Joe Biden is the best President that United States of America has had in many decades; the new President, Donald Trump, has inherited a great economy, according to Matt Winkler, Cofounder and former (and first) Editor-in-Chief of Bloomberg News.
Speaking at the Asian College of Journalism here on Tuesday ‘Trump and the World Economy’, Winkler put up a slide that ranked No.1 among US presidents from Jimmy Carter (1976-1980), on various counts such as ‘manufacturing jobs’, ‘surplus/deficit as a share of GDP’, ‘household debt to disposable income’ and ‘bond market performance relative to the world’. This was as per Bloomberg’s findings.
Strong economy
Winkler took 15 such counts and showed that Biden ranked either No.1 or No.2 in eight of them’ No.4 in four and No.5 in industrial production and No. 8 in US ‘bond market performance’. He said that Trump was inheriting a strong economy, as he did in 2016, when he took over from President Obama.
Another of his charts said that it was during Biden’s four years that the US saw the “biggest increase in manufacturing jobs in 50 years”, ‘best debt performance relative to world bond market’ and ‘biggest decline in budget deficit to GDP ratio’. (Data show a mixed trend in manufacturing jobs, rising and falling, during Biden years, just as in the case of Trump’s first presidency.)
Asked why ‘inflation’ and ‘national debt to GDP’ numbers were missing from his chart, Winkler said that ‘inflation’ was under the control of the Federal Reserve; however, under Biden, the US saw the fastest fall in inflation. (According to US Inflation Calculator, the inflation was 1.2 per cent in November 2020, when Biden was elected president; it went up to 9.1 per cent in June 2022 before falling to 2.9 per cent in December 2024.) Winkler did not respond to the question on US debt.
Wars in Ukraine and West Asia
A student wanted to know if there was a connection between the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and the growth in manufacturing jobs in the US —implying that the US was making business out of weapons supply. Winkler said that it was under Biden that the US was never at any war with any country. Answering a question on the US withdrawing from Afghanistan, leaving a lot of military hardware in the hands of the Taliban, Wilken agreed that the US foreign policy was not flawless.
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