Good grief. What real economic change has he made?
From MSNBC.
At a time when most economists had been using the term "full employment" to describe the economy, 3.9 million more Americans have joined the ranks of the working during the Trump term. During the same period under former President Barack Obama, employment had fallen by 2.6 million. The economy in total, while still not in breakout mode, has grown by $1.4 trillion through the second quarter under Trump; the same time period for Obama saw a gain of just $481 billion, or a third of Trump's total.
Businesses are investing, consumers are spending and innovation is on the rise as well.
Trump pledged that he would pare down regulations that were choking business activity. While the actual moves toward deregulation haven't been quite as ambitious as planned, the approach has won him converts in the business community.
The most recent reading from the National Federation of Independent Business was the second highest in history dating back 45 years. Small business owners reported aggressive hiring plans, the only obstacle to which has been a dearth of labor supply. The end of June saw 6.7 million job openings and just 6.6 million Americans classified as unemployed, an unprecedented imbalance.
"Expansion continues to be a priority for small businesses who show no signs of slowing as they anticipate more sales and better business conditions." NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement.
How he did it
Trump's economic program was very simple: an attack on taxes and regulations with an extra dose of spending on infrastructure and the military that would create a supply shock to a moribund economy.
On the tax side, the White House pushed through a massive $1.5 trillion reform plan that sliced the highest-in-the-world corporate tax from 35 percent to 21 percent and lowered rates for millions of taxpayers, though the cuts for individuals will expire in 2025.
On deregulation, Trump ordered that rules be pared back or eliminated across the board. During his time in office, Congress has cut back on the
Dodd-Frank banking reforms, particularly in areas affecting regional and community institutions, rolled back a multitude of environmental protections that he said were killing jobs and took a hatchet to dozens of other rules. (The left-leaning Brookings Institution think tank has a rolling deregulation
tracker that can be viewed here.)
During the first year of his administration, "significant regulatory activity" had declined 74 percent from where it was in the same period of the Obama administration, according to data collected by Bridget Dooling, research professor at GW's Regulatory Studies Center.
The Dodd-Frank rollbacks have been particularly helpful to community banks, whose share prices collectively are up more than 25 percent over the past year. Small-cap stocks in general have strongly outperformed the broader market, gaining 23 percent over the past 12 months at a time when the S&P 500 is up 17 percent.
The Federal Register, where business rules are stored and thus serves as a proxy for regulatory activity, was 19.2 percent smaller from Inauguration Day until Aug. 16 under Trump than during the same period for Obama.
"You can think of that as turning off the spigot of new regulations," Dooling said in an interview. She said more aggressive movement appears to be on the way.
Dooling said recent regulatory changes from the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Education and Labor will advance deregulation in an even "more meaningful way."
In addition to expected deregulation benefits, there's also anticipation that the true benefits of tax cuts have yet to kick in.
Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, recently told CNBC that he attributes the bulk of new economic growth to deregulation rather than the tax cuts, whose benefits he expects to come later.
