Trump’s Lame Blame Game
Tariffs are hurting China as designed, but that doesn’t mean the domestic cost is Joe Biden’s fault.
Donald Trump often behaves like a Democrat. He was one for most of his adult life, after all. It’s part of why they hate him so much.
His blame-shifting after yesterday’s dismal GDP and Q1 stock market report is a prime example of such behavior.
“We inherited a financial crisis unlike any that we’ve seen in our time,” Barack Obama complained in June 2009, five months after taking office. He won the 2008 election by blaming George W. Bush for everything anyone didn’t like about the economy. He repeated the feat in 2012, running not so much against Mitt Romney as against Bush. “We spent the last three and a half years cleaning up after that mess,” he said in April 2012.
Average annual GDP growth was 2.3% under Obama. It was 2.4% under Bush. During Donald Trump’s first three years, it was 2.5%. A global pandemic disrupted that in his fourth year, allowing Obama’s sidekick Joe Biden to follow his example, even though a massive recovery had begun in Q3 and Q4 of 2020.
“When I took office,” Biden said in February 2021, “I inherited an economy in crisis, with millions out of work and small businesses shuttered because of the previous administration’s failure to act decisively on COVID-19.” He repeated similar lines often that year, using the blame as an excuse to drop an inflation bomb on the nation.
Two years later, he was at it again. “Do I take any blame for inflation? No. Because it was already there when I got here, man.” False. Inflation didn’t rise until April 2021.
Because Trump acts like a Democrat sometimes, it wasn’t surprising in the least that he lamely blamed his predecessor for the fact that GDP fell 0.3% during his first quarter as president. As he posted on Truth Social:
This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!
Just in case Q2 is also bad, he later added, “You could even say next quarter is sort of Biden.”
That’s funny because in January 2024, when Biden was actually president (at least nominally), Trump posted this on Truth Social:
THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLLS AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN, AND THAT WILL DRIVE THE MARKET UP.
In fact, he spent all of 2024 claiming credit for the surging stock market. The Dow Jones was up almost 13% for the year, while the S&P 500 grew by a red-hot 19.6%. Why, then, when the market has reacted negatively to his shock and awe tariff strategy, is it suddenly the former president’s fault?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve written many times giving Trump some benefit of the doubt on his strategy. We were already in a trade war; he didn’t start one. The playing field must be leveled, especially with Red China. There is an art to his tariffs and an uncertainty principle that helps him achieve needed objectives.
But that doesn’t mean the stock market plunge wasn’t directly related to tariffs. When he announced “Liberation Day” tariffs, the markets plummeted. The Dow is down over 4% year to date, though the S&P is off by just 1.6%.
Ironically, the reason GDP is down is a surge of imports. Imported goods were up 51% in the first quarter as companies rushed to import as much as they could to — you guessed it — get ahead of Trump’s tariffs. According to the vehemently anti-tariff Wall Street Journal editorial board, “Imports subtracted a startling 5.03% from GDP.”
Trump argues a “little disturbance” is a price worth paying, but also that there isn’t a price at all, and the price we’re paying is Biden’s fault anyway. Trump must’ve realized how ridiculous this all sounds. Asked by a reporter to explain, he replied, “I’m not taking credit or discredit for the stock market. I’m just saying that we inherited a mess.”
It was worth a try.
In some respects, this is what presidential politics has become in the age when everything hinges on who sits in the Oval Office. The other part is Trump’s unique talent for sometimes eye-roll-worthy hyperbole.
The good news is that GDP and market numbers could settle, and the second quarter may show a return to growth. The even better news is that investment soared nearly 22% as more companies put capital into U.S. operations.
The best news is that the U.S. economy is strong and resilient enough to overcome tariffs. China’s economy? Maybe not so much.
“China’s economy showed its first big signs of damage from the trade war, as steep U.S. tariffs pummeled export orders and production at the country’s factories,” the Journal’s news side reported yesterday. “The sharp pullback shows President Trump’s eye-watering [145%] tariffs on Chinese imports are starting to squeeze the engine room of China’s economy, piling pressure on Beijing to boost its stimulus efforts to shore up growth.”
Chinese strongman Xi Jinping has been predictably stubborn in supposedly standing up to Trump, though he knows his nation is responsible for the trade war and he is facing increasing internal pressure to make a deal.
So, what’s the lesson here? We Americans, especially in the age of social media distraction, are not known for our patience. Trump’s approval ratings are still relatively strong for him, but they are not strong, meaning he has limited political capital to spend. That certainly explains his attempts to shift the blame, even if it’s still transparently futile to kick off a major economic upheaval and then claim the bad parts are your predecessor’s fault.
Trump has bet heavily on his hopes that tariffs can dislodge the terrible status quo that’s had America working at a global disadvantage for decades. Undoing that damage won’t be easy, quick, or cheap. Are Americans willing to wait and endure?
