During an economic panel discussion on CNN’s New Day Tuesday, John Berman and his guests presented highly opinionated and inaccurate economic perspective as consensus—and took every opportunity to criticize President Trump in their ostensibly apolitical analysis. In preparation for the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy report to Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor’s June employment report, both set to be released this Friday, the panel opined critically on Trump’s impact on the economy over the first half of 2017 with no balancing voice in Trump’s defense.
They began with the archetypal metric of job growth:
BERMAN: In fact, if you look at the last three months, aside from the unemployment rate, the job growth is actually slower—
CHRISTINE ROMANS: It’s been slower. It’s been slower than it was the last couple years. This is just February to May, and we’re going to have a new jobs report on Friday, and again it’s expected to show wages, maybe 1.3 percent wage growth. The President has promised that wages are going to start to come back, so he has made that promise, we don’t know exactly how. It has been a tremendous recovery in terms of the number of jobs created over the past few years, and now it seems to be stalling a bit.
It’s true that there are trends that point to an end in this recovery cycle, and areas where growth has not kept up with the rest of the economy. However, there are also areas that indicate vast improvement on Trump’s brief watch: private companies added 253,000 jobs in May, shattering the initial projection of 185,000 and substantially outperforming April’s 174,000 job increase. Additionally, manufacturing, an area of focus for the administration, has seen a significantly successful month—an indicator some may point to as a signal that U.S. manufacturing is beginning to turn the corner following decades of outsourcing and job losses in this vital sector.
The segment continued onto the subject of more minor economic indicators, apple-picking any that appeared to reflect negatively on Trump:
BERMAN: There’s an interesting, some economic numbers out this week, which may be a little bit of a warning sign, and that has to do with auto sales.
ROMANS: Yeah, you’re seeing auto sales start to stall here, and really six months in a row now of stalling auto sales at a time when—these are big manufacturing jobs, this is a big part of the manufacturing base of the United States, and it’s a cyclical industry. So now we’re at the end of that cycle, where things are starting to taper off. Another interesting point about auto sales is the average car loan right now is 69 months. That’s a long time, and I think that shows a little bit of distress for so many of those people who have been buying record numbers of cars over the past few years.
The market for automobiles is one industry that has not kept up with the pace of the rest of the economy, and is rightfully mentioned as one economic indicator that has not yet improved on Trump’s watch. However, the panel ignored similar signs of strong consumer confidence, such as the impressive housing market rally this month. Although both markets are similarly used to measure economic health and consumer confidence, the host and guests focused exclusively on the negative indicator.
Despite all the nitpicking of the economy under Trump, back in 2014, when the U.S. economy actually shrank on President Obama's watch, CNN dismissed the troubling news as "not a big deal."
The panel argued that Trump ought not to be credited with any improvements, but still couldn’t allow the segment to go by without also making political asides:
ROMANS: This is the Trump bump—look, the S&P 500, that’s 500 stocks, the broadest gauge of the American stock market, up 16 percent almost since the President was elected. That’s really remarkable. Now I want to show you that on top of the last several years: this is what it looked like before the President came into office. The Trump bump is just a little bit on the end of what has been a very long and robust rally there. That puts it in context. What is so interesting to me is that this president of the United States takes credit for that red line, but gives no credit to anybody else for the blue that gets up to that point.
BERMAN: It’s more than that, he ran against it.
ROMANS: He did, he did.
It’s debatable the degree to which presidents should be credited or blamed for moves in publicly-traded markets. However, just as there is a cogent argument as for why Trump should not be congratulated for the performance of public equity markets, so too is there a rebuttal as for why this is a result of market optimism in Trump’s promises for tax reform and Obamacare repeal.
This rebuttal, however, was not represented on the CNN panel. Instead, the guests presented their opinions on economic trends as if they were consensus, and Berman made no attempt to challenge any argument made during the segment. Experts continue to debate constructively on a variety of economic issues, from the significance of different metrics to the meaning of those metrics themselves. By foreclosing the opportunity for perspectives more favorable to the President to be heard, CNN allowed this biased panel to affirm their anti-Trump opinions as consensus and assail their political opponents—as the network so commonly does.
Transcript of the July 4 segment:
JOHN BERMAN: From job creation to surging stock prices, President Trump is quick to take credit for a strong economy. He wrote this yesterday: “Really great numbers on jobs and the economy! Things are starting to kick in now, and we have just begun! Don’t like steel and aluminum dumping! Dow hit a new intraday all-time high! I wonder whether or not the Fake News Media will so report?” To break down the numbers and look at how much credit really goes to the President, joining us now are CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans and CNN global economic analyst Rana Foroohar. Rana, I want to start with you: let’s listen to what the President says about jobs here:
TRUMP CLIP: “I think probably seldom has any president and administration done more or had more success so early on, including a record number of resolutions to eliminate job-killing regulations. And we see it all over the country, where jobs are starting that would never have started ever under any circumstances.”
BERMAN: And in fact, the unemployment rate is historically low here, but is the jobs situation any better under President Trump than it was at the end of the Obama administration?
