FACT CHECK: Sorry Trump, Stock Market Did Better Under Obama
The Dow Jones hit a record high Wednesday and Donald Trump wasted no time in taking credit for the stock market high. Trump has regularly trumpeted the stock market gains over the first 6 months of his presidency as a reflection of his magical economy boosting powers.
However, there are a couple important facts to point out.
Frist, Donald Trump hasn’t actually done much in terms of policy to contribute to the increase in the stock market. The economy and stock market that Trump inherited were very strong and continue to be strong despite Trump’s lack of policy action. In fact, Trump has not passed any economic legislation to contribute to the gains in the stock market.
At best, Trump can claim that the specter of less regulation under his administration has caused part of the rally in the markets but that is hardly enough to significantly move the economy.
But more notably, the underlying assumption here is not correct. The stock market under Donald Trump has not performed nearly as well as it did under Barack Obama.
Here are the facts:
In the first 6 months of Barack Obama’s presidency, the S&P 500 rose 22.6%.
And in first 6 months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the S&P 500 has gone up just 8.8%
Oh, and by the way, George H. W. Bush also oversaw a much better stock market performance than Trump with a rise of 20.7% in the S&P 500.
Here is a helpful graphic put together by the folks at Axios using Yahoo Finance data:
Source: Yahoo Finance via Axios
