“We are the Richest, Most Respected Country in the World, With Almost No Inflation, and A Record Stock Market Price” – DJT, November 2025
Ah, the economy. Despite learning how damaging “the economy” can be in the recession when my mom lost literally everything, I still couldn’t pull my teenage head out of my teenage butt to pay attention in literally the most boring class ever, economics.
Even as an adult, I still didn’t pay much attention. You kind of live outside the sphere of economic influence working for the DOJ as your job feels pretty much untouchable. Sure, you’d hear people complain when their 401K went down, but as a 22-year old who felt as far from retirement as we are from when Jesus came to Earth, it didn’t really phase me.
Now as a 31-year old, I’m learning to pay a little more attention. I still put all of my spare money and 401K funds into index funds and don’t even look at them, but now I feel the cost of inflation more. Last week I had to fill the fuel oil at my dad’s farm from 1/3 to full to make it through the season. It was $680. Before Iran, I filled it from COMPELETELY EMPTY for $600. Ouch.
Anyway, I’ll get to the point. Trump has been very loud and proud about the economy he’s created, and when a reader of this blog shared a cool post about how the economy differs under red and blue administrations, I wanted to look more into it and see if there is a difference in economic strength under one or the other.
Defining Economic Strength
There are many different aspects to consider when it comes to measuring economic strength. Inflation, stock prices, unemployment rates, job growth, etc. When it comes to considering the strength of the economy, I found the following from Investopedia and other places as the key indicators of the economy:
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- Unemployment Rate
- Industrial Production
- Consumer Spending
- Inflation
- Home Sales
- Home Building
- Construction Spending
- Manufacturing Demand
- Retail Sales
Quite a few key metrics. These are the ones that I will use to determine economic health across administrations.
One thing I want to point out as important – judging an administration by day one of their tenure is unfair and inaccurate. Because of that, I will only count the last two years of their administration toward my “judgement”, as well as any factors that may impact the numbers. Namely, COVID for late Trump v1 and Biden. I’ll also look only at 2000 to now, as things change over time and the last 25 full years are the best indicators of modern administrations.
Let’s go into the numbers!
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
This chart comes from FRED, tracking the GDP over time.
As we can see, there were only two times when the GDP fell: in the recession, and during the pandemic. They even conveniently shaded the recessions for us! FRED is always looking out for us <3. Otherwise, growth has been pretty steady, particularly after the COVID drop, which would have been Biden’s term. Overall, this metric doesn’t really show much difference in a single term apart from Biden’s. Trump has continued the momentum in 2025 on.
Unemployment Rate
Here’s a pretty damn ugly chart I made showing monthly unemployment rates per the Bureau of Labor Statistics with the beginning of each administration marked, as well as COVID and the recession:
That’s a lot to look at. Here’s one that just shows the unemployment rate recorded in December of each President’s Last year in Office:
Bush gets a pass, as he was in office at the start of the Great Recession. I’m not going to get into whether Bush “caused” the recession, as I think that’s too complex to accurately state.
Obama’s last year in office numbers looked pretty great! Trump’s were high again, but again, it was the beginning of the COVID pandemic and there obviously was nothing he could have done to prevent that. Prior to that they had been trending down.
Biden did a good job of bringing it back down to even less than Obama’s. Based solely on who has the most months with the smallest rate, Biden is the winner for this metric. Highlighted fields are Biden’s, table is sorted by smallest number. The unhighlighted ones were both Trump!
Industrial Production
For this metric, we’re going back to my boy, FRED:
We can see that Bush ramped up production steadily. If I were to guess, it was probably the wars.
It fell rapidly during the Recession, then Obama ramped it back up to new heights by the end of his term in 2016. Production fell and stayed down for the first two years of Trump, then declined up until the plummet of COVID. Biden picked it back up mid-way between Trump’s highs and lows, then we see it trend up when Trump takes office again.
For this, I’m going to give Obama the prize for “Best Industrial Production Numbers” this century as his numbers trended up after the fall of the recession right up until his last year. Trump’s numbers are looking good so far, with increases in both his first term and his current term.
