U.S. deficit spending helped extract us from the Great Depression), but in times of relative prosperity, it is reckless and puts future prosperity at risk. The deficit-to-GDP ratio—perhaps the most important statistic to economic conservatives because it is the “deadbeat index,” that is, an index of how unable or unwilling a nation is to pay its debts—is projected to be 4.6% in 2009, the first time in history that it has been this high when we are not in the throes of a recession or its immediate aftermath. Any honest conservative would be alarmed if this were happening under the Democrats, and they should be at least as alarmed that it’s happening under Trump.Trump seems to be more interested in strong-arming the Fed to goose his short-term numbers than he is in planning for long-term prosperity. In order to safeguard economic stability, the Fed must stay free from political meddling. Trump’s nominations of Herman Cain and the Stephen Moore to the Fed show that either he prefers political cheerleaders to qualified economic leaders, or that the qualified candidates don’t want to work with his administration.This is the kind of destabilizing behavior that creates bubbles and crashes.Even though a majority of the CEOs I know are Republicans, many admit (reluctantly) that Obama did a much better job of promoting the American brand, strengthening trade relations with other nations, maintaining the stability of governance that businesses need to grow, building infrastructure, and, despite some policy disagreements (primarily about particular trade deals and domestic spending), leading us out of a deep recession with a steady hand, all while Trump was sniping at him from Trump Tower. By all relevant accounts, it doesn’t seem that Trump knows as much as he claims about tax policy, trade policy, budgeting, brand-building, or—most surprisingly—deal-making.Now that he’s in office, we can see how he operates, and we’re not impressed. Thankfully, most American corporations are not run “the Trump way.”