Speaking on the “Washington Watch” radio program, economist Stephen Moore explained that U.S. figures released in April showed the economy had contracted 1.5% in the first quarter of 2022.
“In the second quarter,” he told the program, “the economy contracted by another 2%. That's technically a recession.”
Biden criticized for plan to lower some Chinese tariffsSteve Jordahl, AFN The Biden administration has a plan to help the skyrocketing prices on store shelves – lower tariffs on China-made goods – but a U.S. senator says President Biden is desperate to fix problems that he created. Typical of the Biden administration’s tendency to take a bulldozer to all things Trump, the President is preparing to lift a narrow set of tariffs on China in hopes of curbing inflation. 
“This is just another example of Joe Biden blaming inflation on anyone but himself,” U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton told Fox News. “We've had these tariffs in place for three or four years and we didn't have inflation.” In 2019, President Trump imposed a 10% tariff on about $370 billion of Chinese goods. The plan now is reportedly to lift tariffs on approximately $10 billion of that number but Cotton says it's another sign of weakness from the current president. “With tariffs you get some leverage over them,” the senator said of the bullying Chinese government, “and demand that they make a change.” The chief cause of economic hardship is President Biden, Cotton insisted, especially the President’s energy policy that has set gas prices to record highs. |
Economists define “recession” when there are two consecutive quarters – six months – of a declining GDP, or gross domestic product. So the U.S. is now in a recession, Moore was explaining, after the 1.5% retraction through March then a 2% retraction from April to June.
By that period of time, however, when the economists are scrutinizing the figures and politicians are casting blame, the public already knows what's coming. That is because businesses on Main Street, and the factories in the industrial park, reached that conclusion months earlier because revenue was dropping and fewer products were leaving the plant.
The general public doesn’t need an economics degree to reach the same conclusion. Record-high gas prices are devastating everyone from the farmer to the over-the-road trucker, and that cost trickles down to the customer. On top of that, a 40-year-high inflation rate is shooting up the cost of everything from auto parts and electric bills to canned vegetables and a gallon of milk.
Biden denied recession coming
According to Politico, the liberal news website, Washington, D.C. knows it, too. “From Wall Street to Washington,” a July 4th story begins, “whispers about a coming economic slump have risen to nearly a roar as the Federal Reserve ramps up its battle against the highest inflation in four decades.”
Politico points out that Biden told reporters in June there is “nothing inevitable” about a recession last month, but the story tip-toed around the fact the President was unhappy when a reporter said economists are warning a recession is here.
“Come on, don’t make things up,” Biden lectured. “Now you sound like a Republican politician."
In the radio interview, Moore said the back-to-back quarterly figures indicate a “soft recession” but they do confirm, he further said, the economy is “not doing well.”
Layoffs 'sweeping' country
Another indication of a shrinking and struggling economy is unemployment. That figure was just 3.6% in June but Business Insider, in a mid-June story, said layoffs are “sweeping” the country due to a slowdown in business and increasing labor costs. Major corporations Carvana, Peloton, Netflix, Compass, Wells Fargo, among numerous others named in the story, have cut their workforce.
Several companies began layoffs in 2021 when their executives saw the economy was headed in reverse.
Glenn Kelman, CEO of real estate brokerage firm Redfin, said in a blog post he has stated in the past he would never lay off employees unless he had to.
“We have to,” he wrote. “Mortgage rates increased faster than at any point in history. We could be facing years, not months, of fewer home sales, and Redfin still plans to thrive.”
A 30-year fixed rate mortgage is currently averaging 5.7%, a rate not seen since 2008, BankRate.com reported this week.
Democrats being hurt, too
Moore, who is a senior economic analyst at FreedomWorks, went on tell show host Tony Perkins the American public knows the state of the economy because they are letting pollsters now how they feel about it.
A poll from The Associated Press suggests a growing number of Democrats think the economy is bad. A year ago, only 37% of Democrats said the economy was poor. Today, that figure is 67%.
Speaking to reporters in Europe last week at the NATO summit, President Joe Biden reassured them that America is doing great but the third branch of the federal government is letting us all down.
“We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world,” Biden said. “The one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior of the Supreme Court of the United States."
President Biden, who is 79, last earned a paycheck in the private sector in 1973, back when a gallon of gas averaged 39 cents and a loaf of bread cost a quarter.
JCN: Biden's the problem, not the solution
Speaking Wednesday in Cleveland Ohio, President Biden argued that the country would be in worse shape had his administration and Democrats in Congress not acted and enacted his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.
"You all remember what the economy was like when I was elected," Biden said. "A country in a pandemic with no real plans how to get out of it. Millions of people out of their jobs. Families in cars, remember, backed up for literally miles waiting for a box of food to be put in their trunk."
But Alfredo Ortiz, president of Job Creators Network, sees things differently.
"Has he taken a look at gas prices or the price of groceries these days?" Ortiz asks. "The highest inflation rate in four decades is the direct result of the ARP, as Job Creators Network predicted at the time of its passage."
"The 2017 tax law [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] fueled the best economy in history, but Biden wants to gut the law to pay for more spending," Ortiz continues. "JCN sent a letter to Biden urging him to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. We're still waiting for a response – just like all Americans are waiting for a response to the 'Bidenflation' that gets worse every day."
7/7/2022 - Comments from Alfredo Ortiz added.