Consumer Spending
I’m going to have to give FRED an official credit for making this post happen. From FRED, here is the consumer spending:
Unsurprsingly, the recession and COVID were the only times where consumer spending fell rapidly. I can’t say any president did a “better” job than another, but I can say it went up a lot with Biden.
I have a feeling that’s because……..
Inflation!
FREDdie my boy shows this as the inflation rate:
FRED was missing the last two years, so I found this information from CI:
We’re gonna talk about the other administrations before we address the Biden in the room.
Obama saw some high inflation because of the post-recession madness, but managed to consistently drop it during his two terms. Inflation rose and fell under Trump, before SKYROCKING..
Because of COVID, and not at all helped by Biden’s American Relief Plan. In a paper by Brookings, the summary is that the main cause of the inflation was the pandemic’s supply chain issues (remember when toilet paper was extinct for a bit?), and that the ARP added additional inflation to the top of it. To Biden’s discredit, leading economists had warned him of that potential outcome and he seemingly ignored that warning.
Just how responsible was Biden for inflation? The Hill talked to Jason Furman, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under the Obama administration:
Furman said the rescue plan caused between 1 and 4 percentage points of inflation last year.
“If you look at the inflation over the last four or five months, there’s no doubt that the price increases caused by [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin are playing a much bigger role at this stage and the rescue plan is playing a fading role,” he said.
Politifact also addressed this issue, coming to this conclusion:
The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act added about $1.9 trillion to the economy, and economists across the political spectrum say that it spurred inflation. They differ on the precise scale of its impact, with estimates ranging from two to four additional points out of the current inflation rate of about 8.5%.
However, none of the experts we reached, liberal and conservative, said Biden’s actions were responsible for all of the inflation. Past government spending, COVID’s disruptions to labor markets, energy prices and supply-chains also played significant roles. Most recently, the war in Ukraine has made a challenging situation worse.
So in this case, Democrats are responsible for the lowest non-recession rates, and the highest non-recession rates of Inflation. Hard to blame that on a political party when they’re responsible for the two extremes.
Home Sales
FRED let me down on this one. Sad face. I had to go to Mortgage News Daily to find this metric, validated with MacroMicro statistics:
We can see the clear rise in housing sales right up until the epic crash of the recession, which started under Bush. During the Obama administration the sales worked their way up, and then stayed more or less stable under Trump v1. COVID made a huge dent, but it turned around very quickly during the Biden administration, cooling off in the last year. Trump taking office represents a spike but it’s too early to tell if that’s going to last.
Bush’s administration saw the highest numbers but a HUGE crash. Obama’s administration corrected it and handed it over to Trump who kept it stable. Biden’s office somehow saw a huge spike, likely because of low interest rates, which quickly crashed as interest rates rose. I’d state that the longest period of growth and stability were Obama’s years and then Trump’s v1. So, it’s a tie?
Home Building
FRED‘s back for this one:
Just like existing home sales, Obama and Trump saw the greatest period of increase. Something happened in 2019 for Trump where roughly a one-year period saw a dip, a rise, and then the COVID crash. Biden’s administration again saw a large increase, reaching above the Obama and Trump v1 era’s high point. This tapered off but still held steady at, on average, higher than Trump and Obama’s.
I’ll give the highest period or growth and reliability award to Obama, and the highest average since post-recession to Biden. The reason I’m not crediting Bush with the insane numbers is because it was predatory lending that created the conditions for construction to skyrocket, not economic strength.
Construction Spending
Here’s the construction spending, from FRED:
Nothing unexpected to see here, really. The crash, a slow repair by Obama, a weird dip in 2019, a little fall during the pandemic and then a rapid rise under Biden and continuing into Trump.
I’m noticing a trend with a rapid rise in “good” metrics under Biden, despite the inflation. Though Biden certainly made a bad call on ARP, it seems that portions of the economy did benefit from it. It doesn’t really look like any President did a bad job here, though Biden seems to have done the “best” job during his administration on increasing the spending.
Manufacturing Demand
So FRED sayeth:
Bush did a great job at ramping up production. I’m concerned that it was tied to materials and such that led to the recession, but I won’t take away his due. Obama did a great job recovering, but the least year of his term had a slide. Trump ramped it up again, but experienced another slide before COVID. Biden brought everything back up and kept it stable, then it rose again when Trump took office.
