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I think Trump is doing a pretty good job with the economy. I think Obama had a big part to do with getting the economy back on its feet after 2008. I do think it's bad that Trump keeps spending a lot of money and putting the country in more debt.

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I believe that Trump is doing somewhat of a good job for the economy but Obama should be mainly thanked because he helped recover the country in 2008.

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I think that both Obama and Trump can be thanked for how the economy is doing. Obama i feel laid the ground work for Trump and than Trump finished what Obama had already started, making our economy better that it has been in a while.

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The economy is booming! Even though stocks have taken a dramatic drop because of Tariffs, Donald Trump has done a great job bringing back jobs to the USA. We are due for a recession soon so I'm not to surprised by the stocks dropping.

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I think both Obama and Trump should get credit for the economy. Although they both did vastly different things to help it, they both worked. I think the combination of their policies helped us in the end.

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I do think Obama did have something to do with the economy recovering after 2008, but Trump has also done a great job our economy in the two years he's been in office.

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I believe that both Obama and Trump have the right to claim credit for the economy growing. Obama was the one in office when the growth started but when Trump took office the growth continued. I do not believe that either one should solely get the credit.

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Democrats puts blame on the Republicans. The New York Times states, " As Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump’s advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president’s divisive style."

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A series of controversies over the summer has driven President Trump's approval rating below 40 percent and kept Republicans from being able to campaign on a message of economic success. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON - As Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump's advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P. retirements and lawmakers placing the blame squarely on the president's divisive style.

Yet Republican leaders do agree on one surprising element in the battle for Congress: They cannot rely on the booming economy to win over undecided voters.

To the dismay of party leaders, the healthy economy and Mr. Trump have become countervailing forces. The decline in unemployment and soaring gross domestic product, along with the tax overhaul Republicans argue is fueling the growth, have been obscured by the president's inflammatory moves on immigration, Vladimir V. Putin and other fronts, party leaders say.

These self-inflicted wounds since early summer have helped push Mr. Trump's approval ratings below 40 percent and the fortunes of his party down with them.

"This is very much a referendum on the president," Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said of the November election. "If we had to fight this campaign on what we accomplished in Congress and on the state of the economy, I think we'd almost certainly keep our majority."

Glen Bolger, a leading Republican pollster working on several top races this year, was even blunter: "People think the economy is doing well, but that's not what they're voting on - they're voting on the chaos of the guy in the White House."

Democrats still face challenges of their own, namely the unpopularity of Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and the party's tilt left on issues like immigration, both of which could chill support from some otherwise persuadable voters. And the threat of a Democratic majority impeaching the president, which Mr. Trump is eager to raise, could rouse some of his supporters who otherwise may not show up in a year when he's not on the ballot.

Even so, Mr. Bolger and many other prominent Republicans now believe they are likely to lose the House, where they have a 23-seat majority and as many as 60 seats are being fiercely contested by Democrats. The party is preparing to shift advertising money away from some of their most beleaguered incumbents toward a set of races in somewhat more favorable territory. In the narrowly divided Senate, both parties see eight or nine seats, most of them held by Democrats, on a knife's edge.

And instead of attempting to highlight positive economic news like the 3.9 percent unemployment rate, Republicans have turned to a scorched-earth campaign against the Democrats in a bid to save their House majority and salvage their one-seat edge in the Senate.

Republican electioneering groups, including the Congressional Leadership Fund "super PAC" and the National Republican Congressional Committee, have spent millions in recent weeks attacking Democratic candidates in intensely personal terms. The committees, along with some Republican candidates, have blasted one Democratic hopeful in New York for rap lyrics he once wrote; branded another, in Pennsylvania, as a "trust fund baby" and "tax dodger"; and aired commercials featuring veterans in wheelchairs to sow doubts about the patriotism of some Democratic nominees.

The Republican lurch away from economic issues amounts to a bet on the politics of Trump-style cultural division as a means of driving up conservative turnout and disqualifying some Democratic candidates among more moderate voters.

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Speaker Paul D. Ryan is one of 40 House Republicans who chose not to run again this year. Credit Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Party leaders say the individual attacks are only the first step in a broader campaign to shift the midterms away from the Trump focus and toward the implications of Democratic majorities in Congress.

Laying out the strategy in an interview this week in his Capitol office, Representative Kevin McCarthy, the would-be successor to Speaker Paul D. Ryan, warned that if Democrats took power they would swiftly impeach the president, stymie immigration enforcement and seek to enact universal health care.

"It's just going to be chaos," said Mr. McCarthy, trying to repurpose the sense of tumult that voters do not like about Mr. Trump's administration.

Mr. McCarthy acknowledged House Republicans would suffer losses but predicted they would keep a narrow majority so long as Mr. Trump's approval rating rebounded. He even settled on a specific threshold, saying Mr. Trump's approval rating had to be above 43 percent to hold on to the House - even though, historically, the party out of power usually dominates midterm elections when a president's approval rating is markedly under 50 percent.

"It's week by week of where the weather is at - and it's ever changing," Mr. McCarthy said of the political environment. "Let's just hope it's a sunny day on Election Day."

Yet there are already clouds forming over the Republican-controlled capital, visible in the growing anger between the Trump White House and those in the party aligned with congressional Republicans.

