A new National Association of Business Economics survey finds that 55% of professional economists said they believe Hillary Clinton would be the best choice to oversee the U.S. economy as president.
Donald Trump had just 14% support, behind Libertarian Gary Johnson (15%) and “Don’t Know/No Opinion” (15%).
Paul Manafort denied that Donald Trump’s aides mounted an emergency intervention this week to bring the candidate back on message, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Manafort: “Starting Monday, we’re going to be announcing our economic plan. When we do that, we’re comfortable we can get the agenda and the narrative of the campaign back on where it belongs, which is comparing the tepid economy under Obama and Clinton, versus the kind of growth economy that Mr. Trump wants to build.”
He added: “He is very focused. He knows what he needs to do. I am confident he is going to start doing it and eventually the media will start having to cover it.”
Donald Trump “announced a new team of ultra-rich financiers and businessmen as his core economic advisers, a move that brings high-profile names to his inner circle but also may step on his populist claims to save America’s middle class,” the Washington Post reports.
The Fix: Trump’s economic team has six men named Steve, zero women
Join for as low as $6 per month. Learn more.
Already a member? Sign in here.
The Wall Street Journal reports that U.S. employers hired at a steady pace in July with nonfarm payrolls increasing by 255,000. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.9%.
In addition, the jobs reports for the past two months were also revised higher.
Jonathan Chait: “Since the start of the Reagan era, American politics has revolved around a war over the role of government in the economy. The Republican Party is set apart from major conservative parties across the world in its intensely ideological rejection of the state. And, despite his past rhetorical inconsistency, Donald Trump has faithfully adopted those positions. Yet that war has been largely absent not only from the rhetoric in Cleveland, which revolved around nationalism and identity, but in Philadelphia, too. The Democratic speakers have almost entirely ignored Trump’s proposals to deregulate carbon pollution and the finance industry, lavish tax cuts on the very rich, and snatch health insurance from 20 million people.”
“This is not because Democrats lack the confidence in their ability to win an election centered on these issues. (They did it in 2012.) It is because they have chosen to reframe the election as a contest over the much larger question of the sanctity of American democracy.”
Donald Trump said that he would support raising the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, a departure from his previous assertion that wages are “too high,” CNN reports.
“With the Republican and Democratic national conventions just weeks away, the government reported on Friday that employers added 287,000 workers in June, a vigorous rebound that helps sets the stage for the economic themes advanced by the presidential nominees,” the New York Times reports.
“The unexpectedly grim initial employment report in May was disturbing enough to convince every voting member of the Federal Reserve’s policy-making committee last month to oppose any increase in its benchmark interest rate… That jobs report, combined with Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, has fanned wider worries that the American economy is in danger of stalling.”
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, under consideration as Donald Trump’s running mate, is dropping his decades-long support of free trade deals and picking up Trump’s strongly protectionist position, Politico reports.
Said Gingrich: “I basically agree with Trump’s speech on trade.”
“That represents a significant shift for Gingrich, who championed trade agreements while a congressional leader, and a move that would smooth over one of the biggest policy differences between the two men who could form the Republican ticket.”
First Read: “Maybe the most remarkable part of Donald Trump’s anti-trade speech yesterday was the reaction from Republican-leaning big-business groups… There is no doubt that Trump is making a play for some Bernie Sanders supporters… But by doing so, he’s making a break with the modern Republican Party — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush were all for free trade; so are most Republicans currently serving in Congress.
“Bottom line: Yesterday’s speech by Trump was something that no Republican presidential nominee in the last 60 years would have delivered.”
“But that doesn’t mean that Hillary Clinton can take advantage of that break (beyond the fundraising advantage). Indeed, she’s boxed in on trade — by Trump, by Sanders (who, it appears, continues make opposition to the TPP trade accord a condition for his ultimate endorsement), and by President Obama (who supports TPP and sees it as a final legacy achievement). And then there’s the standard operating procedure for Democratic presidents to oppose trade while on the campaign trail but back it when in the Oval Office, which Trump emphasized yesterday. ”
Greg Sargent: Trump is selling American workers a scam
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership is another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country, just a continuing rape of our country. That’s what it is, too. It’s a harsh word: It’s a rape of our country.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by Politico.
“I’m sorry, I’ve got nothing for you on that.”
