In Search of Trump’s Booming Economy
December 12, 2025
Empty office buildings, downtown Hope, Indiana. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
I suppose it is not nice to make fun of a 79-year-old man suffering from mental decline. But when that person is president and threatening to throw millions of people in jail and/or deport them, and also threatening war on countries around the world, their age and mental infirmity does not shield them from criticism. Just as he claims to have settled wars that either never existed or have not been settled, Trump keeps insisting he has created an unprecedented economic boom that is not visible anywhere in the data.
Most immediately, Trump boasts about his accomplishments in improving affordability by bringing prices down. He can take credit that the price of gas is down by around 2 percent, or six cents a gallon, from its year-ago level, but that still leaves it just under $3.00 a gallon. It is not at the $2.00 a gallon he boasts about anywhere in the country. Rather than going down, food prices are up 2.7 percent from a year ago, with items like beef and coffee scoring double-digit increases.
Trump’s big thing is the $20 trillion in investment that he imagines is coming into the country. This sum is equal to two thirds of annual GDP and almost seven times the current annual level of investment. But there is zero evidence of it anywhere in the data.
After an unprecedented boom under Biden, investment in factory construction has trended downward under Trump. It’s hard to imagine some huge explosion of investment that won’t involve building some new factories or renovating existing ones.
There also is no evidence of Trump’s investment boom in new orders for capital goods. This series fluctuates a great deal, as orders, especially of airplanes, tend to clump together. But the average for the third quarter of this year was just 12.0 percent above the average for the last quarter of the Biden administration, before adjusting for inflation. That’s not bad, but hardly a huge boom. In fact, it’s still down by 1.4 percent from the last quarter of 2023, again before adjusting for inflation.
The story doesn’t look any better from the standpoint of manufacturing employment, which Trump has put at the center of his economic agenda. Manufacturing employment is down by 49,000 from when Trump took office in January. Employment had already been falling in 2024, but manufacturing jobs are still going in the wrong direction.
Even Trump’s claims of trillions coming into the Treasury from his import taxes (tariffs) is also a delusion. In October, the most recent month for which we have data, the Treasury collected $31 billion in tariff revenue, roughly $24 billion more than it raised last year. That amounts to a massive tax increase of almost $300 billion a year, or $2,400 per household.
This does not come close to balancing the budget, and we certainly aren’t paying down the debt, as our deluded president claims. However, the tariffs are the major cause of the higher inflation households have seen since Trump took office, in addition to the higher costs imposed by deporting much of the immigrant labor force.
In fact, because of increased spending, the deficit was higher in October of 2025 than it was last October. In addition to normal increases in spending due to higher payments for programs like Social Security and Medicare, it also costs money to have thousands of ICE agents terrorizing people in major cities and to send the military to blow up small ships in the Caribbean with advanced weaponry.
In short, when it comes to Donald Trump’s boasts about the economy, it is all delusion. Psychologists or people who have read his MRI may be able to determine the extent to which Trump is telling deliberate lies, as opposed to really living in his world of make-believe. But for those viewing from a distance, the important thing to know is that it is all nonsense.
This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.
Trump Accounts: Another Con?
Image by Jonathan Cooper.
A day does not seem to go by in which the Trump regime fails to do something outrageous. There are the big outrages that include the terrorism and kidnapping of immigrants, the support of the mass murdering Israeli government, the embrace of brutal authoritarian leaders, the continuous racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, the assaults on the federal workforce, the taking away of help such as food aid for those in extremely precarious situations, the pardoning of fraudsters, the bombing and killing of alleged drug cartel personnel in ships at sea, and the policies that are destructive of the environment, to name just a few.
Then there are what might be viewed as smaller outrages such as Trump’s picture being affixed on 2026 national park passes in which he is wearing a suit (that may show how he wants people to dress when camping and hiking). In 2024 and 2025, among the dates of free entry into the parks were Martin Luther King’s Day and Juneteenth. In 2026, both dates that recognize and celebrate U.S./Black history have been eliminated, and June 14, Trump’s birthday and Flag Day, has been added.
Another of the smaller outrages comes with the Big Beautiful Bill: Trump Accounts. These are a new “investment account for children under 18” that will supposedly, according to the government’s official website, help them to “jumpstart the American Dream.” In Trump’s own words “This is a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation. And they’ll really be getting a big jump on life.” Unmentioned are numerous traps and problems.
The big enticement for parents to create a Trump account applies to children born from 2025-2028. They will supposedly receive a $1,000 to be placed into their Trump account even if the parents are worth billions.
