TRUMP CLAIM

REALITY

“The great American comeback has begun.”

• Economists warned the May jobs numbers did not mean we were safely on the road to recovery yet.

• Washington Center For Equitable Growth’s Kate Bahn: “Even it is unexpected we still have really high unemployment rate. We’re certainly not in a recovery yet … We’re starting to see the spillover effects of the recession — broader more evenly distributed impacts.”

• California Economic Forecast’s Mark Schniepp: “It’s going to be a much more long and arduous recovery of the labor markets.”

“A record 2.5 million new jobs in May and we’re just getting started.”

• While some jobs were added in May, the U.S. has still lost nearly 20 million jobs since March and the unemployment rate remains at levels unseen since the Great Depression.

• Economists warned that further  employment recovery could be slower.

• Evercore ISI’s Ernie Tedeschi: “As good and surprising as this report was, this may just be the low-hanging fruit. These may have been the easiest workers to bring back.”

• Economic growth slowed last year and is no better than the average from the past decade.

• CNBC: “The U.S. economy grew 2.1% in the fourth quarter, closing out a year in which gross domestic product decelerated to its slowest pace in three years amid a continuing drag in business investment.”

“Before the pandemic, President Trump made our economy the envy of the world. Now he’s doing it again.”
(B-roll of workers at Shell factory in Pennsylvania)

• Job growth slowed in Trump’s first three years and he failed to boost economic growth beyond what was accomplished in the Obama-Biden administration.

• Reuters: “The U.S. economy has produced an average of 193,000 new jobs per month, over the past three years. But even with the benefit of Trump’s 2017 massive corporate tax rate cut, that is 14% less than the 224,000 jobs per month created during the last three years of Barack Obama’s administration”

• CNN: “On both a quarterly and annual basis, the Trump Economy has not yet exceeded the best quarters of the Obama years.”

• The Beaver County Shell workers featured cheering in Trump’s campaign ad were forced to attend if they did not want to forego pay.

• The Shell factory Trump’s ad features was announced in 2012 under the Obama-Biden administration.

“Bringing devastating industries back”
(with B-roll of a plane)

• The Trump administration helped bail out private jet companies owned by Trump donors.

• The Trump administration has been slow to spend congressionally appropriated funds to help specific industries.

• Trump’s Treasury Department has spent very little of the $500 billion fund created by Congress in March to help industries.

“Getting direct cash relief to families.”

• The Trump administration initially opposed large scale coronavirus relief and delayed preparing to mitigate the economic impact.

• KUDLOW: “‘We are in the camp that wants timely and targeted micro-measures,’ Kudlow told Bloomberg Television Friday. He rejected initiatives that are ‘large, sweeping, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that don’t affect incentives and don’t affect growth in any permanent way,’ referring to such plans as ‘budget busters.’”

• The Trump administration opposed a second round of direct checks and extending enhanced unemployment benefits.

• KUDLOW: “Color me skeptical another round. I mean, in general, the point here is another $3 trillion package just seems off-target to me.”

• KUDLOW: “We’re not going to go to the $600 [enhanced unemployment benefits]. That’s a disincentive to work, the plus up, that doesn’t work, but we’ll have a better idea.”