After a summer in which the administration implemented a policy of separating migrant children from their parents, the president sided with Mr. Putin over American intelligence services, and then he showed little sympathy following the death of Senator John McCain, Republican strategists say Mr. Trump is alienating a sizable bloc of moderate and Republican-leaning voters who favor right-of-center economic policies but recoil from the president.

"There's 15 percent of the electorate that's happy with the direction of the country but angry with the president," said Corry Bliss, who runs the Congressional Leadership Fund.

But this sort of talk infuriates Mr. Trump's aides, and one senior White House official swiped back at Mr. Bliss, accusing him of attempting to lay the groundwork for deflecting blame for the loss of the House majority. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid about the party's predicament, said the Republicans were facing deep losses because of the 40 House Republicans who chose not to run again - a list, the official pointedly noted, that includes Mr. Ryan himself.

Yet the intraparty finger-pointing goes beyond the skirmishing between the White House and Congress.

Republican strategists affiliated with the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House super PAC, are privately voicing exasperation with the National Republican Congressional Committee for not raising more money, and for being unwilling so far to begin a triage that would transfer resources toward their most viable incumbents. For example, the committee still has $8 million committed to two lawmakers, Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania, who many in the party do not think can win.

And still other party officials have grown frustrated with the Congressional Leadership Fund for what they describe as a tepid effort to defend open seats where incumbent Republicans are retiring. The group is currently spending advertising money in less than a third of the 15 most heavily contested open seats, these Republicans said, putting pressure on other G.O.P. committees to make up the difference in about 10 others.

Democrats see a path to a Senate majority that runs through solidly conservative states like Texas, where Representative Beto O'Rourke is challenging Senator Ted Cruz. Credit Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

Republican officials say privately that the performance of the economy under Mr. Trump has not been a major motivating factor for pro-Trump voters. For some Americans on the right, it may even be contributing to the mood of political apathy that has so alarmed G.O.P. leaders, since voters who are optimistic rarely vote with the intensity of those who are angry or afraid.

America First Action, a political committee aligned with Mr. Trump, conducted a series of focus groups over the summer and concluded the party had a severe voter-turnout problem, brought on in part by contentment about the economy and a refusal by Republicans to believe that Democrats could actually win the midterm elections.

Conservative-leaning voters in the study routinely dismissed the possibility of a Democratic wave election, with some describing the prospect as "fake news," said an official familiar with the research, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the data was not intended to be disclosed. Breaking that attitude of complacency is now the Republicans' top priority, far more than wooing moderates with gentler messaging about economic growth.

So Republicans are turning toward more hard-edge tactics. Incumbents who were widely seen as holding safe seats have ordered up opposition research to try to hurt their Democratic rivals. America Rising, a Republican firm that specializes in finding damaging information on Democrats, is working on three times as many House races as it did in 2016, according to an official with the group.

At a meeting of House Republicans on Thursday, Representative Steve Stivers of Ohio, the N.R.C.C. chair, sought to scare incumbents by running a slide show featuring the excuses losing candidates typically offer up before they lose. (Included in the litany: "I don't need to run negative ads; my constituents know me; my district is different.")

A party official said lawmakers had chipped in $1.2 million for the House campaign committee after the appeal.

Among top Democrats, optimism has soared since Labor Day. Mr. Trump has handed them fodder via his Twitter provocations, and reports of deep internal divisions in his administration have added to a sense of a chaotic presidency - hijacking the news cycle.

Party leaders have closely tracked their leads in several public polls: During a meeting of congressional Democratic leaders on Wednesday evening, a top aide to Ms. Pelosi walked the group through a list of five recent polls that found voters nationally favoring Democratic congressional candidates over Republicans by double-digit margins.

Officials with the main House Democratic super PAC, the House Majority PAC, said their polling in August showed 17 incumbent Republicans trailing and six tied - nearly enough to recapture the majority without even factoring in the open seats the G.O.P. is defending. Strikingly, when the group this month surveyed some of the same districts where Republicans had unleashed a barrage of negative ads, it found that Democratic candidates had slipped only a little and that the races remained within the polling margin of error.

In the Senate, a mood of highly guarded hopefulness has spread among Democrats, who see a path to a majority that runs through a mix of right-leaning and solidly conservative states. By this point in the cycle, some in the party had feared that several incumbents would be headed to certain defeat, and once-inviting takeover opportunities would have slipped off the map, including in Tennessee and Texas. But both of those states remain competitive and a group of rust belt Senate Democrats, like Sherrod Brown of Ohio, seem secure.

"Despite the difficulty of the map's geography, if there's a big wave I think our odds are very, very good," Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said in an interview, adding that when "you're feeling the wave in September it rarely changes much by November."

And the main reason Democrats are sensing a wave is obvious to party veterans.

"He won't allow himself to get credit for the economy," said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to President Trump. Mr. Carville, who fashioned Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" mantra in 1992, continued: "He's made himself bigger than the economy. Every conversation starts and ends with Trump."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Chaos May Offset Economy's Surge, Costing the G.O.P.. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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The Economy Is Humming, but Trump Is Tweeting. Republicans Are Worried.