— Fed Chair Janet Yellen, quoted by Bloomberg, when asked if Donald Trump will cause a global economic crash.
Wall Street Journal: “U.S. companies slowed their hiring drastically in May and unemployment fell as people dropped out of the labor force, a bleak picture for Federal Reserve officials as they prepare to debate increasing short-term interest rates at a policy meeting this month.”
“Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 38,000 in May, the weakest performance since September 2010… Revisions showed employers added a combined 59,000 fewer jobs in April and March than previously estimated.”
The Upshot: “Growth is lukewarm, but it has been consistent enough to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Wages have not risen by much, and the uneven recovery has left segments of the population behind. But the overall unemployment rate is down to 5 percent. That’s unusual for a presidential election season — it has been at 5 percent or lower in only three of the 14 contests that have taken place since 1960.”
“Indeed, the lack of stark economic problems may have allowed Mr. Trump to push unconventional policies. If the economy were repeating the plunge of 2008, fewer voters might be prepared to support a candidate whose policies would disrupt world trade and whose tax cuts would almost certainly lead to a far bigger budget deficit.”
Kansas City Star: “Candidates and voters in both major parties appear to be switching long-held positions on trade policy: Free-trade Republicans are becoming protectionist, while some Democrats are moving the opposite direction on exports and imports.”
“The flip-flops are making it harder to reach consensus in Washington. A major trade deal with Asian nations has stalled largely because of tangled trade politics, for example. But the changing views may also make it harder to decipher races up and down the ballot this year, from president to Congress and beyond. Trade policy no longer breaks along clean partisan lines.”
Donald Trump said that he would like an increase in the minimum wage and that it is best that such a change happen at the state level, the Washington Post reports.
“In the past, Trump has opposed upping the minimum wage. But in recent days, he has increasingly warmed to the idea.”
Said Trump: “I have seen what’s going on, and I don’t know how people make it on $7.25. With that being said, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude, but I’d rather leave it to the states. Let the states decide.”
John Sides: “The longest-running measure of American attitudes about the economy is the Index of Consumer Sentiment. Before I had looked at these data, I was sure I’d find that sentiment was only a bit more positive than it was when Obama took office. But in fact, the upward trend — with the exception of the drop during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis — is striking. This upward trend is also reflected in data from Pew and Gallup.”
“As of the first quarter of 2016, even with a slight downturn in the second and third quarters of 2015, consumer sentiment was as positive as it had been since the mid-2000s. It was also as positive as it had been in the mid-1980s during the recovery from the recession of 1981-1982. For example, the value of consumer sentiment at the end of 1983, as Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign was gearing up, was 91.6. In the first three months of 2015, it was almost exactly the same: 91.5.”
“In other words, consumer sentiment is as positive as it was at the beginning of the election year when Reagan argued that it was ‘Morning in America.'”
William Galston: “Candidates seeking to succeed a two-term incumbent of their own party face an uphill battle. All other things being equal, political scientists find, such candidates can expect to fall short of the incumbents’ re-election vote share by at least 4 percentage points. Applied to the 2012 results, this metric would yield a 47% share for this year’s Democratic nominee.”
“On the other hand, demographic trends favor the Democrats. As the nonwhite share of the electorate increases, Democrats can expect their baseline to shift upward by 1 or even 2 percentage points in each four-year cycle—a significant gain, but not enough to counter the third-term disadvantage.”
“It is at this point that factors specific to 2016 come into play. To begin, the American people’s assessment of Barack Obama’s performance as president has been rising steadily. From a low of 43% approval as recently as December, it has increased to an average of 49% today… Another potential plus for the 2016 Democratic nominee is the economy’s improving condition… Since its recessionary low, the economy has added more than 13 million jobs, and the unemployment rate has fallen by half.”
Donald Trump told the Washington Post that economic conditions are so perilous that the country is headed for a “very massive recession” and that “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, embracing a distinctly gloomy view of the economy that counters mainstream economic forecasts.
“The New York billionaire dismissed concern that his comments — which are exceedingly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a major party front-runner — could potentially affect financial markets.”
Trump also insisted that he would be able to get rid of the nation’s more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years.”
☑️ Get 25% off any shared eCommerce or Managed WordPress hosting plan at WP Engine.
☑️ The Almanac of American Politics 2022 is the gold standard of accessible political information, relied on by everyone involved, invested or interested in politics in America.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.