Obama deserves credit for booming economy: Austan Goolsbee
Former Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee and Forbes Media Chairman Steve Forbes debate over who’s to blame for the bullish economy.
During his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump touted the recent economic growth in the U.S. and the new record highs on Wall Street.
Former economic adviser to President Obama, Austan Goolsbee, on Friday said the Obama should be credited for the booming economy and also criticized companies for not paying employees more than what had been promised from the tax cuts.
“When Barack Obama took office, the GDP was shrinking at a minus 8.9% annual rate we were losing 850,000 jobs a month. When Barack Obama leaves and Donald Trump takes over, Donald Trump inherits the lowest unemployment rate of an incoming president in a half century,” he told FOX Business’ David Asman on “After the Bell.”
Goolsbee said that the only thing Trump deserves credit for is not messing up the bullish economy that was given to him by Obama.
“The growth rate of the recovery was about 2.2% under Barack Obama, which is under 3%. The growth rate in 2017 was 2.3%. So there has been an increase, but it was 0.1%,” he said.
Trump believes that the lowered corporate tax rates would spark businesses to invest more and create new jobs, but didn’t anticipate companies giving out bonuses. After the passing of the bill, more than 100 companies such as J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) and Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) have decided to give employees bonuses and hike wages.
House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) described the bonuses that companies were giving their employees as “crumbs.” Goolsbee explained that he thinks Pelosi’s comment was pointed at the companies not giving more than what they had initially promised.
“The one thing that I would highlight here however, is this bill cost about $2 trillion and what we’re seeing with these bonuses is that the firms are passing on less than 4% of what they got in tax cuts to their workers and that was pledged to us that it was going to be 50%,” he said.
Goolsbee concluded by saying in addition to companies paying people less than what they promised, they are also laying people off.