The first debate of the 2024 campaign between United States President Joe Biden and former US President Donald Trump once again focused attention on their respective economic records in office.
During Thursday’s face-off, the candidates clashed over the economy, with Biden taking credit for overseeing the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump claiming to have presided over “the greatest economy in the history of our country.”
Both Biden and Trump can point to strong performances in specific areas of the economy, but opinion polls have consistently shown that voters have more confidence in the Republican’s ability to deal with economic and cost-of-living issues.
In an ABC News/Ipsos poll released last month, 46% of respondents said they trust Trump on the economy, compared with 32% for Biden.
When it comes to inflation, Trump was favored over the Democrat by 44% to 30%.
Polls also show that the overwhelming majority of Americans see the economy as their top priority, meaning Biden’s re-election hopes will likely survive or die depending on his ability to sell a positive economic message.
Here are Trump and Biden’s economic records compared in four key areas.
Economic growth
Both the Biden and Trump administrations have overseen periods of robust growth.
Since Biden’s inauguration, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased 8.4% when adjusted for inflation.
Under Trump, GDP grew 6.8% – but that includes the drop in economic activity that occurred during the first year of the pandemic.
Excluding 2020, Biden comes out slightly ahead, with an annualized growth rate of about 2.9%, compared to just under 2.7% for Trump.
Inflation
Biden’s term was marked by much higher inflation compared to Trump’s – although many of the factors driving high prices, such as COVID-related supply chain disruptions, were beyond his control.
Since Biden took office, prices have risen more than 19%.
The average price of a gallon (3.8 liters) of gasoline increased from $2.33 to $3.76 between January 2021 and May of this year, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The cost of a loaf of bread rose from $1.55 to $1.97, while the price of a dozen eggs jumped from $1.47 to $2.70.
At a similar point in Trump’s presidency, prices only rose about 5%.
Although inflation has declined sharply since peaking at 9.1% in mid-2022, it remains stubbornly high.
The consumer price index last month stood at 3.3 percent, well above the U.S. Federal Reserve’s target of around 2 percent.
Jobs
Biden and Trump can claim to have presided over strong labor markets.
Unemployment fell to a 53-year low of 3.4 percent in January last year and has remained below 4 percent for all but one month since.
Excluding 2020, Trump also oversaw a period of low unemployment, with the unemployment rate hitting a low of 3.5% at the end of 2019.
Under Biden, the economy has created about 15.7 million jobs.
By contrast, Trump left office with about three million fewer jobs — although that number has been skewed by the pandemic.
However, even before the pandemic, job creation grew at a slower rate during the Trump administration than under Biden.
Remuneration
Although Biden and Trump have presided over solid wage growth on paper, American workers have seen their incomes decline in real terms under Biden due to inflation.
Under Trump, wage growth has remained above inflation, providing modest increases in workers’ earnings.
From March 2021, consumer prices began to diverge from profits, before the trend began to reverse in early 2023.
The result is that real average weekly wages fell 2.14 percent between the start of Biden’s term and the first quarter of 2024, according to a FactCheck.org analysis citing data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The positive news for American workers is that wages have started to grow again.
In May, real wages increased by 0.5% compared to the previous year, although they have not yet recovered to the levels at the beginning of Biden’s term.
“Although real wage growth has turned slightly positive in recent months, the level of real wages is still below where they were at the start of the rise in inflation that we began to see in the first quarter of 2021,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. said in an analysis on Thursday.
“Simply put, real wages have not fully kept up with the sudden rise in inflation.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
