The Trump Depression Has Officially Killed the Obama Recovery
Photo courtesy of eastoregonian.com
Three years before the Trump depression, at his inauguration January 2017, Donald Trump stated:
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”
It is now May 2020 and we have:
- 33 million unemployment claims
- 20.5 million unemployed
- 14.7% overall unemployment
- 18.9% Hispanic unemployment rate
- 16.7% Black unemployment
- 14.5% Asian unemployment
- 14.2% White unemployment
- 1.2 million coronavirus cases
- 76,000 coronavirus deaths
- 25 trillion in debt
In the last two months of his presidency, Obama created 230,000 and 185,000 jobs respectively. Conversely, in the last two months, President Trump has lost 870,000 and 20.5 million jobs.
What Blacks Had To Lose
The Trump pitch to black voters has boiled down to blacks have nothing to lose because we are at the bottom and it could not get worse for us. The Trump depression has shown us that it could get a lot worse.
The official Black unemployment rate soared to 16.7% in April, the highest number since the Great Recession. The actual number is, no doubt, much higher. In January 2010 (Obama’s first budget) it was 16.5%. In January 2017 (when Trump took over for Obama) it was 7.5%. In March 2020, it was 6.7%. April 2020? 16.7%.
The Trump Depression Is Probably Just Beginning
Before the coronavirus pandemic is finally under control, the U.S. economy will undergo its greatest shock since October 1929, when a stock-market crash initiated a Great Depression that lasted a decade. The unemployment rate has reached 15 percent and could well drift up into the 20s very soon after
During the Great Depression, unemployment peaked at 24.9 percent, in 1933. However, that came four years after the stock market crashed in 1929, meaning it was a much more gradual rise. In February of this year, the unemployment rate was just 3.5 percent.
This kind of “carnage” never happened under Obama who was fighting both Ebola and H1N1. Under Trump, this is what winning looks like. Who’s tired of it yet?
