November 12, 2017
Foreign tourism to New York City is set to rise 3.6 percent this year — defying yet another of the many doomsday predictions about Donald Trump’s presidency.
Back in February, the city tourism agency said Trump’s “travel ban and related rhetoric” would mean a drop of 300,000 visitors this year. But the NYC & Co. prophecy proved false.
Of course, other predictions were more dire — particularly those about the stock market.
Finance expert Steve Rattner foresaw “a market crash of historic proportions” under a President Trump. Moody’s warned of a “weaker” economy. Many said 2 percent GDP growth was the best that could be hoped for.
Other doomsayers included Mark Cuban, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin and firms such as Bridgewater Associates and Macroeconomic Advisers. (A less-dishonorable mention goes to Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, who at least walked back his doomsaying about “a global recession, with no end in sight,” soon after election night.)
In fact, the Dow has climbed more than 25 percent since Hillary Clinton conceded. And the first two full quarters of Trump’s term both saw growth of 3 percent or more. Oops.
More recently, Trump’s cutbacks of money to help folks sign up for ObamaCare brought warnings that enrollment would surely plummet. Hah! Over the first few days of open enrollment this year, a record number of people signed up, The Hill reported Tuesday.
The first day alone saw 200,000 sign-ups, twice last year’s number, and more than 1 million visited healthcare.gov, versus 750,000 in 2016.
As for all the noise about fascism and tyranny: Trump has scrupulously obeyed the law, even as judges came up with unprecedented legal theories to strike down his “travel ban” executive orders.
None of this guarantees that the markets won’t turn south eventually, or that ObamaCare won’t run into the rocks. But it does tell you that talk of Trump-fueled armageddon is partisan hysteria, unhinged from reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment