There is no credible argument that Trump was a better President than Biden is. And Biden is an average President at best.
Maybe you should try arguing that Trump is a better President than Buchanan. You might have a shot there.
Even that is a stretch. Buchanan didn’t incite insurrection, at least.
Biden is pretty middle of the road as presidents go but it isn’t as if “the economy” is something that any president actually has any control over; they get blamed when it goes bad or celebrated when it does well, while the executive actually sits in the Oval Office wondering if he says something how it will be taken by the stock market while consumer spending, employment, and inflation indices do whatever they were already doing. You could make an argument that Biden flubbed the withdrawal from Afghanistan by not listening to military advisors, but those advisors were recommending maintaining a garrison force in Kabul indefinitely which is something Biden was not prepared to accept and probably would not have worked even for the short term.
Trump’s “Tariff War” was devastating to American business, especially small businesses depending upon metals and manufactured imports as well as farming dependent upon exports affected by China’s tit-for-tat tariffs. The trade ‘deal’ that the Trump Administration made with China was basically a bucket or warm spit, essentially offering nothing that we didn’t already have before the trade war and was derailed by the pandemic. Trump’s pledges to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States were worse than hollow, and he utterly failed in supporting domestic manufacture for critical supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other strategic industries. Trump, of course, is an even worse negotiator than he is a businessman and can only be seen as ‘projecting strength’ if that means celebrating and trying to cozy up to other autocrats around the world while undermining long-held strategic alliances.
Stranger
Where did China get their wheat and soy beans after Trump’s tariffs? Wasn’t it Russia? Then Trump’s stupid, expensive actions, which negatively affected American farmers that the U.S. government had to give hand-outs to, benefitted Russian and Putin.
Soybean exports were robust during Trump’s term of office
From the US Department of Agrigulture
In 2020, the value of U.S. soybean exports to the world reached a record $25.7 billion, up nearly 40 percent ($7 billion) by value and up 23 percent (11.9 million tons) by volume from the prior year**. Exports to China jumped $6.2 billion (up 77 percent) from last year, significantly contributing to the rise in total exports.** The total value of U.S. soybean exports was more than $4 billion (18 percent) above the 5-year average of 2013-2017.
Bolding mine.
From Forbes:
Biden’s Approval Rating Hits Record Low, Poll Finds
- President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a new low, with less than 40% now approving of his job performance, a new Associated Press-NORC poll finds, as even Democrats take a dimmer view of the president as the U.S. battles issues like inflation, war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing baby formula shortage.
Approval rating is a poll of how people are feeling (or at least how they report that they are feeling). It’s not an objective measure about how a president is doing. It’s hard to look at Biden and say he’s not doing as well as anyone could.
During the June 2019 G20 Osaka summit, China and America agreed to resume stalled trade talks, with Trump announcing he would suspend an additional $300 billion in tariffs that had been under consideration after talks failed the previous month, and asserting China had agreed to buy a “tremendous amount” of American farm products, although there were no specifics or confirmation of this by China.
If an agreement was reached in 2019, an increase of exports in 2020 is not surprising.
Meh, I’ve said I regard Biden as an average President so I’m not going to get worked up over this.
But have you thought out what you’re saying? Earlier you argued that disapproval of Trump was meaningless. But now you’re citing disapproval of Biden as evidence of … something. Which is it?
Of course, Trump struggled to exceed a 40% approval rating and never above 46% during his entire post-inauguration period despite his idolatrous followers, with a net negative approval for the entire period after February 2017. This “the polls prove that Biden is the Worst Of All Time!” (WOAT?) is just another in the bucket of Fox News-promoted arguments intended to retroactively prove that Trump was a better president despite there literally being no objective evidence to support that argument unless you consider “Most Days Spent Golfing” and “Most Lies Issued By Official White House Sources” to be measures of presidential greatness.
Stranger
And yet I didn’t cite Fox. Feel free to cite any current poll on Biden.
