The apocalypse that never happened

| 9:00 pm EST February 1, 2024
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When Donald Trump was running for President of the United States in 2016, he liked to say that under his envisioned leadership, America would be winning—so much so that we would somehow all be “sick and tired of winning.” Not surprisingly, the winning resumed after Trump left office, and it has indeed become a hallmark of the Biden administration.

Great economic news abounds these days, reflecting the fact that the United States is recovering in the post-pandemic era more steadily and robustly than many experts had feared. For example, when I visited Axios.com today, the top headline read, “U.S. winning world economic war.”

These triumphant words refer to the new IMF World Economic Outlook that ranks the United States as the leader among G7 economies. In 2023, the U.S. GDP grew 2.5%, significantly better than Japan, which came in second. The United States also leads other nations in growth projections for 2024, with 2.1%, far ahead of second-place Canada, which is forecast at 1.4%.

As Axios notes, “All countries were dealing with the same problems of post-pandemic inflation and high interest rates,” but the United States succeeded in “achiev[ing] solid growth in spite of those headwinds.” Among the factors credited toward the winning is the Biden administration’s legislative push that led to substantial infrastructure investments, which are paying off.

The very next Axios headline, “The retail apocalypse never happened,” continued this theme, further connecting the concept of winning with the Biden administration. Despite “COVID-era doomsday predictions,” the nationwide vacancy rate for shopping centers has fallen to 5.3%—the lowest level since global commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield began tracking this figure in 2007. According to Cushman’s report, this market is “back for good.”

While the threat of a second Trump term is real, Donald Trump is not exactly winning. Sorry, but a jury verdict imposing tens of millions of dollars in punitive damages for over-the-top defamation stemming from rape allegations is not a winner. Neither is Trump’s endless spewing of angry, self-centered, and highly confused nonsense every day. The fact is that America is winning under Biden—and we’ll never get “sick and tired” of it.