Trump is fighting to get credits for the Obama's economy

The White House, faced with a mid-level raw landscape, is looking for ways to take advantage of the nine-year economic expansion.

President Donald Trump and his economic advisers want to be recognized for their 20 months at the White House.

The White House on Monday extended its argument that the current strong economic growth in the US is his – not a trend that began years ago by former President Barack Obama.

History continues below

The latest claim, in a long-running appearance at the White House press conference by the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett, contradicts the findings of most traditional economists and seems to indicate that the Trump White House Republican half -parcours unless it creates a contrast with Obama.

Hassett denied that his appearance was prompted by a Friday speech in which Obama said, "When you hear how good the economy is now, just remember when this recovery started." The current economic expansion began in mid-2009, six months after Obama's first term.

Trump responded shortly after an appearance in Fargo, N.D .: "He was trying to take credit for this incredible thing going on. … it was not him. "

The argument goes to the heart of Trump's arguments this fall. Facing bad projections for a GOP rout, the president is trying to persuade voters to stick to Republicans arguing that they have achieved economic recovery. But many important indicators of economic growth and job growth have been equally strong in some Obama years, even in the absence of Trump deregulation and tax cuts to boost the deficit. .

"One of the assumptions that has circulated," Hassett said in the briefing, "is that the strong economy we see is only a continuation of recent trends." But economic historians will agree to 100% the fact that there was an inflection in the election of Donald Trump, and that a whole series of data began to head north. "

Hassett pleaded against the Obama economy in a series of also put online, including measures of small business optimism and investment.

The charts showed that capital investment had declined by various measures in the second half of the year. The second term of Obama and then suddenly increased after the election of Trump. A former Obama administration official retorted that capital investment is increasing globally, raising doubts about whether this can be attributed to US government policy.

The former official was also intrigued by the presentation of data by the charts in the form of a series of averages over six quarters rather than by the usual measure of a month, from one to the next. quarter or one year. "They bought what they did," said this person.

Hassett admitted, however, that Trump erred earlier in the day when he tweeted"The GDP rate (4.2%) is higher than the unemployment rate (3.9%) for the first time in more than 100 years!"

"What's true is that it's the highest in 10 years," said Hassett, noting that "I'm not running the Twitter Advisor Board".

What no one disputes is that under both presidents, unemployment has fallen and wages have been slowly rising. In another sign that the Trump administration Hassett released a report last week, recalculating after-tax wage growth to 1.4% over the past year; According to the standard measure used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average wage gains have evolved over the past year even with inflation. (But on Friday, BLS said average hourly earnings in August were up 2.9% from the previous year, the best monthly performance in a decade.)

Ernie Tedeschi, an economist at Evercore ISI who worked in the Treasury Department under Obama, noted that some of Hassett's data was based on surveys of employers. "I agree with Hassett that the feeling seems to have firmed up," he said.

But Tedeschi said recent increases in fixed investment were due in part to hurricane recovery spending and "some one-off rate effects." For example, he said, a recent surge in exports could be a reflection of US companies "trying to position themselves before tariffs come into effect."