Are the president’s stock market claims too risky?
During the first presidential debate in September 2016, thencandidate Donald Trump argued that the booming performance of the stock market under the Obama administration should not be trusted.
“Believe me: We’re in a bubble right now. And the only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that’s going to come crashing down,” Trump said. “We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful.”
More than a year later, President Trump has turned similar record stock market bench marks into his favorite measure of his personal success in office. The Dow Jones industrial average is near the top of his personal list of accomplishments — and has been since the early days of his presidency, although the citations have become more frequent in recent months.
“DOW RISES 5000 POINTS ON THE YEAR FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER — MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president tweeted at 6:04 a.m. Dec. 19, marking the 58th time he has mentioned the stock market since taking office. By comparison, he has tweeted 24 times about his proposed border wall and 20 times about standing for the national anthem.
The embrace of a single number to burnish his own credentials fits a long-held pattern for Trump, who has never shown much concern about overstating his own accomplishments. In the spring, Trump started championing the Labor Department’s jobless rate numbers, just months after he attacked them as phony under President Barack Obama during the campaign.
“They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now,” then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer quoted the president as saying.
In recent weeks, the president has taken full credit for market performance, even though the recent rate of increase largely matches the bull market run under Obama, which began after the market hit bottom in 2009.
White House officials and Trump allies credit the rise with Trump getting rid of some regulations on businesses, questioning trade policies, pushing for tax cuts for corporations and simply having a businessman as president.
Late last month, the president tweeted about “another great day for the Stock Market” and added: “I guess somebody likes me (my policies)!” Earlier that month, he tweeted: “Stock market hit yet another record high yesterday. There is great confidence in the moves that my Administration is making.”
But Democrats and even some Republicans see danger for Trump in his new favorite message. The rise in the market is not felt in the family budgets of many struggling voters. And if the market were to take a dip, it’s unlikely that Trump would take credit for that.
“I think it’s a pretty risky strategy,” said Republican economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, a former economist to President George W. Bush.
Some of the president’s defenders say his strategy has helped to undercut the Democratic talking point that the corporate tax cut benefits only the rich.
“It’s very important and brilliant to focus on the stock market,” said Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, who helped push the Republican tax bill. “You are looking at 54 million people — this is not the 1 percent — they have been able to look at their 401(k)s grow over the last year.”
Convincing even a portion of the middle class to think like investors will, Norquist argued, ultimately increase the reach of the Republican Party over time.
“Democrats’ answer for everything is more cops, more government workers,” he said. “The Republican answer for everything is more 401(k)s.”
Presidents have traditionally