For older children, born between 2016-2024 and not eligible for the $1,000, the lure for starting a Trump account is being provided by the Dell Foundation. $250 will be placed in a child’s account if the kid lives in “ZIP codes where median household incomes are below $150,000 per year.”
Those who designed the official government website with the title “Trump Accounts Jumpstart the American Dream” appear to give Trump credit for the eventual disbursement of the $1,000. Providing no indication that any of the money to fund this program comes out of his own personal funds, the language on the website suggests it does. “Each account provides eligible children with a $1,000 gift courtesy of Donald Trump.”
However, the source of the funding is clarified by the IRS news release on December 2, 2025.
“…the federal government will make a one-time $1,000 pilot program contribution to the Trump Account of each eligible child for whom an election is made, who is a U.S. citizen and who is born on or after Jan. 1, 2025, through Dec. 31, 2028.”
In other words, taxpayers, not Trump, are covering the costs.
The $1,000 for the new little one is not necessarily guaranteed. Scroll down the same official government website and read “Eligible children born from 2025 to 2028 may receive a $1,000 pilot deposit from the U.S. Treasury.” (emphasis added)
Parents and relatives as a group will be allowed to donate up to $5,000 a year into a Trump account starting on July 4, 2026, for which they will not receive a tax benefit. The child won’t be able to use the money until turning 18. Before then, for most, that money is frozen in the account and can’t even be used if a hardship arises as indicated in a question and answer in the IRS Notice 2025-68 page 31.
Q. E-2: During the growth period [the years before the beneficiary turns 18], is it permissible for a trustee to make a hardship distribution from a Trump account or to close a Trump account and distribute the account funds to the account beneficiary?
A. E-2: No. During the growth period, the only permitted distributions are those described [such as death of the child] in Q&A E-1 of this notice. Thus, a trustee is not permitted to make a hardship distribution from a Trump account or to close the Trump account and distribute the account funds to the account beneficiary. (emphasis added)
Hence, if the child is starving to death, about to become homeless, or needs life-saving surgery, none of the money in the Trump account can be used.
When the money can be distributed to the account holder, which is the year the beneficiary turns 18, the income earned as well as the initial $1,000 and other contributions that have not been taxed (unlike parent contributions) will be subject to taxation in ways similar to Individual Retirement Accounts. That means the money in the Trump account available for one’s use to “jumpstart the American Dream” will, after taxes, be reduced. Additionally, unless the Trump account money is put to an eligible use such as paying for college or for purchasing a first home, the money withdrawn that is taxed will also be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty (IRS Notice 2025-68 pages 5-6) unless the beneficiary is at least 591/2 years old.
The money in the account, according to the IRS Notice 2025-68 page 22, must be in an “eligible investment” which is a stock index mutual fund or ETF [Exchange-Traded Fund that holds assets like a mutual fund] invested in “the Standard and Poor’s 500 stock market index, or any other index which is comprised of equity investments in primarily U.S. companies.” The money can’t be invested more conservatively into a certificate of deposit or Treasury note. The investment requirement of the Trump account can be risky because money can be lost if the stock market goes down resulting in the claimed “jumpstart” on the American Dream diminishing or even vanishing. Additionally, from the standpoint of an individual’s self-interest, one will want the fund into which the money is invested to be profitable and grow. In our capitalist system, that generally means that most, if not all the companies whose stock is held by the fund, have management that effectively exploits their workforce and the environment.
The tax form (at least its current draft) used to register a Trump account and, if eligible, to request the $1,000, is being put to a promotional use. It is to be Form 4547 obviously used to represent Trump being the 45th and 47th president. And it has the title “Trump Account Election(s),” likely the first time a president’s name appears in a tax form’s title.
Got to wonder how much taxpayer money is being spent on people getting paid for the time they devote to coming up with the Trump account promotion and tax provisions. The IRS Notice 2025-68 that explains many of the rules for Trump accounts is 44 pages and has the title “Notice of intent to issue regulations with respect to section 530A Trump accounts.” That means that regulations covering the provisions of this law will likely consist of even more pages and will be issued by the anti-regulatory administration that seeks to eliminate all the red tape.
OMG. Can all of this be for real?
Though some money may come from sources other than the kid’s family like the Dell Foundation, how many families will have money to contribute to their kids Trump accounts? Will the $1,000 or the Dell Foundation $250 entice people to sign up? Are people prepared to tie up money for close to 18 years?
Are Trump accounts another public relations scam that bolsters Trump’s ego and serves the financial industry?
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