Trump, Biden battle over economy

President Biden and former President Trump immediately started battling over the state of the economy in Thursday evening’s debate as the national mood on the economy has been sagging.

Within the first few minutes, just about every major economic issue facing the country was mentioned: inflation, price levels, housing shortages, the effect of the Trump tax cuts, jobs and employment, the recovery from the pandemic recession, and others.

“In his economy, he rewarded the wealthy,” Biden said. “He had the largest tax cut in American history — $2 trillion. He raised the deficit larger than any president has in any one term.”

Trump backed his general tariff proposal as a way to boost the U.S. economy and better compete with China.

“It’s just going to cause countries that have been ripping us off for years like China — and many others, in all fairness to China — it’s just going to force them to pay us a lot of money, reduce our deficit tremendously.”

One budgetary analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s economic policies added more than $8 trillion to the deficit, double what Biden’s fiscal policies have added.