So, How's It Going?
To quote the late Queen..."Annus Horribilis."
"Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience." - Theodore Roosevelt
As I write this on Sunday the 18th, we are two days away from the end of President Trump's first year back in office. So, as the title suggests, have things improved?
Let's start with the economy, since that was a truly big deal in the campaign. In 2017, the newly elected President gave an inaugural speech that described a landscape of "American carnage."
Given that President Obama had pulled the country, with, obviously, the help of Congress, out of the depths of the 2008 financial crisis and both unemployment and inflation were well under control at 4.6% and 2.1% respectively, one can understand the comment from former President George W. Bush to Michelle Obama as they sat on the dais..."Well, that was some weird shit."
Now, of course, as the pandemic kicked in, the economy under Trump took a beating. As he ginned up a multi-part plot to overturn the election of 2020, the economy he handed Joe Biden found those figures back to alarming levels...
Unemployment was 6.7% and inflation 7.8%.
The trade deficit with the rest of the world increased 36% and the national debt increased from $14 trillion to $21 trillion. \
Factcheck.org reported in November 2019 that:
"There's no question the economy has been strong since Trump took office, but it was also strong before he took office, a fact he continues to distort as he falsely puffs up his own record." For example, Trump promised real GDP growth of 4–6% per year, but only achieved 2.9% growth in 2018, the same rate as 2015. Further, job creation was slower under President Trump than comparable periods at the end of the Obama Administration. Many of Trump's claims about unemployment, labor force participation, and median household income were also false or exaggerated."
And the next four years was a real slog to get those numbers back down to pre-pandemic levels. But by the fall of 2024, before the election, we saw...
- The economy grew by at least 2.5% each year, with real gross domestic product growth of 2.8% in 2024.
- The percentage and number of Americans who lacked health insurance went down by 0.6 percentage points, or 1.2 million people, when measuring those who were uninsured for an entire year.
- The nationwide violent crime and property crime rates declined. The murder rate dropped by 1.7 points.
- All three major U.S. stock indexes set new records. The S&P 500 climbed 57.8%.
- After-tax corporate profits continued to set records.
- Inflation soared at first, reaching 9% but was back down to 2.4% in the fall of 2024, with the Federal Reserve achieving the hoped for "soft landing."
- Unemployment hovered around 4.4%.
So, given the devastating effects of the pandemic, it's really not a bad record. But this is a result Trump has called a "disaster" that he was handed. So where are those figures now...
Inflation for December 2025 stood at 2.7%, higher than when he assumed office.
Unemployment has climbed to 4.6%, the highest in over four years.
Tariffs have reduced our trade deficit, mainly because we didn't import as much since items became too expensive.
This is the essential tariff lie from the administration. Again, foreign countries don't pay tariffs, we do. Either the importer like WalMart, GM or Coca Cola, or they pass it on to you in higher prices. So, they import less. The Fulcrum economic newsletter put it this way about tariffs...
"That is providing a significant new source of government income, which the US will need to offset large increases in the federal debt arising from huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which was passed last July. However, this fiscal windfall comes at a cost to consumers. If we break it down, the additional revenue amounts to approximately $1,600 per household annually that consumers had to pay in tariff-induced higher prices"
Oh, yeah. The so-called "Big Beautiful Bill," which significantly cut taxes for high-income taxpayers, will add at least $3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years and send the ratio of debt to GDP to a nearly Greece-like 130%, from just under 100% today. In an alarming sign, the federal deficit for 2025 now stands at $1.8 trillion, with interest payments on the debt hitting $1 trillion for the first time.
Tens of millions of Americans are about to lose their health care as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill. An estimated 10 million of the poorest and most disabled Americans will be forced off Medicaid, leaving them with no other health care than a hospital emergency room.
Watch an episode of "The Pitt" if you want to know how that will look.
In addition, a significant chunk of the 24 million Americans who lost their insurance premium supplements as of January 1, because the Trump administration failed to reauthorize them, will see their premiums approximately double, making health care unaffordable.
But the President has an outline of a plan to help those folks, although we've been there before.
The tariffs have forced our former trading partners to look elsewhere for a reliable partner. Canada just sealed a big deal with China. China meanwhile found enough other places to sell that they set new records this year without us.
And that, of course, has American farmers sucking wind. They are hemorrhaging money now, especially since the replacement parts, seed and other necessities now cost more due to tariffs.
But I actually did get this email from the President in my inbox...
President Trump To: me · Thu, Jan 15 at 11:13 AM
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Needless to say, I'm looking forward to a little extra spending money, signed with his new pen, no less. Even though my friends in agriculture might waste it on things like food or seeds.
Yeah, but look on the bright side. We are getting all those pesky foreigners out of here, pronto, amigo. OK, we shot a few people along the way, but your can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, right? OK, eggs are still pricey, but you get my point.
And, it allows our head of Homeland Security, Annie Oakley, to wear what appear to be increasingly larger hats...
OK, those farmers will find it harder to find workers, along with the construction industry, but hey, you will find plenty of nice, white college kids named Chad and Penny to fill in, no doubt. The methods used to accomplish this overall whitening of society are becoming more and more disturbing, though. Take this account...
“Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes…Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared…Everyone is scared.”
Oh, wait. That was from Anne Frank's diary in 1943. Sorry for the confusion.
Seriously, the transformation of the Immigration and Customs agents from folks in windbreakers to guys in full battle-rattle ready to retake Aleppo, is disturbing.
In one year, the independence of the Federal Reserve has been threatened, with a Trump boot licker no doubt in the wings to take over when Jerome Powell's term ends in the spring.
And then there's this new MAGA hat that is seriously being sold right now in Greenland...
Honestly, can you blame them?
We have RFK, Jr. making our kids sicker and Pam Bondi busily indicting a ham sandwich, or something.
And I am curious how many of you MAGA folks, with the best of intentions when you entered the voting booth a year ago, had in mind, "Yeah, I think it's time to disband NATO. Who cares about European allies anyway."
And while we're at it, just let Russia take over Ukraine. What do we care?
Let's start a trade war that hurts American agriculture.
And let's topple some nasty leaders while we're at it. And if we take their oil, put the proceeds in a secret overseas account in Qatar.
Well, you will soon get your wish if we aren't very careful. And there is no reason to believe we will be.
Oh, and the Qatar thing? It's already happened. Why do our banking there? Ask the man in charge at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, if that venerable address is still recognizable after the next 3 years.
So, it has been an eventful year. Inflation and unemployment are up, the debt is higher, we've driven off friends and allies overseas and started bombing people we don't like.
But there is a Nobel Peace Prize hanging on the wall now.
Really folks. Who actually keeps someone else's Nobel Prize and sends her off with some MAGA swag? Seriously, he kept it. But he can correct it with a Sharpie.
And is there an endgame for things like the Venezuela adventure? Of course not. Thinking through things like that or Gaza means long range planning.
That three word phrase might as well be written in Sanskrit.
As Jon Sopel, the BBC White House correspondent during the first Trump term reported on Rex Tillerson, Trump's first Secretary of State...
“After a long silence, Tillerson would eventually pull the curtains back a touch on what life had been like in Trumpworld. ‘What was challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process-oriented ExxonMobil corporation,’ Tillerson told the CBS network months after his firing, ‘was to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just says, “This is what I believe.”
Based on that standard, there's no climate change, no need for renewable energy, no need for NATO, no need for historic trade partnerships, and most of all, no need to say anything more about Jeffrey Epstein.
Now, he is part of the Texas Outlaw Writers, and if this doesn't pan out, the outlaw part will still work as he will indeed resort to robbing banks.