A fixture at Donald Trump’s final campaign rallies features the Republican nominee asking, “Are you better off now than four years ago?” Even with the steep pandemic and war induced-inflation of 2022 and early 2023, the data clearly show the answer is “yes.” Over the last two weeks, even the conservative Wall Street Journal (“U.S. Economy Again Leads the World, IMF Says”) and The Economist (“The Envy of the World”) agreed that “the American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” On Thursday, the Journal’s chief economics commentator Greg Ip concluded simply, “The Next President Inherits a Remarkable Economy.”

But even more dramatic than the dismal U.S. economy President Trump bequeathed to the Biden-Harris administration is the yawning chasm between what candidate Trump promised the American people and what he actually delivered. Here, then, are the top 10 broken Trump promises on the economy.

1. Produce Average Annual Economic Growth of at Least 3.5%

In September 2016, candidate Trump laid down a marker to measure his economic performance as President. He pledged an “average growth rate of 3.5 percent,” adding, “I believe we can reach beyond actually 4 percent growth." On other occasions, he was even more bullish, proclaiming on September 15, 2016, “I believe it's time to establish a national goal of reaching four percent economic growth.” Given that no President since Democrat Lyndon Johnson had presided over such explosive growth, Donald Trump’s 2015 promise was even more comically unrealistic:

“We are looking at a 3% but we think it could be 5 [percent] or even 6 [percent]. We are going to have growth that will be tremendous."

As it turned out, not so much. As Forbes recently summed it up, Trump’s economy only mustered a feeble 1.4% annualized economic growth over his entire term. Even leaving out the COVID ravaged year of 2020, Donald Trump failed to come through on his lofty GDP growth pledges. The inflation-adjusted value of all goods and services produced by the U.S., Forbes noted, expanded “at an annualized rate of 2.7% during Trump’s first three years and 3.5% during Biden’s.”

2. Create 25 Million New Jobs Over 10 Years

The second economic measuring stick Trump offered voters in 2016 was this. “Over the next 10 years, our economic team estimates that under our plan the economy will average 3.5 percent growth and create a total of 25 million new jobs.”

It didn’t turn out that way. As a quick glance at the numbers from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) website reveals, rather than generating 10 million jobs over his four years in the White House Trump instead lost 2.7 million. (In contrast, the U.S. economy under Joe Biden has added a record 16.2 million jobs.)

3. “Be the Greatest Jobs Producer That God Ever Created”

As a candidate and as President-elect, Donald Trump guaranteed, “I will be the greatest jobs producer that God ever created.”

Instead, in Donald J. Trump created the worst jobs producer since Republican Herbert Hoover. The 2.7 million jobs that disappeared during his watch beat the previous post-Hoover record of futility held by George W. Bush. As the Washington Post explained that “Trump will have the worst jobs record in modern U.S. history. It’s not just the pandemic.”

Sadly for Trump, as Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural, “it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”

4. “Bring Back” Manufacturing, Auto and Mining Jobs

In 2016, Trump’s big talk on American job creation was accompanied by pledges to workers in specific sectors and states. “My plan includes a pledge to restore manufacturing in the United States,” Trump announced at a rally in Detroit on October 31, 2016. He repeatedly declared he would “bring back” manufacturing jobs and guaranteed auto workers:

“If I’m elected, you won’t lose one plant, you’ll have plants coming into this country, you’re going to have jobs again, you won’t lose one plant, I promise you that.”

Standing in front of signs proclaiming “Trump Digs Coal,” a hard-hat wearing Donald Trump told West Virginia coal miners in May 2016, “Get ready because you're going to be working your asses off.”

He was wrong on all counts. After gains in manufacturing employment early in his term, the blowback from his Chinese tariffs and then the COVID pandemic ultimately erased 200,000 jobs. That include around 10,000 in the auto industry, which included workers at the very plant where Trump made his promises. As for coal mining, the price pressures from lower cost natural gas and alternative energy sources continued to drive its contraction. From January 2017 to January 2021, total employment in coal mining fell from 50,800 to just 38,100, a staggering 25 percent drop.

5. Tax Cuts Will Pay for Themselves

The centerpiece of President Trump’s economic program was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In the run-up to its passage that December, Trump laughably claimed his scheme would “cost me a fortune.” (Laughably, that is, because the TCJA cut rates on partnerships and “pass-through” entities, which is precisely how the Trump Organization is structured.)  His Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took that preposterous claim a step further, declaring “the rich will pay their fair share" because "there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class."

But that’s not all Mnuchin promised. Throughout 2017, Secretary Mnuchin guaranteed, “The plan will pay for itself with growth.” As he put it that April:

“This will pay for itself with growth and with the reduction of different deductions and closing loopholes.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) disagreed. In 2015, after all, its GOP-appointed Director Keith Hall explained, “No, the evidence is that tax cuts do not pay for themselves. And our models that we're doing, our macroeconomic effects, show that.” Ultimately, the CBO forecast the 10 year cost of Trump’s tax cuts at $1.9 trillion, with only $400 billion in additional revenue from the growth the TCJA would theoretically spur.

As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the CBO got it right. The Trump tax cuts did not produce anywhere near as much revenue for Uncle Sam as if they had never been passed at all. And if the expiring Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended in 2025, CBO warns of an additional $4.6 trillion in red ink from 2025 to 2034. As for the notion that the Trump tax cuts would not benefit the rich, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates those rate reductions “averaged $61,090 for the top 1 percent — and $252,300 for the top one-tenth of 1 percent.”