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WASHINGTON - As Democrats enter the fall midterm campaign with palpable confidence about reclaiming the House and perhaps even the Senate, tensions are rising between the White House and congressional Republicans over who is to blame for political difficulties facing the party, with President Trump's advisers pointing to the high number of G.O.P.

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This article talks about Trumps released the jobs were becoming better before it was actually going to be told to the people. Trump is very excited that the jobs are becoming better for the people. The New York Times states, "WASHINGTON — President Trump broke years of presidential protocol on Friday morning with a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department, an hour before the report was released."

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President Trump on Thursday. Mr. Trump appeared to foreshadow the strength of the most recent jobs report with a post on Twitter on Friday morning. Credit Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON - President Trump broke years of presidential protocol on Friday morning with a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department, an hour before the report was released.

While the White House brushed off any notion that Mr. Trump had crossed a line, legal experts said the tweet raised possible insider trading concerns and economists said it was a blatant misuse of presidential power.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics routinely releases its monthly employment report on the first Friday of the month. The night before, under longstanding tradition, the president and several senior administration officials - including the Treasury secretary and the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers - are briefed on the numbers, which they are not supposed to disclose until the report is made public at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time the next morning.

But Mr. Trump, who was briefed on the numbers Thursday evening, appeared to foreshadow the strength of the latest report on Friday morning on Twitter.

"Looking forward to seeing the unemployment numbers at 8:30 this morning," Mr. Trump posted at 7:21 a.m.

Social media users saw the message as evidence that Mr. Trump had seen the numbers, and that they were good. Sure enough, the report showed that the economy added 223,000 jobs in May, above forecasters' expectations. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.8 percent - the lowest level in 18 years.

White House officials downplayed the president's tweet. Larry Kudlow, the chairman of the National Economic Council, said that he had shared the jobs report on Thursday evening with the president but expressed no concern with Mr. Trump's tweet on Friday morning.

"I don't think he gave anything away, incidentally. I think this is all according to routine, law and custom," Mr. Kudlow said on CNBC.

But economists criticized Mr. Trump for breaking a longstanding practice, and possibly a federal regulation.

Because it is widely known that presidents have early access to jobs numbers, and because Mr. Trump has never before tweeted that he was "looking forward" to a report release, "I would be willing to bet that some people traded off of this," said Thomas O. Gorman, a former Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement official who is now a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney.

"The fact of the matter is, he knew it was good, it was good, and he signaled it," Mr. Gorman said, referring to the number in the jobs report. "You don't have to say, by the way, company A is going to buy company B. You can just signal it. The word selection is very clear. He knew exactly what he was doing."

A spokesman for the Securities and Exchange Commission would not comment on whether the agency was aware of any unusual market activity before the report was released. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not respond to a similar request for comment.

On Wall Street, where the 8:30 a.m. release on Jobs Friday is a major event for the markets each month, traders disagreed on whether the tweet actually moved prices, which fluctuate constantly and make it difficult to determine if any single event pushed them in one direction or another.

But observers also said it is clear that watching the presidential Twitter feed is now being incorporated into the ritual of preparing for the Bureau of Labor Statistics update.

"I think the markets certainly paid attention," said Aaron Kohli, a government bond market strategist at BMO Capital Markets in New York, of the president's Friday tweet. "And will do so next month should there be a tweet, or lack of one."

Many trading firms already use computers to keep track of social media traffic in the hope of garnering trading signals.

"Most sophisticated firms these days are following Twitter, and in the age of Trump, a lot of firms have trading models that are following him," said Larry Tabb, founder of the Tabb Group, a financial markets research and advisory firm.

Still, some expressed concern that the president could turn one of the most important signals about the health of the economy into a trading game that could destabilize financial markets by prompting a rapid sell-off in advance of future jobs reports if Mr. Trump did not tout the upcoming release.

Before he became president, and began to celebrate strong jobs reports, Mr. Trump actively worked to undermine confidence in economic data. Throughout his run for the White House and even in the months before he took office, he often dismissed the reports as "fiction."

Washington has long tried to prevent market-moving data like the employment numbers from being prematurely released. In 1985, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a regulation governing the release of embargoed federal data like the jobs report, including a requirement that employees of the executive branch not comment publicly on the data until an hour after its release.

"All employees of the executive branch who receive prerelease distribution of information and data estimates as authorized above are responsible for assuring that there is no release prior to the official release time," the regulation states. "Except for members of the staff of the agency issuing the principal economic indicator who have been designated by the agency head to provide technical explanations of the data, employees of the executive branch shall not comment publicly on the data until at least one hour after the official release time."

It is unclear whether the regulation applies to Mr. Trump, some legal experts said. "I would be very cautious about assuming this applies to the president, who is generally not considered an employee" of the executive branch, said Adam Scales, a law professor at Rutgers University who teaches administrative law.

The Republican National Committee responded to the criticism of Mr. Trump on Friday afternoon by flagging an evening speech by President Barack Obama on Feb. 5, 2009, the night before the first jobs report release of Mr. Obama's presidency.

