OPINION:
Donald Trump has proven that he knows what it takes to create jobs on a massive scale and ensure that prosperity is shared by all Americans. Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden doesn’t even know how many letters are in the word “jobs.”
President Trump’s record proves that he knows how to create a strong and growing economy that generates enormous opportunity for all Americans to succeed. Prior to the artificial contraction caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the national unemployment rate had been consistently hovering at a 50-year low, and joblessness had reached the lowest level ever recorded for both black and Hispanic workers.
The president’s pro-growth economic policies played a major role in creating the strongest economy in history, which was a particularly impressive feat after eight years of stagnation under the Obama-Biden administration. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for example, cut taxes for every income bracket, particularly benefitting middle-income Americans. The tax bill also created Opportunity Zones, driving tens of billions of dollars in new investment to historically underdeveloped communities in every state, providing jobs, housing, and infrastructure necessary to revive those communities.
Mr. Trump’s emphasis on targeted deregulation has also made it easier and more efficient to create jobs and start new business ventures in this country. In 2012, halfway through the Obama-Biden era, federal regulations were placing a massive burden on the small businesses that account for almost half of all jobs in this country, costing an average of $11,724 each year in regulatory compliance costs for each new employee they hired. The Trump administration slashed tens of billions of dollars worth of harmful, job-killing regulations, saving American households over $3,000 per year on average.
Mr. Biden, however, is vowing to undo these effective policies and replace them with even more crippling taxes and regulations than before, particularly on middle-income Americans. His proposals to eliminate entire industries such as fracking and increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour would be a blow to small- and medium-sized businesses that are only just getting back on their feet after months of pandemic-related lockdowns.
We don’t have to take him at his word, though. Mr. Biden, a career politician who has spent nearly half a century in Washington, has a long history of supporting job-killing policies such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which cost Americans over a million jobs. Mr. Biden also supported normalizing trade relations with China, paving the way for the repressive communist country to secure membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), leading to the loss of over 60,000 American factories and millions more blue collar jobs.
The former vice president clearly has no idea how to manage an economy, and his extensive record of bungling the job as both a senator and vice president proves it. Under the Obama-Biden administration’s job-killing policies, the American middle class experienced a double-whammy in the aftermath of the Great Recession, contributing to this country’s slowest economic recovery since World War II.
While Mr. Biden was still struggling to pinpoint just how many letters are in the word “jobs,” former President Obama entrusted him to manage the administration’s economic recovery agenda — and it turned out to be a miserable failure. President Trump turned things around in a hurry once he took office, and he’s already working the same magic as he orchestrates a “V-shaped” recovery from the artificial coronavirus downturn.
Results matter, and Donald Trump is the only candidate with a proven track record of delivering the sort of results the American people need.
• Jason D. Meister is a political strategist and an advisory board member of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Mr. Meister regularly appears on Fox News, Fox Business, BBC, WSJ Live, One America News, and other media channels.
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