During his 2025 State of the Union address, President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden Administration created major economic problems for the United States. And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claims that economically, former President Joe Biden "left (Trump) a pile of poop."
But in fact, the U.S. enjoyed record-low unemployment rates and robust job creation during much of Biden's presidency. The national unemployment rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was only 4.1 percent in December 2024 (Biden's last full month in office). In January 2023, U.S. unemployment was a mere 3.4 percent — the lowest since May 1969, CNBC reported.
In a biting column published on March 11, MSNBC's Paul Waldman argues that Trump and his allies are pointing the finger at a former president while pushing bad economic policies that could lead to a painful "collapse."
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"While Trump and his allies alternately deflect blame and insist that everything will be fine," Waldman warns, "there's one thing they will never admit: Almost everything the (Trump) Administration and congressional Republicans are doing to the economy is making a collapse more likely. They seem to know it, but either they don't care or they're hoping that the damage will be limited while they go about gutting the federal government."
Waldman continues, "For the last 35 years, over six presidencies, the U.S. economy has followed a cycle: A Republican president presides over a recession, a Democratic president gets elected and cleans up the mess; then, a Republican gets elected and screws everything up all over again. It was a good bet the cycle would continue with the second Trump presidency; the only surprise is that it’s happening so quickly."
The Trump policies that risk creating a deep recession, according to Waldman, range from steep new tariffs to draconian cuts to the federal workforce.
"Trump's constant toggling on tariffs has left businesses uncertain about whether to invest and consumers nervous about renewed inflation, since tariffs are essentially a sales tax on imported goods," Waldman observes. "If they go into force in full, the effects could be widespread, including pushing up the price of houses and cars. Probably in anticipation, consumer confidence is down, and consumer spending recently dropped for the first time in almost two years. The stock market has been tumbling, with Monday, (March 10) the worst day on Wall Street this year."
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Waldman stresses that mass layoffs of federal workers will inevitably hurt the private sector in a variety of ways.
"The (Trump) Administration's planned layoffs of hundreds of thousands of government workers are in and of themselves a substantial hit to the economy," Waldman warns. "What hasn't gotten as much attention is the likely effects of Musk's canceling federal contracts and programs willy-nilly. Most Americans probably don't realize that while there are about 3 million federal employees, including postal workers, even more private-sector jobs depend on federal contracts and grants. They include everything from airplane machinists to medical researchers to child care specialists to food service workers."
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Paul Waldman's full MSNBC column is available at this link.