Economic Optimism Has Collapsed Under Build-Back-Better-Biden: TIPP Poll
Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech about the economy, saying that “as I go across the country, our economy has gone from being on the mend to on the move.” What country is Biden talking about, exactly? Because here in the U.S., the economy went from booming under President Donald Trump to disaster under Biden.
The latest evidence of Biden’s detachment from reality comes from the IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, which plunged 9.5% in May, dropping down to 41.2 (anything under 50 signals pessimism).
That puts it below the Index’s worst reading during the height of the COVID pandemic, when it bottomed out at 44 in July 2020. By the time Biden took office, it had rebounded and was back above 50, where the Index had been during the entirety of the Trump administration.
The IBD/TIPP Financial Stress Index, meanwhile, has shot up to 69.3 (anything above 50 indicates high stress), roughly where it was during the 2008 financial crisis. It has climbed 22% on Biden’s watch.
For Biden to say the economy “is on the move” is truly delirious. GDP was down 1.4% in the first quarter, and nearly half of adults think we are already in a recession, the IBD/TIPP poll found.
Biden also bragged about how the economy created “8.3 million jobs in my first 15 months in office – a record.”
Big deal.
In the last nine months of the Trump administration, the economy added 12.5 million jobs – recovering more than half of those lost during the pointless COVID lockdowns. In other words, the jobs recovery slowed dramatically under Build-Back-Better Biden and we’re still a million jobs shy of the pre-COVID peak.
Biden also likes to boast about wage growth, without pointing out that inflation has climbed faster than wages, leaving workers worse off – real wages are down 3% since he took office. This, too, is a dramatic turnaround from the Trump years, when real wages climbed 10%.
The IBD/TIPP Poll found that only 18% of the adults surveyed say their earnings have kept pace with inflation.
Another favorite Biden line is how “The stock market has gone up exponentially since I’ve been president.” That was supposed to prove that he was a capitalist in good standing.
But notice how you don’t hear Biden talk about the stock market anymore. That’s because it’s swooning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,200 points Wednesday, its biggest decline since pandemic panic set in in 2020. Overall, the market has lost almost all the ground it gained after he took office. Over the same stretch in Trump’s first term, the Dow climbed 23%.
In his remarks last week, Biden said “when you look at the economy today, it’s clear that we’ve made enormous strides.”
He’s right about that. Unfortunately, those enormous strides have all been in the wrong direction.
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