The Trump administration may go down as one of the oddest occurrences in American history.
From a President demanding a wall to battle against an onslaught of Mexicans that, according to Fox News never existed, to a country tearing away from a global economy to fantastic results, we are living in a time where reason and common sense are no longer reasonable nor common.
What makes the state of America even more difficult to understand, is that everything we are witnessing has come about without much push from the President himself. The highly touted tax cuts were a pet project Speaker Paul Ryan had wanted to pass through Congress for years and, regardless of who was President, would have gone through. The new NAFTA deal while finally being pushed forward, had been agreed to by Canada and Mexico earlier this year (referring to the dairy farmers and automotive/manufacturing gains). Why America decided to hold out to a point that may cost them the very deal is not very clear.
And the Trump tariffs are currently in a short-term “great”, long-term “who the hell knows” situation that, due to a strong economy has helped drive competing nations into a corner.
But despite the big wins undertaken by the Trump administration, in particular when it comes to the economy, according to a recent Business Insider article, we may be thanking the wrong person for its success.
Business Insider took a look at all states and the District of Columbia to figure out which ones were performing the best. “Business Insider combined six measures of labor-market and general economic” health to do this. These measures included “the unemployment rate, job growth, per-capita GDP, GDP growth, average weekly wages, and wage growth. By putting all those on a common scale and combining them,” the company was able to grant each state an overall economy score.
To get a sense of what I’m getting at, I took the list from Business Insider and provided the political party that each state voted for during the 2016 election. Take a look below and prepare to have your mind blown….!!!
Top 10 States with the Best Economy
- DC – Dem
- Washington – Dem
- Colorado -Dem
- Wyoming – Rep
- Hawaii – Dem
- Utah – Rep
- Texas – Rep
- Massachusetts – Dem
- Virginia – Dem
- Iowa – Rep
As you can see 4 of the top 5 states voted Democrat in 2016, with 6 of the 10 states being blue for the top 10 list. What is more amazing is that only 20 states plus DC voted for Clinton in 2016 while 30 states voted for Trump.
When we take a look at the bottom ten states, it tells a different tale
Bottom 10 states with the Worst Economy
51) Mississippi – Rep
50) Alaska – Rep
49) Arkansas -Rep
48) Kentucky – Rep
47) West Virginia – Rep
46) Alabama – Rep
45) Maine – Dem (1pt to Rep)
44) New Mexico – Dem
43) Delaware – Dem
42) Indiana – Rep
Five out of five of the bottom states in America when looking at the economy voted Republican. In fact you don’t get to a left leaning state until 7.
To put it in percentage terms, 23% of Republican states that voted for Trump ended up in the bottom 10 while only 14% of states voting for Democrats found themselves so low, including DC.
In contrast, 28.5% of states that voted Democrat were in the top 10 of economies while only 13.3% of Republican leaning states hit that mark.
The reason for this may be that Trump policies benefit liberal states or that tariffs from rival nations are purposefully targeting Trump supporters. Maybe liberal states are better at handling economies than conservative states or maybe opportunities just happened to be rewarded to left leaning states at this time.
Who knows…..but what we can all agree on is this, in a weird time, it appears that Democrats are leading the Trump economy.
Thank you for your time, and I will enjoy reading your comments about how this is fake news and I made all of this up.
