As Trump and Harris Tout Their Economic Records, What Do the Numbers Say?

There’s an old saying that goes, “If you put 10 economists in a room, you’ll get 11 opinions.” The data, meanwhile, shows that if you ask U.S. voters how they feel about the economy, their opinions will largely fall along party lines: Democrats with a Democratic president are more likely to say the economy is good, and vice versa. Voters also rank the economy as their most important issue when choosing a presidential candidate — even though presidents may have less influence over the economy than most people think.

Are these discrepancies making your head spin yet? Mine sure is.

One thing’s for certain: The economy has been a major talking point on the campaign trail for both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Trump wants you to think that President Joe Biden’s administration “destroyed the economy”; he’s repeatedly claimed that his own presidency ushered in “the greatest economy in the history of our country.” Harris is tasked with the difficult feat of running on the economic wins of the Biden-Harris administration, while acknowledging that voters’ current view of the economy is far from rosy. With Election Day less than a week away and Trump and Harris locked in a dead heat, how both candidates spin their economic pitches could tip the balance on the nation’s vote.

Let’s take a look at some facts.

If something reeks of hyperbole, it probably is one. No, the economy under Trump was not “the greatest in the history of our country,” although his presidency saw relatively low inflation. If the 2020 pandemic is excluded, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 2.67 percent, similar to Biden’s 3.4 percent.

But the pandemic did, of course, happen — and when taken into account, GDP growth under Trump was a measly 1.45 percent. An independent commission found that Trump’s botched response to COVID-19 fueled more deaths; the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, has claimed that the administration’s response spurred an economic fallout.

Whatever way you slice it, Trump’s GDP — the value of all goods and services produced in the country each year — was not all that different from his predecessor nor his successor. (GDP growth under Obama averaged a comparable 2.4 percent in his second term.) But GDP is not the only way to assess an economy, nor is it always the most useful figure for considering how a population experiences economic prosperity. And on other measures, Trump still falls short.

On the 2016 campaign trail, Trump promised to pay down the federal debt by implementing new tariffs on foreign imports and using tax cuts to galvanize economic growth. In reality, the deficit rose by almost $7.8 trillion under Trump, the third-biggest increase of any U.S. president, relative to the size of the economy. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that Trump’s new economic plan would increase the deficit by another $7.75 trillion. Harris’s plan would also add to the heaping federal debt pile, but much less at $3.95 trillion.

Federal debt might not be top-of-mind for most voters, but economists say that eventually the deficit growth will become unsustainable, dragging down the national economy. In fact, in 2017, Democratic lawmakers warned that Trump’s tax bill could fuel the deficit and open the door for austerity measures favored by Republicans, such as cutting back on Medicare and Social Security spending.

Indeed, the self-described “King of Debt” pushed the deficit close to World War II levels, while providing tax cuts that disproportionately favored the wealthy. Households in the top one percent of income received, on average, more than $60,000 in 2025 from Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Households in the bottom 60 percent, however, only saw average savings of less than $500. To make matters worse, economists overwhelmingly say that Trump’s current tariff proposal would raise the cost of goods for consumers — directly contradicting his pledge to bring down prices.

Meanwhile, as much as Trump likes to slam Biden on the campaign trail for his purported economic missteps, he’s simultaneously promised a medley of policies that mirror Harris’s own proposals.

For example, both candidates have called for an elimination of taxes on tips. Harris wants to expand the 2021 child tax credit, offering a tax break of up to $6,000 to families with newborns; Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has also proposed a $5,000 child tax credit.

But while Harris has put forward her 82-page plan to build an “opportunity economy,” Trump’s proposals have been piecemeal. For instance, during a speech in Detroit, Michigan, Trump proposed a tax write-off for auto loans; at a rally in Nevada, where there’s a large hospitality industry, Trump promised no taxes on tips. In the absence of a detailed economic agenda, it’s unclear whether Trump has the intention — or ability — to see his promises through.

Democrats, for their part, have also cherrypicked economic data to cast the Biden-Harris economic record in a more favorable light. The current administration frequently touts that a record 15.7 million jobs have been added during Biden’s presidency. This dwarfs Trump’s record — 6.7 million jobs, if pandemic job losses are excluded. But economists disagree on whether Biden can claim full credit for that job gain; after all, it ignores that many of the jobs added were ones that were originally lost during the pandemic. The net gain, then, is closer to 6 million — not all that different from Trump’s.

Behind the straight numbers, though, is a more complex reality. The impact of U.S. job growth hasn’t been uniformly felt, and those who are still without a job have had to deal with cuts to COVID programs, such as expanded unemployment benefits. Small businesses and manufacturers have been cutting thousands of jobs, while 30 percent of new jobs added have been in government roles. Last year, high-profile mass layoffs occurred across industries, including media, tech and finance. More and more Americans are taking on part-time and freelance work or earning less than a living wage — economic realities that aren’t reflected in unemployment rates.

The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, an economic research group dedicated to improving the well-being of lower-income Americans, estimates that “functional unemployment” is nearly 24 percent — far, far higher than the 4 percent unemployment statistic that’s often cited. This number includes people who want a full-time job but work fewer than 35 hours per week, as well as people who earn less than $25,000 per year.

This type of nuance isn’t often captured in mainstream headlines. Over the past year, a frustrating number of articles have pondered some variation of the question: If the data says that the economy is so good, why do Americans think it’s so bad? The answer is often chocked up to inflation, or perhaps people simply not grasping the “truth” of the strong Biden economy.

But Americans are responding to more than just “vibes,” and some economists have noted that GDP growth is not the best way to measure a population’s economic well-being. In 2024, a strong national economy doesn’t always equate to quality of life on the ground. GDP “fails to capture the distribution of income across society,” Amit Kapoor and Bibek Debroy wrote in a 2019 article in the Harvard Business Review. “It cannot differentiate between an unequal and an egalitarian society if they have similar economic sizes.”

Indeed, the U.S. has substantially higher wealth inequality than most other rich countries. The issue cannot be attributed to neither a Biden nor Trump presidency; wealth inequality is an endemic problem in the U.S. Since 1979, household income growth has skewed heavily toward the top. Median pay for middle-wage workers rose just 13.7 percent from 1979 to 2019, compared to a 160 percent rise after inflation for the top 1 percent.

It’s clear that people across the U.S. are fed up with an economy that favors large corporations and the top 1 percent at the expense of everyone else. Trump’s messaging has seized on this sense of anxiety to build support for his campaign, but his record from his last term as president undermines his promises to the working class. In addition to tax cuts for the rich, Trump gutted workplace safety rules, opposed increasing the federal minimum wage, rolled back wage protections for tipped workers and made anti-union appointees to the same board tasked with protecting organized labor.

With November 5 less than a week away, I keep thinking about how, if you put 10 economists in a room, you might get 11 opinions. But if you put 160 million voters in a polling booth — well, we’ll soon find out which opinion resonates the most.