The economy will be a big topic at this week’s Democratic National Convention. Democrats will claim the U.S. economy has improved under President Joe Biden and paint a picture of how “bad it was” when Donald Trump left office. Meanwhile, Trump campaigns on the success of his presidency and the economy he oversaw before the pandemic stopped growth in its tracks. 

However, Forbes reports that the real situation is likely somewhere between what Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are saying. 

According to many polls, the economy is the most important issue for voters as they look ahead to the November presidential election. Research shows that people had more confidence in Donald Trump than in Joe Biden for handling the economy. Biden has the lowest trust in managing the economy of any president since George W. Bush during the Great Recession in 2008, according to a Gallup survey.  

One pain point for Biden has been the national debt. The U.S. national debt is now $35.2 trillion, which is over 25% more than when President Biden started his term. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the debt increased by 39%, going from $19.95 trillion in January 2017 to $5.85 trillion in 2023. From 2021 to 2023, the U.S. had a total deficit of $5.85 trillion, compared to $2.43 trillion from 2017 to 2019. According to the Forbes report, the debt increased by $3.13 trillion in 2020 alone. 

Forbes says inflation is much higher during President Biden’s time in office than during Donald Trump’s first term. According to the government’s consumer price index, inflation increased by 19% in the first 42 months of Biden’s presidency, while it only increased by 6% during Trump’s first 42 months. Inflation reached a 40-year high of 9% in 2022 under Biden. It has since dropped to just over 3%. Biden has said that the high inflation was partly caused by the ongoing effects of COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, but critics blame his administration’s policies for the increase. 

Trump says that the U.S. is facing the worst inflation ever and is nearly 50% under Biden, but neither of these claims is correct. On the other hand, Biden has also been misleading about inflation. He claims it was 9.1% when he started office, but it was 1.4% in January 2021. 

Trump steals the win in consumer confidence. Last month, according to a University of Michigan survey, people’s feelings about the economy were worse than they ever were during Donald Trump’s presidency. Even though the economy is “growing well,” according to Biden, and the stock market is performing well, people still feel the effects of high inflation. In April, the personal savings rate, which shows how much money Americans save after paying for necessities, was just 3.6%. That’s less than half of what it was in April 2019, when it was 7.7%. 

Gas prices hit a record high of over $5 per gallon in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, which caused energy prices around the world to rise. This happened because the U.S. and other countries decided not to buy oil from Russia, the world’s third-largest oil producer. The average price for a gallon of gasoline went down from $2.37 to $2.28 between December 2016 and 2020. But last week, it had gone back to $3.41 on average. 

Stocks did better under Donald Trump, but both presidents saw substantial stock market gains. Since Biden started his term in 2021, the S&P 500 index has grown at an annual rate of 12.5%. Under Trump, it grew at 16.3% per year. Despite rocky economic waters, the stock market remains stable. 

During Trump’s presidency, unemployment fell from 4.7% to as low as 3.5%, which was the lowest it had been since 1969. Wages also grew by 15% during his term. However, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a significant spike in unemployment to 14.9% in April 2020 and temporarily shrank the workforce. 

Under Biden, jobs have increased by 11%, and unemployment has dropped from 6.7% to 4.3%. However, Biden’s job gains are part of the recovery from the pandemic, with unemployment at record lows before COVID-19 hit. The number of jobs has only increased by 4% since then. 

Under Biden, the number of American-born workers has grown by 2%, while the workforce of immigrants has grown by 16%. This lends some believability to Trump’s claim that uncontrolled immigration impacts job numbers. 

Harris has focused her campaign on the Biden administration’s economic achievements, even though some voters have doubted them before. She also highlights the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

What she can’t answer is how Trump, whose presidency put money back into the pockets of Americans, will “destroy the economy.” It’s too late for that. Biden started doing that on day one.