Billionaire investor and television personality Mark Cuban defended the state of the economy under President Biden and criticized former President Trump on Friday, arguing that Trump squandered the strong economy he received from former President Obama.
After highlighting a chart on social media platform X showing 12 consecutive months of positive real wage growth in the US, Cuban responded to a user who seemed unimpressed with the numbers.
“Imagine looking at this chart and not realizing that your guy underperformed the Obama economy he inherited and revealed all the wage growth trends in place when he took office,” Cuban said of the former president.
The chart showed the annual change in real average hourly earnings since before 2010, appearing to cover much of the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations.
The user argued that Cuban was ignoring the absence of any negative wage growth under Trump.
“You can’t boast about Biden’s ‘wage growth’ because the line is positive and then ignore the lack of negative wage growth under the Trump administration,” they said.
Before 12 consecutive months of positive real wage growth, meaning wages outpaced inflation, Biden presided over 25 consecutive months of negative real wage growth, according to the chart.
The “Shark Tank” star responded, arguing that Obama and Biden inherited economic crises and were able to reverse negative wage growth while Trump presided over declining wage growth.
“I just showed you the graph. No comment,” Cuban said. “The facts are that Obama and Biden inherited the Great Recession and Covid, both generational issues, and made the economy positive over time.”
“The guy among them inherited a booming economy and, in terms of wage growth, slowed it down,” he added. “Is that what the numbers tell you?”
Biden has struggled to change Americans’ largely negative views on the economy as he prepares to face Trump once again in November.
Nearly three in five Americans believe the U.S. is in a recession, even though experts say there hasn’t been a recession since 2020, according to a Harris Poll survey released earlier this week.
Although inflation rose rapidly in 2021 and 2022, reaching a 40-year high of 9.1%, it has declined significantly since then. In April, consumer prices rose just 3.4% compared to the previous year.
Despite repeated interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve to contain inflation, the labor market has also remained surprisingly strong, repeatedly frustrating previous expectations, while unemployment has remained below 4% for the longest period in 50 years. .
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
