Trump says the economy ‘went to hell’ under Biden. The opposite is true

Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”

But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.

When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.

Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.

Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president. Under Trump, job growth was far worse – during his first four-year term, the nation lost 2.7m jobs overall, making Trump’s presidency the first since Herbert Hoover’s during which the nation suffered a net loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for this, but even during Trump’s first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, job growth was only half as fast as it was under Biden.

Recently, Trump has repeatedly boasted how his tariffs will bring back manufacturing. Trump fails to note, however, that Biden had considerable success in bringing bring back manufacturing and factory jobs. Under most recent presidents, the US lost manufacturing jobs, but under Biden, the nation gained an impressive 750,000 factory jobs, the most under any president since the 1970s. A big reason for this was that as a result of Biden’s green jobs legislation and the Chips Act to boost semiconductor production, manufacturing investment boomed, more than doubling during Biden’s four years in office.

Biden took considerable pride about how the economy performed under him, even though he failed to persuade most Americans that the it was doing well. In December, Biden wrote: “Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation [since he took office], and unions have won wage increases from 25% to 60% in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3% per year on average the last four years – faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high.”

Many economists vigorously disagree with Trump’s claim that he inherited a poor economy. Paul Krugman wrote that in January, when Biden left office, the US had what was “very close to a Goldilocks economy, in which everything is more or less just right”. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, had even more glowing words. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” he said. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic.”

Trump pays attention to one measure of the economy above all others: how the stock market is doing. During Biden’s four years, Wall Street did very well. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose by 39% and the S&P 500 soared by 55.7%, including a 28% jump during 2024. In contrast, the stock market is down overall since Trump took office as investors have grown alarmed about the president’s tariff war against the US’s trading partners.

To be sure, there were some serious economic problems under Biden. Housing affordability was a major problem, and inflation rose to uncomfortable levels. The spike in prices was caused largely by two factors: the pandemic, which gave rise to worldwide supply chain problems, and Putin’s war in Ukraine, which pushed up food and fuel prices. But Trump, in denouncing Biden on inflation, ignores all that.

As Trump’s trade war spooks the markets and makes nervous CEOs rethink their investment plans, many economists are saying it’s more and more likely the US will stumble into recession this year.

Trump has a long history of refusing to accept blame for mistakes and problems, and by repeatedly claiming he inherited a horrible economy, he seems to be laying the groundwork to blame Biden if the country slides into a painful recession.