RANA FOROOHAR: Absolutely not. The most important thing is, we’re actually at the end of a recovery cycle. We have been in an economic recovery now for almost a decade, believe it or not. It may not feel like that always, but jobs have been created for a long time, and it’s true: unemployment is at near-record lows in the post-crisis era, unfortunately wages haven’t really ticked up, and that’s what people really feel in their pocketbooks. That’s why I think that a lot of people are saying, where is the recovery? Either way, under Obama or under Trump.
BERMAN: In fact, if you look at the last three months, aside from the unemployment rate, the job growth is actually slower—
CHRISTINE ROMANS: It’s been slower. It’s been slower than it was the last couple years. This is just February to May, and we’re going to have a new jobs report on Friday, and again it’s expected to show wages, maybe 1.3 percent wage growth. The President has promised that wages are going to start to come back, so he has made that promise, we don’t know exactly how. It has been a tremendous recovery in terms of the number of jobs created over the past few years, and now it seems to be stalling a bit.
BERMAN: Well, things are good! Things are pretty good right now, they’re just not markedly better than they were before which is what the President was claiming, and that gets to the stock market, which is something the President says that we don’t talk about. I happen to know, because I used to sit next to you every morning, you talk about it every day!
ROMANS: This is the Trump bump—look, the S&P 500, that’s 500 stocks, the broadest gauge of the American stock market, up 16 percent almost since the President was elected. That’s really remarkable. Now I want to show you that on top of the last several years: this is what it looked like before the President came into office. The Trump bump is just a little bit on the end of what has been a very long and robust rally there. That puts it in context. What is so interesting to me is that this president of the United States takes credit for that red line, but gives no credit to anybody else for the blue that gets up to that point.
BERMAN: It’s more than that, he ran against it.
ROMANS: He did, he did.
FOROOHAR: Also, if you wanted to say who’s in charge of the stock market boom, Janet Yellen. It’s really the head of the Fed—they’ve kept interest rates low, they pumped $4 trillion into the markets over the last few years—really it’s neither Obama nor Trump that deserves credit for this.
ROMANS: The thing about that chart, too, that I find so interesting is that it shows an investor class that has been enriched under this presidency and the prior administration, so the investor class has done very well. Donald Trump, the president, has not shown yet that he can connect the investor class to the working class. Working class voters, except for low gas prices which also the White House doesn’t get credit for, that’s the real—
BERMAN: Let’s talk about the low gas prices right now, because we have the average. Today it’s $2.23 per gallon, which is really low! It’s as low as it’s been since 2005. This is undeniably good, and I’m more than willing to give whoever’s in office credit, but then everyone else deserves credit as well.
FOROOHAR: Well if you want to talk about low gas prices, you can talk about China. China’s slowing down—that’s one of the reasons the demand in the global economy for oil and for gas has actually decreased. It really has nothing to do with the administration. Global markets price oil and gas.
BERMAN: Romans, gas?
ROMANS: I think prices are going to start to go up a little bit, but look, you’ve got a supply glut, you’ve got weakening demand, and you’ve got very low gas. What’s so funny to me is that every four years, candidates campaign on “I can lower your gas prices!” and none of them really can. It is a global market. But I think that for those working class voters that voted for Donald Trump in particular, the number one economic indicator they’re feeling right now are those lower gas prices. I haven’t seen a big change in the jobs situation for those workers yet. He is promising that’s going to come.
BERMAN: There’s an interesting, some economic numbers out this week, which may be a little bit of a warning sign, and that has to do with auto sales.
ROMANS: Yeah, you’re seeing auto sales start to stall here, and really six months in a row now of stalling auto sales at a time when—these are big manufacturing jobs, this is a big part of the manufacturing base of the United States, and it’s a cyclical industry. So now we’re at the end of that cycle, where things are starting to taper off. Another interesting point about auto sales is the average car loan right now is 69 months. That’s a long time, and I think that shows a little bit of distress for so many of those people who have been buying record numbers of cars over the past few years.
FOROOHAR: And one of the areas that people are actually defaulting on these days has been auto loans, so there’s a little bit of trouble in that market. Student loans, too, I mean we haven’t even talked about that, but there’s a huge bubble there.
ROMANS: Even as the president is talking about having these companies make more of their cars here, sell their cars here, you’re starting to see that slowdown.
BERMAN: So I have two questions, these are leading questions right now. Bottom line: is the economy pretty good right now?
FOROOHAR: Relative to what it’s been pre-crisis, yeah. But if you think about over the long haul, every recovery since the 90s has been longer and weaker than the one before it, so we’re dealing with big, long-term problems in the economy that really have nothing to do with this president.
BERMAN: Well, I was going to say, the follow-up question, does the President deserve any more credit than any other president does from this type of situation?
ROMANS: I think presidents get too much credit and too much blame for what’s going on in the economy.
FOROOHAR: I agree with that. I agree with that.
ROMANS: The irony for this president is, the numbers that he absolutely did not agree with a year ago, now he is calling his own.
BERMAN: And he says he’s not a politician. When in fact that is the epitome of politics. Rana Foroohar, Christine Romans, thank you so much.