6. Eliminate the Entire U.S. National Debt “Over a Period of 8 Years”

The torrents of red ink unleashed by his tax cuts helped doom yet another impossible promise from candidate Donald Trump during his first run for the White House.

In March 2016, Bob Woodward asked Trump how long it would take to eliminate the entire U.S. national debt of $19 trillion. Trump’s response?

“Well, I would say over a period of eight years.”

Trump’s pledge was akin to proclaiming the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. At the time Trump spoke, the U.S. had not only run up $19 trillion in debt, but was forecast by CBO to pile on $12 trillion more in the ensuing decade. Cutting $31 trillion from the total spending of $72 trillion in over those 10 years would have been economically and politically impossible.

At the end of the day, the entire discussion was moot. During his time in the Oval Office, Donald Trump added $7.8 trillion to the U.S. national debt.

7. Deport All 11 Million Undocumented Immigrants in Two Years

Central to President Trump’s laughable guarantees on the economy was his plan to deport the undocumented immigrants supposedly taking jobs from hard-working Americans. In 2015 and 2016, Trump did not merely promise to build a 1,000-mile wall along our southern border. “I will have Mexico pay for that wall,” he said, “Mark my words.” Of course, that didn’t happen.

But Trump had other words on immigration, too. In September 2015, Trump was asked how long it would take to remove all 11 million undocumented immigrants—85% of whom had been in the United States for five years or longer—from the country. His confident answer?

“I think it's a process that can take 18 months to two years if properly handled.”

Needless to say, Trump’s pledge to eject 15,000 unauthorized immigrants a day, every day, for two years, never materialized. The Department of Homeland Security estimated there were 11.8 million undocumented immigrants in the US. in 2016. By 2020, that figure dipped to 10.5 million, a decline fueled more by the COVID pandemic and the return of migrants back to their home countries.

Regardless, the math hasn’t changed despite Trump’s renewed pledges of “mass deportation.” The removals alone could cost hundreds of billions of dollars, while the seismic disruption to the U.S. labor force would shave trillions of dollars from American gross domestic product. As with so much of what Trump utters, his mass deportations would be cruel--and stupid.

8 Provide Health Insurance “for Everybody”

Health care represents roughly 20 percent of the entire American economy. And during the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump has beclowned himself by pathetically claiming he never wanted to end Obamacare, also known as the popular Affordable Care Act which now provides coverage for 50 million Americans. (Only the “no” vote of John McCain prevented President Trump from repealing Obamacare in 2017.) Making matters worse, during his lone debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump admitted he has no health care plan, but only “concepts of a plan.”

But during his first White House run, Donald Trump bragged that he had a health care plan. It was called “universal coverage.”

In a September 2015 interview with Scott Pelley of CBS 60 Minutes, Trump guaranteed that "everybody's got to be covered."

PELLEY: Universal health care?

TRUMP: I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now.

PELLEY: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of how?

TRUMP: They're going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably—

PELLEY: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

TRUMP: --the government's gonna pay for it. But we're going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most it's going to be a private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything.

Days before taking the oath of office, President-elect Trump made the same pledge. In a January 14th telephone interview with the Washington Post, President-elect Trump described his imminent Obamacare replacement plan this way.

"We're going to have insurance for everybody," Trump said. "There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can't pay for it, you don't get it. That's not going to happen with us." People covered under the law "can expect to have great health care. It will be in a much simplified form. Much less expensive and much better."

In reality, President Trump did nothing to deliver universal health care coverage for all Americans. The percentage of Americans without health insurance rose from 7.9% in 2017 to 8.6% in 2020. The Biden administration’s temporary expansion of Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid eligibility during the COVID pandemic reduced that figure to a record low of 7.7% in 2023.

9. Negotiate Medicare Drug Prices to Save $300 Billion a Year

For America’s seniors in particular, the high cost of prescription drug prices represents a constant financial challenge. There’s no mystery as to why. When the Medicare Part D drug program became law, President George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans blocked Democratic efforts to empower the federal government to negotiate prices directly with Big Pharma.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, candidate Donald Trump focused on this point to promise “yuge” savings:

"We are not allowed to negotiate drug prices. Can you believe it? We pay about $300 billion more than we are supposed to, than if we negotiated the price. So there's $300 billion on day one we solve."

There were only two problems with Trump’s math. For starters, “total spending in Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) in 2014 was $78 billion,” the Washington Post explained. “So Trump, in effect, is claiming to save $300 billion a year on a $78 billion program. That’s like turning water into wine.” (Total prescription drug pricing for all Americans that year was $298 billion.) The second and bigger problem was that President Trump reversed course in his month office, abandoning the pledge before January 2017 was even finished.

Despite Trump’s later claims to the contrary, it was President Biden who signed the Inflation Reduction Act and its provisions for Medicare drug negotiations into law.

10. Invest $1 Trillion to Rebuild U.S Infrastructure

Throughout the 2016, candidate Trump promised his administration would spend $1 trillion on rebuilding America’s aging infrastructure. As he summed it up in his Inaugural Address, “We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.”

But it never happened. Over his tenure, President Trump’s many failed attempts to launch “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke. It’s no wonder the Washington Post reported four years ago, “Trump’s 2016 campaign pledges on infrastructure have fallen short, creating opening for Biden.” And on November 15, 2021, it was President Joe Biden who signed the $1 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure bill into law.