When it comes down to it, many Americans will vote based on the economy. Inflation rates are down, but that still leaves many with too high grocery prices. Trump wants us to believe that he alone created “a great economy,” which was undermined by Biden. What Trump actually did was to continue the economic growth of the Obama years and then give huge tax breaks to the rich, adding trillions to our national debt. As NBC News reported in August 2020, “If you compare key economic indicators from Barack Obama’s second term in office to the first three years of Trump’s time (that is, before the pandemic hit), the data show a continuation of trends, not a dramatic shift. It suggests Trump didn’t build something new; rather he inherited a pretty good situation.”

Trump then presided over a cataclysmic decline in the economy by mismanaging the Covid-19 pandemic, pretending for months that it wasn’t that serious. Overspending during the pandemic, plus the worldwide disruption of the supply chain that followed, has largely led to the spike in inflation. Let’s not fool ourselves. Trump, with his many bankruptcies and wild promises of more budget-smashing tax cuts, along with tariffs on everything we import that will be paid by you, not by the exporting nations, is the last person to trust on the economy. Harris at least has a plan, Trump has only bluster and lies.

Rob Fried

Concord