Mr. Biden was asked to respond to the economic pain Americans are feeling because of inflation, from the grocery store to the housing market. The president figuratively pointed his finger straight at Trump.
“We’ve got to take a look at what I was left with when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me,” the president said, with a noticeably raspy voice. “We had an economy that was in freefall. The pandemic was so badly handled. … What we had to try to do was put things back together again, and that’s exactly what we began to do.”
The president pointed to various moves his administration has made to lower prices for Americans, including curbing insulin costs to closer to $15 than $400.
Trump insisted the U.S. “had the greatest economy in the history of our country” when he was president, and pointed the finger back at Mr. Biden.
“Inflation is killing our country, it is absolutely killing us,” Trump said.
Trump’s claim that during his presidency the U.S. had the “greatest economy in the history of the country” is false by many of the common metrics used to judge economic performance. The claim struggles when looking at GDP. Excluding the 2020 pandemic, growth after inflation under Trump averaged 2.67%, according to figures from the World Bank. This is far from the GDP growth under Democratic President Bill Clinton, of 4%, according to World Bank data. Including the time after COVID spread, that average drops to 1.45%.
Trump also claimed, falsely, that the only jobs Mr. Biden created were for “illegal immigrants,” and “bounce back” jobs in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump claimed, falsely, that the only jobs Mr. Biden created were for “illegal immigrants,” and “bounce back” jobs in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump also defended his proposal to impose a 10% tariff on all foreign products entering the U.S.
“It’s not going to drive them higher,” Trump insisted, contradicting the view of many economic experts. “It’s just going to cost countries that have been ripping us off for years like China and many others, in all fairness to China.”
