ECONOMY/FEDERAL RESERVE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump has complained that the Federal Reserve has been hurting the economy, first by raising interest rates and then by not lowering them fast enough. ‘No help from Fed!’ he said on Twitter last week, in what has become a typical broadside. But a New York Times analysis shows that under Mr. Trump, Fed policy has supported Mr. Trump’s push for economic growth. In fact, the central bank has kept interest rates lower than under any other president since Jimmy Carter, when adjusted for the economy’s output and inflation. At the same time, Congress has provided an unusual level of fiscal support. Only one president in the past 25 years got a bigger lift from tax cuts and federal spending increases than Mr. Trump has since he signed the 2017 tax overhaul. That was George W. Bush, whose two terms included several rounds of tax cuts and deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
–Jim Tankersley, Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman, “Help for the Economy? Despite Grumbling, Trump Has Had Plenty,” The New York Times online, August 8, 2019