WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump leaned on economic arguments in his reelection bid. The economy favored Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
FILE PHOTO: A combination picture shows U.S. President Donald Trump pumping his fist during a campaign event at Capital Region International Airport in Lansing, Michigan, U.S. October 27, 2020, and Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden making a fist during a drive-in campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., October 30, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Brian Snyder/File Photos
President-elect Biden won in counties accounting for 70% of the country’s economic output, and also in places that were generally doing better under the Republican incumbent than was “Trump country,” according to an analysis of the Nov. 3 election results released by the Brookings Institution on Tuesday.
The study showed Biden’s unweighted gross domestic product share was higher even than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 64% in 2016, after he flipped the electoral results in populous places like Maricopa County in Arizona and Tarrant County in Texas that had favored Trump four years ago.
Trump’s share fell correspondingly.
GRAPHIC: U.S. economic output is urban — and “Blue” –
In one sense the result is not surprising: GDP follows population, and, just as the Republican base is concentrated in thousands of less populated counties across the country’s mid-section, the Democratic base is centered in the more populated cities and particularly East and West Coast metropolises like Los Angeles, New York and Atlanta, which was key to Biden’s apparent win in Georgia.
Those cities are where the country’s most productive workers and companies are based, even if Trump, despite his focus on the economy, has portrayed them as uniformly troubled rather than the foundation of U.S. wealth.
Mark Muro, senior fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program, said that even as the results reflect demographic trends underway for decades, the resulting political division remains unresolved – even on pressing current issues like coronavirus pandemic aid to cities.
The Republican Party “reflects an economic base situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas, remains frustrated, and sees no reason to consider the priorities and needs of the nation’s metropolitan centers,” Muro said. “That is not a scenario for economic consensus or achievement.”
Of course, even in Democratic strongholds, Trump got votes. While Vermont remains deeply blue-based in terms of vote share and Wyoming a deep red, much of the country blends more toward the middle, and the 2020 election showed the group of competitive states widening from traditional battlegrounds like Florida and the Midwest to include Sun Belt states like Georgia and Arizona.
GRAPHIC: “No blue states and red states…” –
However, in Trump’s case the results may follow other logic. Analysis of the results showed he faced little blowback from voters in places that supported him in 2016 and which have been hit hardest by the coronavirus. Indeed, his vote share often increased in those places.
But neither was he necessarily rewarded for the strength of the economy before the pandemic.
According to a new analysis by the Economic Innovation Group, the counties that voted for Biden also enjoyed wage, job and business growth under the Trump administration greater than the counties that voted for Trump.
GRAPHIC: Job, establishment and wage growth –
Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Dan Burns and Paul Simao
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.
