Donald Trump continues to remind us that he only cares about Trump. In an interview aired Monday, the former president expressed his hope that the economy crashes in the next year so he wouldn’t have to be “Herbert Hoover.”
When speaking to MAGA loyalist Lou Dobbs in an interview aired Monday, Trump proceeded to take credit for the U.S. economy’s growth under President Joe Biden‘s administration.
“We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did,” Trump claimed. “It’s just running off the fumes.”
“And when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover,” he continued, when pondering the idea of re-election. “The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.”
Hoover, who assumed the presidency in 1929 as the stock market reached unprecedented levels, saw that bubble burst during his first year in office, leading to the Great Depression.
Trump, who has previously claimed that the “Biden administration is running on the fumes of the great success of the Trump Administration,” accomplished the feat of becoming the first president since Hoover to leave the country with fewer jobs by the end of his one-term presidency.
Under Trump’s administration the unemployment rate surged to 14.7 percent in April 2020 and by the time he left office the following January, the rate had receded to 6.3 percent. Many economists have pointed to the former president’s disastrous leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic as having exacerbated the country’s economic downturn at the time.
Last month, Trump warned that if he was not elected president in 2024, the U.S. would see its economy plunge into a “1929”-era depression. His words arrived as the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a record high, and data released by the Labor Department in early December reported that under the Biden administration, the U.S. economy added 199,000 jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.7 percent.
Earlier this week, Biden delivered his first major election year campaign speech near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden emphasized his predecessor’s refusal to accept the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 as a threat to American democracy.
“Donald Trump’s campaign is about him. Not America. Not you,” said Biden. “Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.”
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
