How Does Trump Compare to Previous Presidents - Update 2

This is an update to my previous post of 11/22/2019.  I have now added an additional economic indicator of "Unemployment", understanding that lower numbers reflect a stronger economy.  With only his first two years of results (2017 and 2018), Trump has the highest REDUCTION rate of -11.4% and the next highest reduction rate is Obama at -9.6%.  (Statistically speaking, 2017 and 2018 are not different from the 8 years of Obama).

The addition of Unemployment has now created 12 categories of comparisons.  All previous conclusions in the 11/22/2019 post remain the same with this one exception:  Trump was worse than the Democratic Average on 11 of 12 categories and was worse than the Republican Average on 7 of 12 categories.

How Does Trump Compare to Previous Presidents - Update 1

I published my first evaluation of Trump's performance on 9/6/2018, using Federal Budget and Financial Market data. This previous analysis used only one year of actuals for Trump and 6 years of forecasted results from the Office of Management and Budget.  This update has 3 years of actual data and only one forecasted year to make up his first term.  My experience has been the next year forecast is very good as most policy spending is already set.

As a refresher on my approach, I have covered the years from 1961 (Kennedy/Johnson) to the present.  For these years,  I downloaded the entire budget detail from the "Office of Management and Budget".  These data were analyzed using statistical techniques to establish the Annual Compound Growth Rate (CAGR) for each presidential term.  There has been one four year term for each political party (Carter, Bush1) and I have calculated Trump's CAGR using the 2020 Federal Budget publication but this time using only the years 2107 to 2020 to represent Trump's first  4 year term.

To compare each of the 9 Presidential Terms, I have focused on GDP, Budget Receipts (3 categories), Budget Outlays, Deficit, Supplemental Spending, and National Debt.  I have also added the growth of the Dow Jones Industrial Average as an additional  economic indicator which Trump uses frequently.  Since the United States is growing and spending is likewise growing exponentially, the use of Compounded Annual Growth Rates makes for equitable comparisons between Presidents.  A summary of these findings can be seen in the table below:

Looking at the individual categories above, Trump is NOT the best in any category!  When evaluating the economy, GDP is usually at the top of the list and Trump is below the Republican and Democratic averages on GDP growth and below the Republican average on Real GDP.  Trump's tax plan shows up in Corporate Income Taxes, shrinking at -3.9% compounded annually, resulting in Receipt growth at only 3.2%, the lowest of all Presidents. Spending growth is twice that of Receipts at 6.4% which is mid range among all 9 Presidents. To summarize, Trump is on the "bad" side of the Republican average on 7 of 11 categories.  He is on the "bad" side of the Democratic average on 11 of 11 categories.

I also launched an analysis to confirm (or disprove) the many comments from the Trump Administration concerning Trump's superior performance relative to previous Presidents. The scoring is based on assigning 2 points for best performance in a category and 1 point for second best.  Also, -2 points for worst performance in a category and -1 point for second worst.  Good performance is considered high growth in Receipts, GDP and Stock Market; poor performance is high growth in Spending and Deficit/Debt (traditional Republican principles).  Here are some top line findings: combining Presidential performance on the growth rates across all financial results: Trump is now alone at SECOND TO LAST place among all 9 Presidents. Bettering Trump are Nixon/Ford, Reagan, Bush 2, Obama, Carter, Kennedy/Johnson and Clinton.  Bush 1 has the lowest score of all Presidents and Clinton had the highest.

One of the sub-categories of "Outlays" or spending is Total Net Interest on the Federal Debt which is shown below:

The green, white and red sections around the data are statistical limits which are helpful in determining if all of the data fall within a "normal" range which helps identify "outliers".  If there are no outliers, the annual compound growth rate is determined.  It can be found in the data box, just above the blue highlighted number.

In this case the Trump's growth of the Interest on the Debt is 22.1% compounded annually.  This is 3 times higher than the other 8 President's combined average of 7.3%!  As you can see the slope of line is quite a bit steeper, reflecting the higher debt growth and higher interest rates that are likely to increase with such high national debt.  This has not been much discussed in the press but is a natural outcome of Trump's tax plan.  One more item in the news is the Trade War and its affect on the our economy.  Although it is already reflected in the GDP and Receipts above, I took a look at the Trade Deficit and Trump is running at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 9.4% as compared to Obama at 1.7%!  Enough Said!!

Is Border Security Really a National Security Threat?

On April 9, 2018, I published "Will Trump's Troops on the Border Really Help?" that evaluated the effects of having the military at the SW border.  As part of this post, I looked at Apprehensions at the Southwest Border and determined that military presence at the border had little effect on reducing this number.  While looking at 20 years of history on Apprehensions, I also concluded that NAFTA might have made a contribution to 75% reduction in Apprehensions since 2002.

Now that the Government is in a partial shutdown over "border security" with negotiations underway to solve this "problem",  I thought it would be instructive to update this Apprehension data and look at additional data to determine if it supports the claim that there is a National Security Threat.  All of this data was retrieved from US Customs and Border Patrol web site.

First, it will be important to understand two organizational components of Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  The Office of Field Operations (OFO) is the largest organization in CPB and is primarily responsible for security at Ports of Entry.  US Border Patrol has the responsibility for security along the border BETWEEN Ports of Entry.  This is the subject that is so much in the news concerning a "wall".  Part of the problem is that "border security" would include Ports of Entry AND the border between them.  The "wall" concentrates on the border between Ports of Entry.  So, if building a "wall" is a National Security imperative, it would be important to see if CPB data supports this claim.

I'll start once again with Apprehensions by Border Patrol, first by fiscal year.

There is a rapid decline from 2002 to 2011 when the Apprehensions fell from 1,600,000 per year to 400,000 per year.  If the number of illegal crossing constitutes a National Security concern, this crisis should have been declared in 1980's and 1990's!  Obviously, this 75% reduction in illegal crossings was  achieved without a complete wall.  

Breaking this annual data down into monthly data can give us plenty of data to look at Apprehensions since Trump took office.  First, I wanted to compare Obama's Administration to that of Trumps's first 2 years.

Most notable here is the lower left corner, highlighted in blue, which shows that Trump's average apprehensions ARE statistically lower that Obama's average.  Again it does not seem that the lowest average illegal crossings, in the last 35 years, are evidence of a National Crisis.

This graph highlights the first two years of Trump's administration to show that, although the average is statistically lower, it is in a steady climb of 89% compounded annually.  Might this again be related to the "undoing" of NAFTA by Trump and, therefore, gives a suggestion of a possible solution to illegal crossings through trade negotiations with Mexico.

Trump often talks about gang members, MS 13 in particular, crossing the border in large numbers as well as a "flood" of drugs.  So I also found CPB data on these areas as well.  First of all, gang members captured in FY 2018 represent only 0.18% of all apprehensions and MS 13 only 0.009%.  This does not sound like a National Security threat to me.  Finally, only 13% of drugs seized were seized by Border Patrol with the remaining seized by the Office of Field Operations (Ports of Entry).  The only exception to this is Marijuana, the amount is twice that seized at Ports of Entry.  However, the amount of marijuana seized between Ports of Entry has been reduced by 80% since 2012 without a complete wall.

In closing, it appears to me that there is absolutely no evidence from CPB to support building any additional wall components, nor yielding evidence of a National Security claim to access wall money by Executive Order.

PS- Just heard Mulvaney on Meet the Press say that there have been 60,000 apprehensions at the border over the last three years!  Not True.  10,000 of this number are called "Inadmissible" which are those people at the Ports of Entry rejected by Office of Field Operations and, therefore, not an illegal crossing.