The economy was shedding jobs rapidly in the depths of the Great Recession and Mr. Obama, pushing for passage of an economic stimulus bill, told a congressional Democratic retreat that "Tomorrow we're expecting another dismal jobs report, on top of the half a million jobs that were lost last month, on top of the half a million jobs that were lost the month before that, on top of the 2.6 million jobs that were lost last year."

Even before the numbers were released on Friday, economists said they were stunned at the prospect that Mr. Trump was giving hints about the report's content, which fast-acting traders in financial markets could seize on to place bets on an optimism-fueled market surge.

Austan Goolsbee, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for a year during President Obama's first term, called Mr. Trump's tweet "totally inappropriate". If he or another official had sent a tweet like the president's, he said, he would have been investigated.

"It's more than just a breakdown of a norm, this is really an abuse of the office," Mr. Goolsbee said.

Other economists went further, raising the possibility that if Mr. Trump was willing to give Twitter users a premature hint at the strength of report, he could also have shared the numbers with a more select group even earlier.

"President Trump was sent the jobs numbers in advance," said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government who was Mr. Obama's final chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. "Sharing them with the public is destabilizing and inappropriate. A bigger concern is if he was bragging about them privately to his friends last night - friends who could make millions on the information."

Mr. Furman said during his tenure, he briefed the president in person in the early evening if Mr. Obama was in Washington, and usually gave him the numbers over a secure phone line if the president was traveling. Mr. Obama also received a paper summary of the next day's major economic releases around 7 p.m.

Mr. Furman said he and other officials took the security of the numbers seriously. When he started at the White House, Mr. Furman said, he signed a memorandum of understanding with the Labor Department agreeing only to share the numbers with the handful of people authorized to see them. He said he did not believe the information was formally classified, but the staff treated it that way, discussing it via a secure line.

Letting the numbers leak, Mr. Furman said, risked undermining public confidence in the integrity of economic data.

Jim Tankersley reported from Washington and Matt Phillips from New York. Ben Casselman contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: So Good President Can't Wait To Tell You. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Trump Touts Jobs Report Before Official Release, Breaking Protocol

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WASHINGTON - President Trump broke years of presidential protocol on Friday morning with a tweet that signaled a strong jobs report was on its way from the Labor Department, an hour before the report was released.

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Trump talks about how the economy is growth is becoming to be way better than before and how the Democrats are lying and failing to see it

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Trump states that the jobs are becoming better for the people and there are now more higher paying jobs that the people can now work to make a better living

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Failing New York Times agrees on how Trump is changing the economy for the better. The Republicans and New York Times and the Senators agrees that Trump is doing an amazing job to change and make the economy better. But The House of Representative states, "There are, to be sure, reasons that the economy could slow. First is the real possibility that Democrats take over the House of Representatives in November. Promises to impeach President Trump, roll back tax cuts and reverse significant regulatory relief would go a long way toward undermining the confidence with which CEOs are investing today." So they really don't like what he is doing to the economy and they feel the change is not that big.

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Remember when Mitt Romney Willard (Mitt) Mitt Romney 5 themes to watch for in 2020 fight for House The 2020 presidential race: A 2004 redux? Beto O'Rourke seen as a top contender in 2020: poll MORE was trashed for saying that "corporations are people?"

President Obama, who claimed to corner the market on compassion, never understood that it is people - consumers, people who manage big companies and people who own smaller firms - that ultimately lead the economy forward.

We are in the midst of an authentic economic boom. Why? Because those same people are making decisions to hire and invest, decisions that emerge from their growing confidence.

The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), which conducts regular surveys of small business owners, reported this week that optimism among its members in August had hit an all-time high.

Optimism topped the prior record set in 1983, a year in which Ronald Reagan was president and GDP grew at 4.6 percent. What happened next? Growth jumped in 1984 to 7.2 percent.

Soaring optimism and an accelerating economy are extraordinary achievements, especially given that the liberal media is not exactly cheerleading from the sidelines.

Buried in every article reporting that wage growth was the strongest for nine years or that productivity is finally beginning to increase are dark warnings about the impact of trade conflicts or the threat of looming inflation.

It's understandable; Republicans are campaigning with surging growth at their back, and the anti-Trump press certainly does not want to help them out. But those ominous warning can take a toll on sentiment.

Still, the numbers are undeniable. A record number of people are quitting their jobs, confident something better will come along. Job openings are at a record high; consumer confidence, according to the Conference Board, was the highest in August since 2000; and capital investment is ratcheting up.

Some are beginning to hint that there's more good news to come. One of Wall Street's leading economists sent a report to clients this week saying various industries are still strengthening, with the banner: "Strength of U.S. Economy May Be Underestimated."

This growth potential has been underestimated by the likes of Larry Summers who said our growth would forever be tempered by "secular stagnation" or by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi Kobach 'very concerned' voter fraud may have happened in North Carolina Ocasio-Cortez rips presence of lobbyists at orientation event Dem McCready withdraws concession as election fraud claims hit North Carolina race MORE (D-Calif.) who scoffed that lower taxes won't help the middle class.

But the impact of the Trump agenda is not underestimated by business leaders who protested in vain against the regulatory assault from the Obama White House and complained that high tax rates were impeding their competitiveness.

