Comparing Trump and Biden

2024 Elections The Rematch The Trump and Biden Economies by the Numbers Approaching the November presidential rematch between incumbent President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and his predecessor Donald Trump, a Republican, the two candidates are already drawing distinctions over their economic records. And there are surely fundamental differences between them. But any broad comparison is complicated by the huge disruptions at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, which triggered two of the most extreme quarters of economic contraction and growth in U.S. history, followed by a bout of inflation reminiscent of the 1970s. Should Trump be blamed for a collapse in output that rivaled the Great Depression? Should Biden get credit for millions of jobs created in 2021 that were largely a pandemic rebound? Below, a look at key measures of economic performance - from growth overall to the labor market, from tariffs to tax collections - that illustrate the contrasts and similarities between the economies under both. Overall Growth The broadest measure of an economy’s performance is annualized growth in gross domestic product, a figure that counts every widget produced, every meal served, and every dollar spent by the government to measure changes to the country’s