No, Trump did not have a particularly strong economic record even before the pandemic.

Economic performance under Trump was, in lots of ways, a little worse than under Obama.

A THREAD.

Let's start with jobs. More jobs were added from 2013-2016 than from 2016-2019.

GDP

Overall economic growth increased only a tiny tiny bit under President Trump. Hard to see a massive boom here.

How about income?

By most measures, income growth actually declined for everyday people under President Trump (even before COVID).

Here's private wages, disposable income, average hourly earnings, and median family income.

All down or flat.

Trump likes to brag about the Black unemployment rate (ignoring that it's now 12 percent). But actually, the unemployment rate for Black workers declined more and faster in the last three years of Barack Obama than in the first three years of Donald Trump.

More subjective measures of wellbeing and economic precariousness also show the same thing: a marked slowdown in the pace of improvement. Here are a couple of relevant questions from the Fed's report on economic wellbeing.

There is one area of the economy that definitely did get a boost under President Trump: the corporate sector.

Corporate profits increased and the stock market (Trump's favorite) did grow faster.

Stepping back:

There's just not much evidence that "Trump's economy" was better in any real ways than the economy he inherited. It had most of the same strengths and weaknesses.

And that's before the pandemic. And that's before evaluating his specific policies.

All of this, and more, in this post here: https://michaelslinden.medium.com/evaluating-donald-trumps-economic-record-23a75addfd05