There are, to be sure, reasons that the economy could slow. First is the real possibility that Democrats take over the House of Representatives in November. Promises to impeach President Trump Donald John Trump Kobach 'very concerned' voter fraud may have happened in North Carolina Trump Jr. makes fun of Ocasio-Cortez by sharing meme that suggests socialists eat dogs Trump's 2020 campaign will be headquartered at Trump Tower: report MORE , roll back tax cuts and reverse significant regulatory relief would go a long way toward undermining the confidence with which CEOs are investing today.

Also, there is no question that the trade skirmishes with China, the EU and our North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) partners have alarmed some sectors.

It looks likely that the NAFTA reboot will be put to bed soon ( Canada is hinting at flexibility with respect to its steep dairy tariffs), and there is apparently progress behind the scenes with the EU.

China continues to press a hard line with negotiations, but we are skeptical they will allow their economy to slow further just to save face. If the EU and the U.S. move together toward significant World Trade Organization (WTO) reforms, the Chinese will suffer. Our guess is they will forestall that outcome by coming back to the table.

Trade tensions are not as concerning for those running small businesses as they are for big corporations, since the little guys generally have less exposure to overseas markets.

Threats of tariffs and disrupted trade agreements may alarm the head of General Motors but are unlikely to mean much to the person who owns several car washes or McDonald's franchises.

That person is more concerned with tax rates, materials costs, health-care costs for employees, the availability of workers and the endless haggling with federal and local authorities over safety and labor rules. Those issues are real, and some, like prices for raw materials or the difficulty filling jobs, are increasingly troublesome.

But, for the most part, those problems are being buried by surging demand. Business has, according to many, never been better.

The NFIB survey showed hiring plans setting a new record, while the number of owners declaring the time is right for expansion tied the all-time high reached in May.

Sales, investment and earnings are breaking records. According to NFIB, "August is the ninth consecutive strong month of reported sales gains after years of low or negative numbers."

If President Obama is puzzled why some give President Trump credit for the surging economy, it comes down to this: During his eight years in office, business leaders never felt confident about the future. It takes confidence to build a new plant or gear up for higher sales.

Today, as lower taxes make firms more profitable and lighter regulations allow them to be more agile and focused on satisfying customers rather than Uncle Sam, managers are more willing to plunge ahead. Last month, a record number of business owners decided to build inventories - making the bet that higher demand is here to stay.

NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a press release, "At the beginning of this historic run, Index gains were dominated by expectations...Now the Index is dominated by real business activity that makes GDP grow: job creation plans, job openings, string capital spending plans, record inventory investment plans, and earnings."

This is exactly what the Trump economic plan of lower taxes and lighter regulations was meant to create. It wasn't a shot in the dark. It had happened before, under President Reagan.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. For 15 years, she has been a columnist for The Fiscal Times, Fox News, the New York Sun and numerous other organizations.

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national federation of independent business

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Thank goodness Trump gets what Obama failed to grasp on economy

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Remember when Mitt Romney Willard (Mitt) Mitt Romney 5 themes to watch for in 2020 fight for House The 2020 presidential race: A 2004 redux? Beto O'Rourke seen as a top contender in 2020: poll MORE was trashed for saying that "corporations are people?"

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The New York Times basically agrees on how well Trump is doing with changing the economy.

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Trump is very proud of the roaring economy he claims he brought to America, he also gave his supporters a big thanks for their part. Trump also says that a new poll puts his popularity over 90%.

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Trump also claimed that his approval was above 90% which is remarkable. Obviously his ratings are much lower and may even be bad, lower ratings. We don't know where Trump got this number and we don't know what factors affect the rating either. Some Republican party ratings could be putting him around that mark Trump is always very confident and boastful of his success, most of the time his statements are true and he does do a good job as president, although he has a tendency to make things seem a bit better than what they are.
Another link directly citing the tweet - https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/30/donald-trump/has-donald-trump-had-highest-poll-numbers-any-gop-/

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A good economy isn't making Trump popular and probably never will. It's not in his DNA to be decent, classy or respectful of our fragile democracy.

What's a guy have to do to be popular?

Unemployment is 3.9 percent. Gasoline prices are up, but at $2.84 (AAA's national average), they still seem far from "ouch" territory. Retailers, restaurants and summer vacation spots say business is good. The stock market is once again touching all-time highs. On Wednesday, the government said the economy grew at a 4.2 percent pace in the second quarter - faster than first thought. It's the fifth best quarter in fact, for the last decade.

And yet, says an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, 62 percent of Americans say the nation is on the wrong track. As for the man at the top, President Donald Trump's approval - as measured by the FiveThirtyEight average of all polls - is an anemic 41.5 percent.

When the economy's this good, the president usually gets the credit. In 1999 and 2000, during the last two years of Bill Clinton's presidency, the stock market was booming, gas was cheap, people had money to burn. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.9 percent. Sounds familiar, right? Yet Clinton's approval was in the 60s, at times hitting 66 percent - 25 percentage points higher than Trump now.

Bad Trump numbers are good for Democrats

These numbers spell trouble as the November midterms approach. The president's name won't be on any ballot, but midterms are always about the man in the Oval Office. FiveThirtyEight and two closely watched political forecasters - the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and the Cook Political Report - all say the stage is set for a Democratic takeover of the House. This in turn could mean - as the president himself acknowledged on Fox News last week - that he could face impeachment next year.

