Among the silly things said at the Trump–Noem 2024 rally in Rapid City Friday night was Donald Trump’s claim that President Joe Biden’s economic policies have driven the country into “a depression.”
This statement is false.
Forbes explains that, while we don’t have a technical definition of a depression, we recognize that a depression is a grave global economic collapse:
During a depression, the unemployment rate spikes into double-digits and demand for consumer goods collapses.
Companies usually slow production or shut down factories to compensate, and investment activity dries up. As a result, GDP and other measures of economic activity experience deep contractions. Recovery from a depression can take years or decades [Kat Tretina, “What Is Economic Depression?” Forbes, 2022.08.09].
The United States has suffered exactly one depression in the last hundred years. The 1930s Great Depression is nothing like what is happening now in the United States economy. Unemployment is at the lowest single digits in 50 years. Consumer demand is easing back from post-pandemic summer splurging, but we are still buying lots of stuff.
And while South Dakota had a year-long recession due to chronic Republican poor performance, the national economy isn’t depressing or recessing; GDP is up nationwide thanks to Bidenomics. The sudden and sharp recession that accompanied the outbreak of coronavirus in spring 2020 could have turned into a widespread economic collapse (remember the fears that...
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