For length of increase without a dip, Obama wins. For term stability, Obama wins. Bush also did a good job until the recession, and Trump did see an increase before a slide back. Overall, I think Obama’s terms had the strongest overall.
Retail Sales
Least but not least, we have a strong finish with FRED:
No surprises here.
Biden’s inflation led to increase in overall spending, because everything was so dang gone expensive. Bush did a good job, Obama brought us back from the recession, Trump held strong until COVID, then Biden saw a steady increase in spending as well.
The longest period of growth and stability was with Bush and Obama.
Conclusion
I’m really not sure it can be said that, within the last 25 years, a single administration has been “the best”. Overall, Bush and Obama led the economy on the longest stretches of growth and stability. Biden saw leaps in some of the good metrics, and some of the bad (namely inflation). Nothing changed significantly in Trump’s first administration, but he didn’t deeply mess anything up.
Overall, I think it’s fair to say that both Democrats and Republicans are capable at leading a strong economy, even with outside factors like COVID and the recession to contend with. In the future I’d like to look at just what the impact Biden’s ARP had on the inflation and see how much of the blame we can attribute to him.
Huge shoutout to FRED for making this post possible!
Thank you for reading!
This is an extremely complex topic, even with ample data. One of the problems is that the impact of many economic decisions aren’t seen till years after they are implemented. Tariffs are a great example. In the short term they appear inflationary, but if they are effective in shifting production to the U.S., they will make for a future spike in the GDP.
Some of the data requires human interaction to produce it making it more of a survey than a true data point. Unemployment data for example always comes with a question of voluntarily unemployed, or no longer receiving benefits, etc… that creep into conversations. Long story short if no one applied for or took unemployment benefits for a month, we couldn’t reasonably state that we had 0% unemployment.
Almost the entirety of the Biden administration (and the last year of Trump’s first term) is nothing more than chaos from a data standpoint due to covid-19. We injected over $5 trillion into our economy. Trying to extract the impact of policy vs reaction to the pandemic is literally impossible.
There is a significant difference in an administrations ability to impact the economy based on the make-up of the House and Senate. Bush with a friendly House and Senate is an entirely different animal than Bush going it alone.
Lastly, even defining the start/end of an administration is problematic. On November 6, 2024, business started reacting to the reality that the GOP would control all three branches. Wind and solar companies reacted, oil companies reacted, manufacturers reacted, the stock market reacted etc… These reactions were unlikely to be reasonably attributed to the Biden Administration even though he would still be president for another 2+ months.
You are absolutely right on people making preemptive changes knowing how the incoming administration is going to work. I remember a bunch of people from back home in rural MN buying crazy expensive ice houses, UTVs, trucks and more when Trump got elected because they figured they’d be making so much more money. Unfortunately lots of them are now feeling the pinch when they weren’t immediately resolved of their need to pay taxes.
I really wanted to avoid another discussion, we have too many, interlocking threads already, BUT, I couldn’t let this minor “error” go. It is this– we all do it, but we should not blame (or credit) the President for everything, at least not without considering what Congress he might have had to work with, along with other overall influences like COVID or war. Biggest driver of inflation, for example, is Congressional overspending.
One of the biggest mistakes that the 24/7 news cycle, the Internet and social media has wrought is that too many people believe that if we just elect the right person as President, everything else will take care of itself. We only need pay attention, and barely that, once every four years. Many voters, I know, cast a ballot for President, maybe one or two contests down-ballot, and then leave the rest blank. I’ve always found it is very important to contact your State Rep or Senator, or even go to City Council, where you can have a lot more influence, can know the issues and vote accordingly. And it looks like the wonderful information you have provided is rather indeterminant at that abstract height.
You’re totally correct that the President is not entirely to blame for economic conditions! I get very frustrated when I see people blaming Biden as a person for inflation, despite the factors that contributed to it. They can only do what they can do, but for the interest of the argument I was curious if there was a huge difference between the numbers in different administrations. It seems that where there are, there’s a major event like COVID or the recession that’s the real driver, not a President’s economic policy.
How do you feel about Iran and the rise in oil prices? Do you feel the ends justify the means?