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This piece is incredibly credulous about Trump's approach to the economy and in accepting the myth that, prior to Trump, the GOP embraced "sacred verities about government debt." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/business/economy/trump-economy-manufacturing.html?smid=tw-share
First, the record over the last forty years makes it patently obviously that the GOP only embraces these "sacred verities" when a Democrat holds the presidency. /2
It quotes an AIE economist saying that Trump has "completely moved the Republican Party away from reducing Social Security and Medicare spending" but not Trump's own claim that he would consider cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his second term./3 https://www.vox.com/2020/3/6/21168038/trump-on-entitlements-fox-news-town-hall
It says Trump has been a "relentless cheerleader" for manufacturing and that the "pace of hiring in the sector sped up considerably in 2018 before stalling out last year." The numbers, never cited in this piece, show his record is no better than Obama's./4 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/16/trump-manufacturing-jobs-record-415588
And this misleading sentence could have come out of Trump campaign ad: "In perhaps the greatest reversal of fortune of the Trump presidency, a microscopically tiny virus upended the outsize economic legacy that Mr. Trump had planned to run on for re-election." Outsize legacy?/5
There were all kinds of weaknesses in the economy even before the pandemic. A Barron's article in July had the headline, "The Pre-Coronavirus Economy Wasn’t All That Strong." And this EPI report has more details. /6 https://www.epi.org/blog/the-trump-administration-was-ruining-the-pre-covid-19-19-economy-too-just-more-slowly/
In describing Trump's "reputation as a savvy businessman and hard-nosed negotiator," the author might have tested this reputation against reality. As @JohnCassidy pointed out, the record shows him in fact to have been a historically bad business person./7 https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/as-a-businessman-trump-was-the-biggest-loser-of-all
And here's another deceptive sentence meant to show that he was won "over both hard-core capitalists and the working class": "There would be large tax breaks and deregulation for business owners and investors, and trade protection and aid for manufacturers, miners and farmers."/8
What's deceptive about that sentence is that other than miners, of whom there are 50,000, in the US--in comparison Whole Foods employs 91,000--none of the other groups listed represent the "working class," for whom Trump has done virtually nothing./9
There are too many examples to name, but just to take one: his Department of Labor's ruling on overtime pay was "a bitter defeat for the 2.8 million...who would’ve also gotten overtime under the original rule proposed by the Obama administration."/10 https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/24/20835653/trump-overtime-pay-rule-explained
And this is quite the understatement that fails to describe the nature of the boondoggle:" he often took credit for manufacturing jobs at companies like General Motors and Foxconn that later disappeared or never materialized."/11 https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718234407/president-trumps-foxconn-promise-so-far-unfulfilled
And this terrible sentence is doubly wrong: "Even voters who don’t particularly like Mr. Trump credit him with re-energizing the U.S. economy." First, HE DID NOT RE-ENERGIZE THE U.S. ECONOMY, and, second, the person quoted to back up this claim is a Trump voter!/12
And here's the shocker: Mr. Dealtrey who "considered the possibility of supporting a moderate Democrat like Mr. Biden or Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota...plans to once again support the president." Knock me over with a feather./13
Lastly, for a piece that claims to consider Trump's "economic legacy," it vastly understates the degree to which, in spite of his faux populist rhetoric, he has governed as a traditional conservative Republican./14
His signature legislative achievement is a tax cut slanted heavily to the very rich and to corporations. He is still trying to take away health care from millions of struggling Americans. He has pushed deregulation of corporations. And he has appointed pro-corporate judges./15
"Despite dismal economic news," it says, "many voters still reward him for" reframing the economic conversation. But his closing pitch is that his opponents will raise taxes, impose regulation, and are "socialists." How unorthodox for a GOP candidate is any of this, really? /16
