The Legacy of Trump-O-Nomics—Uniparty Failure By Another Name

If any more evidence is needed, the “incoming” data this AM was just another reminder that the ballyhooed MAGA Economy was actually an economic abortion of historic proportion.

In this case January retail sales posted at -0.8% versus last month, but that’s just the usual monthly noise part. What was far more relevant is that real retail sales last month posted at $226.13 billion (1982-1984$), which was -2.7% below the level back in March 2021 when the last Trump/Biden stimmy hit the cash registers.

In a word, so much extra and artificial spending power was pumped into the US economy during the crazed fiscal and monetary bacchanalia of March 2020 to March 2021 that real consumer spending has now flat-lined for the last 34 months. And when you peel back the onion during the pre-March 2021 period the data get truly crazy.

In the first place, real retail spending had been nothing to write home about during the Donald’s first 38 months in office. The CAGR (compound annual growth rate) had been just 1.6% between December 2016 and February 2020—a figure which compared poorly to the 2.0% per annum average that had prevailed between 1992 and 2016.

Of course, the Donald wants you to believe that he magically lit a fire under the US economy, and that the latter was going gangbusters until he got blinded-sided by the Chiiina Virus. But the above comparison is all pre-Covid, and it puts the lie to his boast.

But what isn’t an exaggeration is that by unleashing Dr. Fauci and his malpracticing doctors on March 16, 2020, the Donald delivered a body-blow to the American economy the likes of which had never before been experienced. Thus, here is three decades of monthly change in real retail sales, and the data leaves nothing to the imagination. Sales plunged by 26% in April 2020 or by orders of magnitude more than ever before.

Monthly Change In Constant Dollar Retail Sales, 1992 to April 2020

But then came the Donald’s unhinged stimmy stampede, causing real retail sales to explode by +46% in the 11 months between April 2020 and March 2021. And, no, we didn’t mis-type the number. As is evident in the chart below, spending took off like a rocket ship when Washington pumped a tsunami of cash into household banks accounts.