Then-President Donald Trump gestures toward Democratic rival Joe Biden during their debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Oct. 22, 2020.
Then-President Donald Trump gestures toward Democratic rival Joe Biden during their debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Oct. 22, 2020. (Jim Watson – AFP / Getty Images)
One might say a jewel in the crown of Donald Trump’s presidency was the astounding rise of the stock market.
Early in his tenure, economists such as Stephen Moore were predicting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average could reach 30,000 — and it did.
The day after the former New York businessman was elected to the White House, the market leaped more than 250 points to approximately 18,600, and it stayed pretty much on an upward trajectory thereafter.
On the day Trump left office — Jan. 20, 2021 — the market closed at approximately 30,900, or about 40 percent higher than it was on Election Day 2016.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Under President Joe Biden, the market stood at about 31,200 on Thursday, so up around 300 points, or 1 percent. Not so good.
To be fair, it had reached a high close of about 36,500 early this year before the sell-off began.
Over the past month, however, the Dow has plunged more than 11 percent, dropping from around 35,160 on April 20 to 31,250 early Friday.
When Trump faced off against candidate Biden in their second presidential debate on Oct. 22, 2020, he predicted the stock market would crash if the Democrat were elected.
“The stock market will boom if I’m elected. If he’s elected, the stock market will crash. The biggest analysts are saying that,” the 45th president asserted.
Trump added that 401(k) retirement accounts were through the roof on his watch.
Well, the New York real estate mogul was about a year off in his timing, if he was predicting right after Biden got elected the market would crash, but not in the ultimate place the liberal politician’s policies would take the country.
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Comparing apples for apples, stocks performed much worse during Biden’s first year in office than Trump’s.
The Dow Jones gained 31 percent with the Donald at the helm in 2017, which was the best first year since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt in the depths of the Great Depression, CNBC reported.
During Biden’s first year in the White House, the market went up just 11 percent.
Mind you, that was with the nation’s economy getting fully back in swing after the COVID-19 lockdowns and with the Federal Reserve pumping hundreds of billions of easy money.
In other words, the wind was at Biden’s back.
He did his best to drop his sails, however, just a few short months into office.
The Democrats passed and Biden signed into law the hyperinflationary $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021.
Biden followed that doozy up by clamping down on domestic oil production, which helped to drive gas prices to all-time highs.
And now we have stagflation: a stagnant economy (negative gross domestic product growth in the first quarter) and high inflation rates not seen since the early 1980s.
Some of Biden’s worst economic instincts — raising taxes and adding new environmental regulations, embodied in the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better legislation — were blocked thanks to moderate Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, or the country would be in a far worse place.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal editorial board offered the best advice to Biden and his economic team.
It was akin to that Jerry Seinfeld gave George Costanza back in the day: Whatever instincts they have about how to best run an economy, do the opposite.
