Kudlow Touts Economic Bright Spots, Looks Past Pandemic Pain
Kudlow Touts Economic Bright Spots, Looking Past Persistent Pain
(Bloomberg) -- White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow prompted President Donald Trump’s performance, touting the stock market’s surge to a record even as millions of people remain unemployed.
Kudlow’s take on the second night of the Republican National Convention emphasized the most-positive aspects of the economic comeback since the lockdown at the start of the Covid-19 crisis: rebounds in housing sales and manufacturing, and resilient consumer spending at retailers such as Home Depot Inc., Walmart Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.
“Right now, our economic health is coming back,” he said.
Yet in portraying the pandemic, and the economic shutdown to contain it, as once-in-a-century events that are in the past, he looked past fresh data points indicating a long road ahead -- including Tuesday’s decline in consumer confidence to the lowest since 2014.
Kudlow described the recovery as “V” shaped, though many economists see a bumpier road ahead. Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly increased to more than 1.1 million in last week’s report and millions more continue to file for assistance each week.
The economy and workers were front and center during the convention’s second night, which featured the mayor of a Minnesota town who is the son and grandson of miners and a dairy farmer from Wisconsin.
“He delivered the best economy in our history, and he will do it again for all of us,” said Robert Vlaisavljevich, Mayor of Eveleth, a town in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota.
The area has a long boom-and-bust history and had fallen victim to cheaper steel imports that forced U.S. producers to close area taconite mines and curb production. Trump imposed 25% steel tariffs in mid-2018, providing some protection for local jobs, at least in the short-term.
Republicans are aiming to win Minnesota in this year’s presidential race. The state has historically been a Democratic stronghold but Hillary Clinton won the state by a narrow margin in 2016.
U.S.-China Trade
The issue of China and trade also was featured. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, in a speech taped on a trip to Jerusalem, praised Trump for taking an aggressive approach to China. Trump has slapped hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs on the world’s second-largest economy, which he has long said was taking jobs away from the U.S.
“He has ended the ridiculously unfair trade arrangement with China that punched a hole in our economy,” Pompeo said. “Those jobs? Those jobs are coming back home.”
Joe Biden’s campaign rejects that view, calling the administration’s trade deal with China weak.
“He plunged American manufacturing into a recession and sent farm bankruptcies through the roof,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden. “Then, in one of the most catastrophic mistakes of any commander in chief in modern American history, he gave the Chinese government a pass as the worst public health crisis in over 100 years spread like wildfire -- all so that he could hang onto this empty trade pact.”
On Monday, U.S. and Chinese officials signaled progress on their trade agreement but Beijing is far behind where it needs to be to meet its promises to increase purchases of agricultural, energy and manufactured goods from the U.S.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.