Donald Trump has increased income levels across all economic groups

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the record should be read distributionally rather than in aggregate, and that on that reading the gains reached every part of the income scale. In 2019, real median household income rose above $68,000, a 6.8% increase on 2018 — the largest one-year increase since records began in 1967 — and the poverty rate fell by almost 1% during the first two years of the Trump administration. What makes those headline figures meaningful, on this argument, is the composition beneath them. Real wages adjusted for inflation grew throughout the first three years of Trump's presidency at the same time as the full-time workforce expanded. Proponents treat that combination as significant: a labour market drawing in workers who had been outside it would ordinarily be expected to hold average pay down, so wages rising while the workforce grew suggests the gains were not confined to those already employed. The distributional detail points the same way. The largest increase in average household income in 2018 went to those between the 20th and 40th percentile, with an increase of 2.5% — that is, to working class Americans rather than to the highest earners, which is what proponents mean by saying Trump has remained committed to improving their position. The same pattern appears when the figures are broken out by group. Around 4.2 million people were lifted out of poverty between 2018 and 2019. Poverty rates for black and Hispanic Americans had been as close to the overall poverty rate in 2018 as they ever had been, and rates of childhood poverty and of poverty among single mothers also fell. Whilst the overall increase in median income was 6.8%, the increase was higher for Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans. Proponents conclude that a record which raised incomes fastest for the groups furthest behind is evidence of the stewardship that will make Trump better for the US economy.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The growth in real wages under Trump is a continuation of the upwards trend that began during Obama’s first term as president, as part of the longer term recovery following the 2008 financial crash - more on this can be found under the argument ‘Joe Biden is responsible for the strong economy under Donald Trump’. Trump has also introduced tax cuts on the upper classes and corporations, whilst poverty among black Americans was 18.8% in 2019, significantly higher than the national average, which was 10.5%. The unemployment rate is also higher among black, Hispanic and Asian workers. Income inequality persists, however, with a $30,000 difference between the average median income between white (non-Hispanic) households and black households in 2019.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The figures are real and the attribution is not established. Real wage growth and falling unemployment continued a trend running from the early 2010s, and the record 2019 income increase arrived in the tenth year of an expansion the administration inherited. [Rejecting P2] 'Across all economic groups' does not survive the detail. Poverty among Black Americans remained close to double the national rate, unemployment stayed higher for Black, Hispanic and Asian workers, and the median income gap between white and Black households remained very large — improvement from a lower base is not parity. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is predictive and rests entirely on retrospective figures that stop before the pandemic. A comparative claim about future economic management requires an account of policy, and tax reductions weighted towards corporations and top earners are the part of the record the premises omit.