The rookie president from the world of business and his advisers had a solid read on the economy. The contrast with his predecessor is striking. From 2010–2016 the Obama White House’s multiyear forecasts had overestimated annual economic growth by more than 70 percent.17
In the Trump era, growth remained solid until the 2020 coronavirus shutdowns by state and local governments. A key ingredient in that solid growth was that Trump was not embarrassed to support politically incorrect but valuable American industries. Over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 2019, Trump instructed the U.S. Agriculture Department to end a Bill Clinton ban on logging in a large swath of Alaska and then flew overseas and defended America’s oil and gas industry.
As for the Clinton logging ban on government-owned land, “it should never have been applied to our state, and it is harming our ability to develop a sustainable, year-round economy for the Southeast region, where less than one percent of the land is privately held,” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the Washington Post. “The timber industry has declined precipitously, and it is astonishing that the few remaining mills in our nation’s largest national forest have to constantly worry about running out of supply.”18
Not long afterward, Trump was in Biarritz, France, delivering a message that virtually no one in his audience wanted to hear. At a press conference with French president Emmanuel Macron following the G7 summit, President Trump described his thoughts on restricting traditional energy production. Here’s an excerpt from the White House’s official transcript:
Q: Mr. President, there was a significant talk at the summit about climate change. I know in the past you’ve harbored some skepticism of the science in climate change. What do you think the world should be doing about climate change? And do you still harbor that skepticism?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I feel that the United States has tremendous wealth. The wealth is under its feet. I’ve made that wealth come alive.…
We’re the number one energy producer in the world.… It’s tremendous wealth. And [liquefied natural gas] is being sought after all over Europe and all over the world, and we have more of it than anybody else. And I’m not going to lose that wealth. I’m not going to lose it on dreams, on windmills—which, frankly, aren’t working too well. I’m not going to lose it.…
I want clean air. I want clean water. I want a wealthy country. I want a spectacular country with jobs, with pensions, with so many things. And that’s what we’re getting. So I want to be very careful.19
Trump doesn’t apologize for the fact that prosperity for Americans is his priority. And he has a conviction that his war on Washington bureaucracy is critical to the success of Americans who work outside of Washington. The results have been striking. By the end of 2019 he was setting yet another new annual record for the fewest number of final rules published in the Federal Register since such records began being tallied in the 1970s. (That’s when agencies were required to disclose their activities in a standard format.) “It is a notable achievement that all three of the lowest-ever annual rule counts belong to Trump,” observes Wayne Crews.20
Results for American workers have also been striking. Wage gains were especially strong among the non-rich.
“Rank-and-File Workers Get Bigger Raises” was the headline on a December 27, 2019, story in the Wall Street Journal. Eric Morath and Jeffrey Sparshott reported, “Pay for the bottom 25% of wage earners rose 4.5% in November from a year earlier, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Wages for the top 25% of earners rose 2.9%. Similarly, the Atlanta Fed found wages for low-skilled workers have accelerated since early 2018, and last month matched the pace of high-skill workers for the first time since 2010.”21
Finally, after a long era of stagnation, wages for workers were rising as fast or faster than the pay of their bosses. The Journal reporters added: “Labor Department data paint a similar picture. Average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers in the private sector were up 3.7% in November from a year earlier—stronger than the 3.1% advance for all employees—implying managers and other nonproduction workers saw a 1.6% wage increase in the past year. The department doesn’t produce separate management pay figures.”22
Beyond wages, Morath and Sparshott also noted that the labor market had lately been especially good for the least-educated workers: “The labor market for skilled workers is always tighter, but it hasn’t improved as substantially in recent years. The unemployment rate for high school dropouts fell to 5.3% last month from 7.8% three years earlier. The rate for college grads is down to 2% from 2.4% in November 2016, and is slightly elevated relative to the late 1990s and early 2000s.”23
A little more than a month later, and one day before his vindication in the Senate impeachment trial, President Trump gave his State of the Union address. Some people may remember the night for Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s theatrical shredding of the speech text the president had just presented to her. But she might have reflected on some of its contents. “From the instant I took office, I moved rapidly to revive the United States economy—slashing a record number of job-killing regulations…,” said Trump. “Our agenda is relentlessly pro-worker, pro-family, pro-growth, and, most of all, pro-American.… We are advancing with unbridled optimism and lifting high our citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed.…”24
Assessing the results of the Trump deregulation effort today, a bank CEO tells us that his industry hasn’t seen any yet but adds that “there has been reform in a lot
