U.S. President Donald Trump with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the White House Oval Office on February 21, 2025 (The White House/Wikimedia Commons)
During his speeches, President Donald Trump often claims that he inherited a broken economy from former President Joe Biden and is now overseeing an era of renewed prosperity. But Biden's defenders, including liberal economist and former New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, are quick to counter that the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during his years in the White House.
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, unemployment was under 4 percent during much of Biden's presidency. But frustration over inflation worked to Trump's advantage in the 2024 election, giving him a narrow popular-vote victory of roughly 1.5 percent over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
In an opinion column published on New Year's Day 2026, Bloomberg News' Robert Burgess argues that the U.S. stock market didn't perform as well as Trump claims in 2025.
"It's the time of year when investors peek at their accounts to see whether it will be champagne and caviar to celebrate the holidays or beer and chips," Burgess explains. "The MSCI USA Index's 16.3 percent gain would suggest the former is on the menu, and yet, the latter might be more appropriate. Yes, stock gains have comfortably exceeded the long-term average for a third straight year. But the result hardly ratifies President Donald Trump's oft repeated assertion that the U.S. is the world’s 'hottest' country."
Burgess adds, "Stacked up against the rest of the world, America's stock market looks like an also-ran: The MSCI USA's advance pales next to the 29.2 percent surge in the MSCI All Country World Index excluding America."
The Bloomberg News journalist stresses that it's important to compare stock performances in the U.S. to other countries.
"To understand just how poor this performance was," Burgess notes, "consider that nothing of this magnitude has happened since 2009, when the global economy began to recover from the financial crisis. Stocks are no anomaly; U.S. bonds and the dollar are relative losers as well. The best explanation for why investors discounted U.S. assets so soon after The Economist dubbed the American economy 'the envy of the world' can be found in the latest OECD forecasts."
Burgess continues, "Coming into 2025, the Paris-based organization predicted the U.S economy would grow 2.4 percent for the year, trouncing the rest of the developed world's 1.9 percent. Now, the OECD predicts a less optimistic 2 percent. It sees a further downshift in 2026, to 1.7 percent, matching the OECD overall."
Robert Burgess' full column for Bloomberg News is available at this link (subscription required).
