In a recent press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the Republican nominee for U.S. presidency Donald J. Trump laid out a pretty bleak vision of what he believes is to come if he doesn’t win the next election.
According to him, America’s headed straight for a “Great Depression” and possibly even World War III. A full-blown global meltdown.
Trump’s got a lot to say about the Biden-Harris administration, and none of it’s good. He’s convinced that under their leadership, the U.S. is teetering on the edge of a massive economic collapse.
He even went on to predict that the country could see unemployment numbers shoot up to 25%, like we saw during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Trump claims Democrats will bring war and economic ruin
Trump’s convinced that Biden’s policies are pushing the U.S. right into a global conflict. He even went as far as to say that we could end up in a war where the weapons used would be “the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.”
The former president has been on this theme for a while. Back in February 2024, at the CPAC conference, he said that if Biden gets reelected, we’ll be “losing World War III” before we even know it.
But here’s the thing: the numbers don’t exactly back up Trump’s claims. Sure, the U.S. economy isn’t perfect, but it’s not on the edge of collapse, either.
Right now, the unemployment rate is sitting at 4.3%, which is simply too far from the 25% Trump is predicting. And while there are definitely some global tensions, there’s no solid evidence that a third world war is right around the corner.
The current reality
We’ve seen Trump use this kind of rhetoric before. Remember when he said his crowd on January 6th, 2021, was bigger than Martin Luther King Jr.’s at the March on Washington in 1963? Yeah, that didn’t exactly check out.
According to him, the 2024 election is the last chance for America to “save our country.” He told an audience in South Carolina back in January 2023 that the U.S. needs a leader who can “take on the whole system” and “win.”
In Trump’s view, he’s the only one who can pull the country back from the edge. He believes he can fix things with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his allies North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi Jinping, and India’s Narendra Modi.
According to most economists, GDP growth is expected to slow down in 2024, but a recession isn’t likely. In fact, growth should pick up again by 2025 as inflation eases and the Federal Reserve cuts rates.
But the unemployment rate did rise to 4.3% in July 2024, which triggered something called the Sahm Rule.
That rule has historically signaled the start of a recession, but economists aren’t convinced it’s accurate this time around. They’re saying that the economy might keep expanding, even if it’s at a slower rate.
There’s also been some tightening in financial conditions, thanks to the Fed’s interest rate hikes. That’s bumped up the chances of a recession to somewhere between 15% and 25%, depending on who you ask.
But again, most economists don’t think a recession is a sure thing.
