How did California’s economy fare under President Donald Trump’s first term?

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TRUMP AND THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

Via David Lightman...

Was California’s economy better under President Donald Trump than under President Joe Biden?

Hard to say.

Evaluating the entire economy is not easy, but one measure is unemployment. The state’s annual jobless rates were between 4% and 4.8% from 2017 to 2019, Trump’s first three years in office. Then came the Covid pandemic in March 2020, and the year’s rate averaged 10.2%.

It fell back during the Biden years, falling under 5% in 2022 and 2023. But in recent months, the rate has topped 5% and was 5.3% in September, the latest data available.

That tied California with Illinois for the nation’s second highest state unemployment rate. Nevada was first at 5.6%.

Consumer prices followed national trends under Trump and then Biden. Prices in California were up 3% in 2017, 3.7% in 2018, 2.9% in 2019 and 1.8% in 2020, as detailed in last month’s UCLA Anderson forecast.

Trump will inherit a California economy that grew 2.8% in the second quarter of this year, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis said. The national economy grew at a 3% pace.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“It is commonsense that felons should not own nor have access to firearms. States must maintain the ability to keep weapons out of the hands of individuals who have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have violated state and federal felony criminal laws.”

- California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in a statement accompanying a legal brief he filed before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concerning a case where a convicted felon was arrested for unlawfully possessing a gun under federal law.

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