If anyone would lime an alternate take on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and the actions of Trump and Biden, they can read this analysis at Politifact.
Politifact presents itself as an independent fact-checking organization — but of course that claim is disputed. The article quotes a couple of political scientists saying Congress passed the sanctions because because both parties were worried about Trump and Russia.
Article excerpt:
(…)Congress felt it had to get involved because both parties feared Trump could not be trusted with Russia, and they didn’t want to leave him the unilateral power to end sanctions via executive order, said Yoshiko M. Herrera, a University Wisconsin-Madison political scientist.
When it came time to sign the bill, Trump did so grudgingly and called it “seriously flawed.” (…)
The border was less controlled under Trump. And gas was unusually cheap under Trump because of the pandemic that he did everything in his power to perpetuate, and it’s expensive under Biden because Biden is actually standing up to the biggest threat to the world today.
And negotiating trade deals that favor the US is exactly what Trump didn’t do. His deals did hurt China a bit, but that shouldn’t be anywhere on our list of priorities, because, while China isn’t our friend, they also aren’t our enemy. And those deals also hurt the US even more than they hurt China, which is something we should care about. As anyone who knows anything at all about dealmaking (i.e., not Trump) knows, a good deal is one where both parties benefit.
You could make a pretty good case that he did, or at least encouraged one.
Again, Trump was one of the few major world leaders opposed to Nord Stream 2 and it was for the obvious control it it gives Russia over Germany’s energy needs. And the LNG sea ports that Trump was pushing Germany to build are now going to happen. Clearly his position on this was the correct one and Biden’s removal of sanctions was poorly thought out.
Reuters > Germany ramps up capacity for LNG imports to replace Russian gas
- FRANKFURT, May 5 (Reuters) - Germany took steps to ramp up liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports on Thursday as it moves away from piped Russian supply, renting four floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) and choosing the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven as the first handling hub.
- Reporting by Vera Eckert, additional reporting by Nora Buli and Reuters TV, editing by Elaine Hardcastle
I cited the increase in exports in soybeans that contradicted the assertion it harmed the US. And China is not our friend or a friend to any other country… Not even a little. Not only did Trump negotiate a favorable trade deal for the United States he also forced the the Universal Postal Union to update the postal rates so China couldn’t abuse the US postal system’s rates against us. He did this by threatening to withdraw from the UPU.
The New York Times U.S. Will Remain in Postal Treaty After Emergency Talks
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Sept. 25, 2019 GENEVA — The United States agreed on Wednesday to stay in a United Nations body that has regulated international mail service for more than a century after delegates agreed during emergency talks to change the way postal fees are structured.
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The Trump administration had threatened to leave the body, the Universal Postal Union, after Oct. 17 if its members did not change the system of fees that postal services charge for collection and delivery of international mail and small parcels.
This was a really bold move to take by President Trump because China has been using the US Postal system to undercut transportation fees. The US had no power to adjust the rates.
Putin is a secret police spy guy. While the U.S. might, over many years, match him war crime for war crime, the basement of the Lubyanka is what he is in a way it is not what Biden is, or GW Bush is, or even what Trump is.
Plus, although degree of proficiency seems a state secret, both Putin and Xi know some English, giving them an advantage in 1 on 1’s with translators.
U.S. politicians are shmoozers. They think that happy talk builds relationships. Dictators rarely are into such relationships.
Agreements have to be negotiated at a lower level, based on national interests.
I agree U.S. officials shouldn’t personally insult Putin (as I did in my last post). Diplomats should be diplomatic.
the Pandemic started in 2020. Yet in 2021 the price of gas rose dramatically from $2.42 to to $3.41 in Jan of 2022.
That had nothing to do with who was president and everything with the fact that oversupply of gasoline meant that many fracking and other costly extraction operations had been shuttered (likely never to reopen) and then in 2021 people returned to more normal work and travel schedules with a concomitant increase in demand for fuel.
Stranger
Meanwhile, in 2008…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNbiKGmXsAEUeLP?format=jpg&name=large