Here's the question: With the best economy we've seen in a generation, why is Trump reviled and disrespected by most of the country?

The answer lies within Trump himself. He is reviled and disrespected because he gives reason to revile and disrespect. His self-constructed dilemma is this: If he would just tone it down, take the high road, show, for once, that he is capable of class and decency and integrity and honesty, then his numbers would begin to inch up.

More: The real scandal isn't collusion with Russia, it's everything about Donald Trump

Trump trillion-dollar-plus deficits are putting America on a path to fiscal ruin

Pardon Trump to get him out of the White House? America should make that deal

But Trump can't do these things because that's not who he is. It's not in his DNA to be honest. It's not in his DNA to be decent. Just ask the family of the late Sen. John McCain, the Gold Star parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan,the students of Trump University, or members of any minority. We disapprove of Donald Trump because he equivocates on matters that are beyond equivocation.

Public opinion is not just eroding among Americans. Fact: At the beginning of Trump's presidency, 64 percent of the world had confidence in the U.S. president; at the end of June 2017 - just five months later - only 22 percent did. The Pew global survey of 37 nations added that those holding a favorable view of the United States slipped by 15 points to 49 percent.

Trump and his nativist "America First" followers might say who cares what the world thinks? My response: Try asking someone you've dissed for a favor. Then there is this: 41 million American jobs - 1 in 5 - are linked to trade (and the casualties of Trump's trade wars already have begun).

Who cares what other countries think?

Perhaps our head-in-the-sand president and his band of eager believers might want to acknowledge that we need the rest of the world just as it needs us. Here are two questions for them: 1) What happens when and if we need help from countries that Trump has alienated with his antics? And 2) How does the world laughing at us help with the whole "Make America Great Again" thing?

I've said it before and it bears repeating: Whenever Trump's supporters are confronted with these realities, their default response is, "Well, we know he's not Mother Teresa, but unemployment is down and stocks are up." It's acceptable, then, to lower our standards with such a trade-off? It's OK to have a president who surrounds himself with felons and corner-cutting grifters? Who is genetically incapable of instilling pride in more than just a small subset of the country? Who mocks the ethos that once made us the envy of the world?

This is why even a roaring economy can't lift Donald Trump's numbers.

I do give the president credit for something very important: He has reminded us that the values we cherish must never be taken for granted. He is a bull running about unchecked in our fragile china shop of a democracy. His base, blind to the lies, selfishness and shameless self-dealing, doesn't seem to mind. For this, they must be written off.

For the rest of us, the Trump era can be seen as a clarion call for change. Trump is not the cause of our problems but the result of them. We can and must do better - and when we do, that's when America will be great again.
Paul Brandus, founder and White House bureau chief of West Wing Reports, is the author of "Under This Roof: The White House and the Presidency" and a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @WestWingReport​​​​​​
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Roaring economy isn't lifting Donald Trump approval rating. He has only himself to blame.

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A good economy isn't making Trump popular and probably never will. It's not in his DNA to be decent, classy or respectful of our fragile democracy. What's a guy have to do to be popular? Unemployment is 3.9 percent. Gasoline prices are up, but at $2.84 (AAA's national average), they still seem far from "ouch" territory.

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The article here shows that in many cases Trump's economy is doing well, the factors they show are not always a sign of a "roaring" economy, but the economy is generally doing well.

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The first estimate for June quarter's GDP growth was released Friday morning, showing growth of 4.1%. This was a solid increase from the 2.2% first quarter print, but a little short of most projections. To smooth out any one quarter's spike or drop, the U.S. economy grew 2.9% on a trailing four quarter basis, matching 2015's result. This Forbes article does an analysis of the quarter's growth.

One short-term unknown: How much of the increase is due to tax cuts? And could they be a sugar rush that will wear off? The resulting yearly Federal deficit to $1 trillion (or more starting next year) could have significant negative long-term consequences.

Trump's tariff wars could impact the economy not just in the short-term but also in the long-term, as countries may adjust their domestic policies if they think the U.S. is not a reliable trading partner. For example, think of China becoming more focused on increasing soybean production and therefore having a long-term impact on U.S. farmers.

I have developed a publicly available Google document, which tracks over 100 indicators to help evaluate the progress and potential of "Make America Great Again."

Below are a few of those indicators that I think are worth highlighting.
GDP growth helped by exports but hurt by inventories
A couple of items from the GDP report to keep in mind: In any given quarter, the major components (personal consumption, private domestic investment, inventory changes and imports & exports) can fluctuate significantly, as they did this quarter. One key swing factor this quarter was inventory declines subtracting 1% from the result, but this was offset by exports adding 1.1%. Companies trying to adjust to the tariffs may have impacted these two items.

