As alluded to in a previous article, the time frame as to which Trump's eocnomic policies would not kick in has expired and we are now experiencing the effects of the policies of the current administration. Up until to this point, most of the economic factors and changes were due to a combination Obama-era policies as well as monetary policies controlled by the Federal Reserve in addition to private sector microeconomics. However, at the six month mark the first real look at the economy has rolled in with the most recent jobs report. As of August 2017, the economy added just 156,000 jobs, a lackluster figure given how much was expected to be generated. Unemployment increased from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent. Although the unemployment rate is not a clear indicator of any significant eocnomic change or policy as unempoloyment ticks are usually given a standard deviation of a few tenths of a percentage, the lackluster jobs report indicates a few things about not only the impacts of Trump's policies directly on the economy, but also the confidence consumers and employers have in the economy. Net national income has also risen, but at a much slower rate than previous economic quarters as well.
Despite GDP increasing by 3 percent in the last quarter, there are a few flaws and considerations to be taken in analyzing this data. To begin with, using GDP as the only primary method of analyzing the economic growth and strength of a nation is misleading as the aggregate GDP does not completely and wholistically reflect the actions fo the entire economy, but rather the final outputs of the economy. The second point is that despite increasing in the wake of economic policies by this current administration, the real increase in GDP is most likely due to corporate earnings and profits as corporate profits has incresaed rapidly in the last quarter and continues to increase.
The one positive factor in the wake of the policies of the Trump adminsitration would be that manufacturing jobs incresaed significantly in the past quarter. In fact, manufacturing jobs was the shoulder carrying the jobs report in the past quarter, exceeding past expectations and accounting for much of the loss of job growth. This is a rather unusual phenomenon as manufacturing jobs in the long-term are expected to decrease significantly in the future because of increases in automation technology and machine learning. More research is needed in this area in order to fully account for this strong increase in mufacturing jobs.
In conclusion of the analyisis of the beginning of the effects of Trumponomics on the economic sector, it seems that Trump's policies are overall slightly negative. Obviously we would not see any significant changes so soon into these changes, however they carry a certian weight in understanding that the very beginning of these changes would signal decresaes in major economic factors that were expected to increase, or increase at a much faster pace at this current point. If the current administration is not careful, these specific losses coulde exacerbated in the future.
