Is stock markets rise worth what were paying?
“America is roaring back,” Donald Trump pitched to the global elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland. Those back home should be asking two questions: How loud, really, is that roar? (The economy’s, not Trump’s.) And what price are Americans paying for his approach to growth?
The Davos billionaires are not unimpressed by the opportunities offered by the grand deregulator. If the United States wants to let their mining companies ravage its public lands, why would they stop it? Energy Fuels, a Canadian uranium producer, successfully lobbied the Trump administration to shrink the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent.
If the U.S. permits the world’s financial predators to go after ordinary Americans with abusive loans and such, well, there’s money in that. And who in Davos is going to argue against lower taxes on their investments?
Speaking of investments, the U.S. stock market has performed admirably in Trump’s first year. No denying that. But the globally oriented know that others are doing better. As The Wall Street Journal reports, “foreign stock returns edged out those in the U.S. last year for the first time since 2012.”
As for this year so far, stock yields in dollars have risen by a higher percentage in France, Germany and Sweden than in the United States, according to Morgan Stanley Capital International. Just don’t tell America’s little people that France, Germany and Sweden enjoyed these gains without dismantling their generous universal health care systems. Their populations would never put up with it.
In a 2016 presidential debate, Trump vowed to raise American economic growth by 4 percent a year — hey, maybe 6 percent. “We’re bringing (the gross domestic product) from 1 percent up to 4 percent,” he assured voters. “And I actually think we can go higher than 4 percent.”
For the record, real GDP grew by 2.3 percent last year. That was not bad, though nowhere near 4 percent.
In Obama’s last year in office, real GDP rose only 1.5 percent. But for two years under Obama, it grew faster than Trump’s 2.3 percent. Guess Obamacare didn’t destroy the economy after all.
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