Trump's one-year report card

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Donald Trump's first year in office, I am seeing numerous commentaries assessing his first year in office (see FiveThirtyEight, The Economist and BBC) . About a year ago, I laid out my criteria for his success (see Forget politics! Here are the 5 key macro indicators of Trump's political fortunes) using the criteria that Newt Gingrich specified in a New York Times interview:

“Ultimately this is about governing,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has advised Mr. Trump. “There are two things he’s got to do between now and 2020: He has to keep America safe and create a lot of jobs. That’s what he promised in his speech. If he does those two things, everything else is noise.”

“The average American isn’t paying attention to this stuff,” he added. “They are going to look around in late 2019 and early 2020 and ask themselves if they are doing better. If the answer’s yes, they are going to say, ‘Cool, give me some more.’”

As Trump has "kept America safe", because, like it or not, mass shootings such as the one in Las Vegas doesn't politically count as a terrorist incident. From a strictly economics viewpoint to judge whether he "created a lot of jobs", I used the Bloomberg Intelligence economic criteria to judge Trump on his economic record.

Despite all of the outrage of the anti-Trumpers, Trump`s economic record has been quite good in the past year.

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