Trump sees the US as a 'disaster' but the numbers tell a different story

Jobs and wages are up and the economy is growing as fast as it did in his first term

- Peter Baker

To hear US President-elect Donald Trump tell it, he is about to take over a nation ravaged by crisis, a desolate hellscape of crime, chaos and economic hardship. "Our country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the world!" he declared on social media last week.

But by many traditional metrics, the America that Trump will inherit from President Joe Biden when he takes the oath for a second time, two weeks from Jan 6, is actually in better shape than that bequeathed to any newly elected president since Mr George W. Bush came into office in 2001.

For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no US troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicates that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.

Jobs are up, wages are rising and the economy is growing as fast as it did during Trump's presidency. Unemployment is as low as it was just before the Covid-19 pandemic and near its historic best. Domestic energy production is higher than it has ever been.

The manufacturing sector has more jobs than under any president since Mr Bush. Drug overdose deaths have fallen for the first time in years. Even inflation, the scourge of the Biden presidency, has returned closer to normal, although prices remain higher than they were four years ago.

"President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets," said Mr Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "The US economy is the envy of the rest of the world, as it is the only significant economy that is growing more quickly post-pandemic than pre-pandemic."