Note that the Bureau of Economic Analysis has revised its historical figures. The trailing four-quarter GDP growth was 2.845%, but has been rounded up to 2.9% in the graph.
The S&P 500 is being buffeted by tariffs and higher interest rates
The S&P 500 is up 32% since Trump was elected and is just under 6% for the year. July's increase of 4% accounts for over two-thirds of this year's gain. The implementation of tariffs and an increase in interest rates have caused the stock market to be more volatile this year and could offset the tax cut benefits.
Unemployment rate is getting about as low as it can go
The unemployment rate hit a high of 10% in October 2009 around the depth of the Great Recession, and it declined seven consectutive years during Obama's presidency. It has continued this downtrend trend and hit a low of 3.8% in May this year before inching up to 4% in June.
Job growth continues its five year trend
With 1.29 million jobs added in the first six months this year, the country is on pace to exceed 2016 and 2017 figures. It could be difficult to exceed 2015's 2.71 million due to the challenges companies have finding people with the right skills. Additionally, the administration's tightening immigration policy could put a damper on not just having enough people for organizations to hire, but also having the people with the right talents and expertise.
Hourly wages trending up but still below expectations
Hourly wages have moved up from the 2% zone during 2009- 2014 to the 2.5% to 2.9% range the past three-plus years. One reason they haven't moved higher (as many have expected they should due to the tight labor market) may be due to higher paid individuals leaving the workforce who are then replaced by newer entrants at lower wages.
Manufacturing jobs are on the rebound
In the first half of this year, there have been 174,000 manufacturing jobs added. This is almost as many as any full year over the past decade and should easily surpass any added during Obama's administration as the economy recovered from the Great Recession.
Coal jobs have halted their downward trend
At its recent peak in 2011, there were 89,400 people employed in the coal industry, declining to 49,700 in 2016. There are now over 162 million people employed in the civilian labor force and almost 3.5 million jobs have been created since 2016. Over the same 18-month time-frame, the coal industry has added 3,500 jobs for a total of 53,200, making up 0.033% of the U.S. total workforce.
Federal deficit shooting above $1 trillion a year
The federal deficit peaked at $1.4 trillion in 2009 due to the Great Recession and fell to a low of $438 billion in 2015. It increased to $666 billion in fiscal 2017 (Obama's last budget), but due to the Republican and Trump's tax cuts it looks to hit $1 trillion in fiscal 2019. Unless the economy can consistently generate 3% or greater growth the deficits will likely remain above $1 trillion. This is a tall order because the economy will slow or contract (historically we are overdue for this) and the deficit will balloon even higher.
U.S. trade deficit has increased under Trump's watch
After hovering around $500 billion during the last three years of Obama's presidency, it rose to $552 billion in 2017 and was $570 billion over the past twelve months. While Trump rails on trade deficits, the larger deficit is being driven by the strength of the U.S. economy (a good thing). He is correct that certain industries and citizens are negatively impacted by other countries trade practices. However, he overlooks that U.S. consumer's benefit from products being sourced from other countries.
Core CPI
The Consumer Price Index, or CPI, has moved above the Fed's 2% target. The all items CPI increased 2.9% year over year as of June, however, energy increased at a 12% rate. When food and energy are removed, since they can be volatile, the Core CPI in June rose at a 2.3% rate. If Core CPI remains above 2%, this is another reason that the Fed will continue to increase interest rates.
Oil prices have risen significantly but not too surprising
Oil prices have increased 65% since Trump took office. Except for a drop to about $30 in early 2016, oil prices in the mid-$40's had been the norm for about two years after falling from over $100 in 2014. It took a few years for supply and demand to get back in balance. Prices have increased as U.S. and global economies rebound and OPEC holding pretty well to production quotas.
Housing prices have risen over the past 6 years
Housing prices fell and then were flat from 2008 to 2012 as the Great Recession hit this segment of the economy very hard. Since March 2012, per the Case-Schiller 20-city composite index, it has been on a steady upwards climb. This has continued during Trump's time in office with the latest reading showing a 6.5% year-over-year increase.
Mortgage rates are tracking the 10 year U.S. Treasury interest rate
Mortgage rates have increased over one full percentage point since Trump took office. As the Fed has raised rates and started to shrink its balance sheet, the 10-year Treasury interest rate has also increased by a full percentage point. Since 30-year mortgage rates are closely tied to the 10-year Treasury, it makes sense that buyers and refinancers are having to pay a higher rate.

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Trump's Economic Scorecard: 18 Months Into His Presidency

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The first estimate for June quarter's GDP came in at a solid 4.1%, but a little short of most projections. On a trailing four quarter basis, the economy has grown 2.9%. Key items going forward are will tariffs and rising interest rates offset the tax cuts.

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Mainstream Media tries to put  Trump accomplishments as Obama accomplishment and Trump states that Obama had the weakest recovery since the Great Depression.

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This article talks about how Trump and Obama argue over who really started the growth and Economy change. Trump thinks he has done the most work to change the economy but Obama disagrees. Obama thinks that all the of jobs, and employment rate has still been the same since 2015 & 2016. The Republicans agree with Trump in call it a miracle but Obama had to remind them of the true facts.

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Two presidents boasted about the strength of the American economy this weekend, each claiming credit for the steady growth and declining unemployment as President Donald Trump seeks to parlay the nation's economic success into a winning midterm message for his embattled party - and former President Barack Obama reminds voters just when the boom began.

