The economy was one of the major issues of the 2024 election; in most polls, in fact, it was the issue. The Biden administration and its fellow travelers in the legacy media, when talking about the economy, made a show of imitating a famous internet meme that shows a dog seated in a chair, eyes wide as the house around him is engulfed in flames, with the caption "This is fine, everything's fine." But the American voters clearly didn't think everyone was fine, and that's one of the major reasons that Donald Trump occupies the White House today and not (shudder) Kamala Harris.
Most Americans aren't overly concerned with GDP numbers and the non-farm payroll when they're paying $5 a gallon for gasoline, or a dollar apiece for eggs. President Trump's Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, in a podcast interview, pointed out that not only did he believe the Biden administration's economic figures didn't reflect reality, but that the Biden administration also didn't have a good grip on the perceptions of the American people.
The Treasury Secretary has candidly admitted that the GDP numbers that dominated the previous administration's economic approach are not accurate.
Scott Bessent said the Trump administration is focused on what the American public are actually feeling about the money in their pockets than Joe Biden's team.
The former hedge fund boss argued that Biden made a 'mistake' by dismissing the hardships that consumers were actually feeling at grocery stores and gas stations.
When asked point-blank whether he believed that GDP numbers and nonfarm payrolls were accurate on the All-In podcast last week, Bessent replied: 'No. They're subject to big revisions over time.
This has always been the case; GDP numbers are refined over time as more data comes in. So are other indicators like the aforementioned non-farm payroll, as well as things like the labor force participation rate. All of those things are important indicators, of course. One data point in any measure isn't necessarily indicative, but the trends over time are.
But there are economics, and then there are politics; the two overlap but often require different touches.
'I thought one of the big mistakes of the Biden administration was that they went with the numbers and not what the American people were feeling.'
The Treasury Secretary said the economic concerns of the public were dismissed as merely a 'vibe-cession' and that Biden told them, 'you don't know how good you've got it.'
Instead, Bessent said the Trump administration was going to 'have respect for how [the public] feel and then we need to go back and look at what is causing this anxiety.'
This is an interesting comment for a couple of reasons.
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There's an old saying that in politics, perception is reality. The reality for many people is that they are having a hard time putting gas in their car or making a Sunday morning omelet because the Biden administration's energy policy has jacked up prices on the first and their screeching panic over the bird flu has caused the latter - all the while the Biden people were pointing to their numbers, and saying "This is fine, everything's fine."
Also, the Biden administration didn't have any connection to most of the country. Oh, old Joe loved to claim he had the pulse of the mainstream; he styled himself "Scranton Joe," often making that claim from his Rehoboth Beach mansion. But as we are all becoming more painfully aware by the day, for most of the last four years old Joe has had very little idea of what was really going on, and many of us harbor a sneaking suspicion that a bunch of 20-something interns were behind a lot of the policy statements.
Scott Bessent laid out how the Trump administration is taking a different tack:
Bessent said in his podcast interview that he's making sure the administration is listening to Americans, and not just what they see on paper.
'I was on Meet the Press yesterday,' he recalled, 'and there was something that said – 'Well, the American people don't believe Donald Trump's doing enough on the economy.' And I told the host, I said, 'You know, the one thing I'm not going to answer is that they don't know what they're talking about.'
'I have to have respect for how they feel, and then we need to go back and look at what is causing this anxiety,' Bessent said, and vowed: 'So that's what that's what we're going to do.'
Imagine that. Find out what's bothering the American people, what issues and items are making their lives more stressful, and see what you can do to make things easier. The obvious answer would be "leave us alone," but this is, at least, taking regular folks a little more seriously.
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