Donald Trump silent as jobs report reveals he’s severely screwed up the Obama economy
During his first several months in office, Donald Trump loved bragging about positive economic indicators, seemingly without realizing that he was merely giving credit to President Obama’s economic policies. But this morning Trump has failed to tweet anything at all. It’s no wonder: the latest jobs report says that Trump has finally found a way to severely screw up the roaring Obama economy.
The new jobs report says that the U.S. economy lost jobs in September, for the first time in seven years. For that matter it lost a whopping 33,000 jobs. This is in contrast to the often 200,000 per month job growth under the Obama economy (link). Some economists have already tried to spin this as being related to the impact of hurricanes – but it’s too large of a dropoff to be blamed on localized events. There are broader reasons why Trump’s policies are having a negative impact on job growth.
Trump’s Muslim travel ban and open hostility toward foreign nationals isn’t good for the international tourism industry in the United States. Trump’s hostile attitude toward Mexican immigrants is bad for agriculture and other industries. It was inevitable that these kinds of economically stupid decisions were going to negatively impact job growth. This is also not the first time job growth has dropped under Trump; it’s merely the most severe. So now all eyes are on Wall Street to see how this jobs report translates to the stock market.
The general pattern for a declining economy is that job growth drops off but the stock market keeps growing for a bit, as investors continue to place hope in an economic bounceback. If jobs drop off again next month, the stock market will take a major hit, and that’s the point when the average Joe will conclude that the economy is in trouble. Then again, with jobs having dropped for the first time since 2010, this alone may be big enough news to penetrate the public consciousness.