"When you hear how great the economy's doing right now, let's just remember when this recovery started," Obama said on Friday in a speech that marked his first foray into the upcoming elections. "I mean, I'm glad it's continued, but when you hear about this economic miracle that's been going on, when the job numbers come out, monthly job numbers, suddenly Republicans are saying it's a miracle. I have to kind of remind them, actually, those job numbers are the same as they were in 2015 and 2016."

Trump disparaged the speech, at one point saying he fell asleep during it.

"If the Democrats got in with their agenda in November of almost two years ago, instead of having 4.2 up, I believe honestly you'd have 4.2 down," Trump said Friday night, speaking of GDP growth. "It was the weakest recovery in the history of our country since, I guess, to be totally specific, because I'm not sure they've gone any further, since the Great Depression."

"The Economy is soooo good, perhaps the best in our country's history," Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday.

Earlier this summer, he stood on the South Lawn of the White House and boasted about achieving a "turnaround of historic proportions" - an "economic miracle."

The Economy is soooo good, perhaps the best in our country's history (remember, it's the economy stupid!), that the Democrats are flailing & lying like CRAZY! Phony books, articles and T.V. "hits" like no other pol has had to endure-and they are losing big. Very dishonest people!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 10, 2018

The economy's success or failure depends on much more than who sits in the Oval Office, but let's take a look at the facts here.

Was the economy struggling when Trump took office?

Absolutely not. Trump inherited a booming economy with low unemployment and steady job growth - an easy win on day one - and he quickly claimed credit. Early in his presidency, Trump boasted about job gains starting from his election onward, crediting Obama's final months as his own.

It is extremely unlikely that the GDP could ever have been negative 4.2 percent no matter who was elected in 2016. At the height of the 2009 recession, GDP was at -2.5 percent. It has not been at or above -4.2 percent in 86 years.

The economy was, however, struggling when Obama took office in 2009. He inherited a dismal economy in the middle of a recession that lasted 18 months, facing what many feared would be a depression, and was able to turn it around in the first years of his presidency. The U.S. is now its 10th year of economic growth, and in its longest period of growth with 95 straight months of job creation. The bulk of that decade of growth was under Obama's presidency, and can fairly be credited to him.

Still, as Trump accurately points out, the recovery under Obama was marked by a slower rate of growth than what followed previous recessions, such as the recovery under President Ronald Reagan in 1983 and 1984.

But, what about the Trump effect?

Trump's supporters say he's supercharged the economy. Now in the second year of his presidency, he has passed a major tax bill and rolled back a significant number of regulations, giving the economy another injection of capital - though economists disagree on the how much the tax cuts will really benefit the larger economy and whether it will have lasting effects to the economy.

Trump has surely seen some impressive data points in his first term: GDP growth has reached 4.2 percent, unemployment has reached its lowest point in half a century, and the stock market has reached new heights.

The president and his administration have been eager to tout the numbers. Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, kicked off the White House press briefing on Monday with a slew of charts. He said the growth is not an extension of a trend, but rather a "clear upward trajectory, way above the trend."

Economists aren't buying it: While the tax cuts probably helped inject some cash into the economy - particularly the stock market - the country has largely maintained the growth it saw under Obama.

The numbers Hassett touted, economists said, were cherrypicked to show a trend that economists say they're just not seeing.

"The entire story of claiming some major change in economic activity doesn't ring true," said Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman. "I think there's really very little to point to, and you'd have tell some story based on stock market. Any time the story hinges on the stock market, that means an economist is going to be very much on weak ground."

Hassett did correct Trump, who tweeted Monday morning that "the GDP Rate (4.2%) is higher than the Unemployment Rate (3.9%) for the first time in over 100 years!"

Multiple news organizations had fact checked the president's statement earlier in the day, and found "100 years" to be false. This type of relationship between the GDP and the unemployment rate had not happened in 10 years, Hassett confirmed in response to a question from a reporter.

"You'd have to talk to the president about where the number came from, but the correct number is 10 years," Hassett said. Trump has yet to correct his tweet.

Still, it's impossible to tease out Trump's economy from Obama's this early in the former's presidency. GDP last reached 4.2 percent during Obama's second term. And where workers are concerned, Trump's gains do not yet match his predecessor's. Since Trump took office, the country has added 3.58 million jobs, short of the 3.96 million jobs that were added in the final 19 months of Obama's presidency.

Economies do not grow overnight, or turn on a hair with a new presidency. While Obama can look back on his eight years and see his leadership play out, Trump's effect is still not yet known.

"In my view, the [Trump] effects are going to be much longer term - we shouldn't be looking at these indicators right now, which is just kind of a continuation," Harvard economist Marc Melitz said, citing tariffs and renegotiated trade deals as a top concern down the line. "It's going to generate a lot of instability. Already you can see some of it in terms of higher prices for a lot of materials in the U.S."

Trump has previously said that the U.S. is enjoying the best economy in America's history - a claim other fact checkers have ruled to be false.

But it certainly is one of the best, as Trump tweeted today - thanks in large part to Obama.

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Fact check: Did Trump pull off an 'economic turnaround?'

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Two presidents boasted about the strength of the American economy this weekend, each claiming credit for the steady growth and declining unemployment as President Donald Trump seeks to parlay the nation's economic success into a winning midterm message for his embattled party - and former President Barack Obama reminds voters just when the boom began.