What's wrong

[CUDA]

Trade is going the wrong way?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47472282

[bullet20vee]

We're still trying to straigten out the mess Obama created. Hang in there snowflake, it's only gonna get better.

[David]

I can give examples of why it went wrong. China buys raw materials and food products from the US, and could easily switch to other suppliers. Like they just did with Canadian canola. A company that buys stamped, molded, cast components (tooled stuff) in China can't switch to another supplier overnight. Tools have to be made. The steel tariffs made sourcing some of my company's parts in the US more expensive, so the company off-shored a bunch of those - possible because as a global company some parts are sourced in multiple regions.

"Winning trade wars is easy". Not.

[FMP]

It's been suggested the Canadian canola cancellation is a response to the arrest of a certain high profile Chinese telecom executive now facing extradition and trial in the USA.

[powerabout]

Americans must have too much money if they keep buying overseas stuff?

[XstreamVking]

If we stopped buying foreign goods a lot of other countries would collapse financially. Better hope we keep some trade going. And trade policy can't be changed unless the domestic products are available to the American consumer. It will take time, but things will swing around in the right direction. Imagine how good we would be doing if we had a cooperative spirit in our country instead of all the ninny's and the bitching they do when the President tries to make things better. In china they would cut their fn heads off for the crap they pull here.....

[CUDA]

It's called a Democracy, no decapitation aloud...

[CUDA]

We're still trying to straigten out the mess Obama created. Hang in there snowflake, it's only gonna get better.

it's spelled straighten, we need to straighten out your perception of reality caveman.

I guess you have a major memory lapse...

You see the rich who own the Republican party, stripped away controls to prevent such things from happening so down the tubes we went, If you look back after every eight-year term of Republican rule the economy went down.

Responding to the Great Recession[edit]

Non-farm job creation averaged approximately 200,000/month for 73 months from October 2010 to October 2016, a robust rate by historical standards. The unemployment rate fell from 10% to less than 5%.^[19][20]

CBO explained that the shortfall in employment relative to a theoretical full employment level fell from nearly 10 million in 2010 to 1.6 million by late 2016. The shortfall was due to excess levels of unemployment and a decline in labor force participation.^[21]

The tier 1 ratio represents the strength of the financial cushion that a bank maintains; the higher the ratio, the stronger the financial position of the bank, other things equal. Dodd–Frank set standards for improving this ratio and has been successful in that regard.^[2]

U.S. changes in household debt as a percentage of GDP for 1989-2016. Recoveries from financial crises tend to be protracted, as debt levels must be reduced before typical borrow-and-spend patterns are resumed. In this case, homeowners paid down debt from 2009-2012.^[22]

Several major U.S. economic variables had recovered from the 2007-2009 Subprime mortgage crisis and Great Recession by the 2013-2014 time period.

See also: Subprime mortgage crisis
President Obama's first inauguration was held during the depths of the Great Recession. The situation was dire; the economy had lost nearly 3.6 million jobs in 2008 and was shedding jobs at a nearly 800,000 per month rate when he took office. During September 2008, several major financial institutions either collapsed, were forced into mergers, or were bailed-out by the government. The financial system was nearly frozen, as the equivalent of a bank run on the essentially unregulated, non-depository shadow banking system was in-progress.^[23] Ben Bernanke later stated that 12 of the 13 largest U.S. financial institutions were at risk of failure during the crisis.^[24]
The Bush Administration had passed the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program in October 2008 and provided enormous loan guarantees to help strengthen the banks as late as January 2009 during the transition period. Further, the U.S. Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke was taking a series of innovative emergency steps to inject money into the financial system, acting in their role as the "lender of last resort." Obama and Bernanke agreed that further action was also needed by Congress to help boost the economy beyond Wall Street.^[1][25]
Stimulus[edit]

Main article: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $831 billion economic stimuluspackage aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening worldwide recession.^[26] The act increased federal spending by $573 billion^[27] for health care, infrastructure, education and social benefits, with the remainder used for tax relief^[28] — including a $116 billion income tax cut that benefited 95% of working families.^[29] Democrats overwhelmingly supported this measure, while only a few Senate Republicans supported the law.
The CBO estimated ARRA would positively impact GDP and employment, with primary impact between 2009 and 2011. It projected an increase in the GDP of between 1.4 and 3.8% by late 2009, 1.1 and 3.3% by late 2010, and 0.4 and 1.3% by late 2011, as well as a decrease of between zero and 0.2% beyond 2014.^[30] The impact to employment would be an increase of 0.8 million to 2.3 million by last-2009, an increase of 1.2 million to 3.6 million by late 2010, an increase of 0.6 million to 1.9 million by late 2011, and declining increases in subsequent years as the U.S. labor market reaches nearly full employment, but never negative.^[30] The CBO estimated that enacting the bill would increase federal budget deficits by $185 billion over the remaining months of fiscal year 2009, $399 billion in 2010, and $134 billion in 2011, or $787 billion over the 2009–2019 period.^[31]
The Congressional Budget Office and a broad range of economists credit Obama's stimulus plan for economic growth.^[32][33] The CBO's final analysis in February 2015 found that ARRA provided substantial improvement to GDP growth and employment.^[34]

Although an April 2010 survey of members of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) showed an increase in job creation (over a similar January survey) for the first time in two years, 73% of the 68 respondents believed that the stimulus bill had no impact on employment at their company after one year of ARRA's enactment.^[35] The economy of the United States has grown faster than the other original NATO members by a wider margin under President Obama than it has anytime since the end of World War II.^[36] The OECD credits the much faster growth in the United States to the stimulus in the United States, in contrast to the austerity measures taken in the European Union.^[37]
The Council of Economic Advisers produced a comprehensive report on the ARRA in 2014, which includes a variety of graphics illustrating the positive effect on both GDP and jobs. It also covers the allocation of spending and tax cuts contained in the legislation.^[38]
U.S. automobile industry support[edit]

Obama intervened in the troubled automotive industry^[39] in March 2009, renewing loans for General Motors and Chrysler to continue operations while reorganizing. Over the following months, the White House set terms for both firms' bankruptcies, including the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat^[40] and a reorganization of General Motors giving the U.S. government a temporary 60% equity stake in the company, with the Canadian government taking a 12% stake.^[41]
In June 2009, dissatisfied with the pace of economic stimulus, Obama called on his cabinet to accelerate the investment.^[42] By late 2013, the Federal Government had disposed of (re-privatized) all of its investments in Chrysler and GM. As of late 2016, taxpayers had recovered $71 billion of the $80 billion invested in the automobile industry.^[2]
According to a study by the Center for Automotive Research, the bailout saved 2.63 million jobs and saved or avoided the loss of $105 billion in transfer payments and the loss of personal and social insurance tax collection.^[43][44] Auto and light truck production pre-crisis of 2007 was 16.0 million units, fell to 10.4 million units at the trough of the Great Recession in 2009, then steadily rebounded to 18.3 million by December 2016.^[45] He also signed into law the Car Allowance Rebate System program, also known as "Cash for Clunkers."^[46][47][48]
Trends in employment[edit]

See also: Unemployment in the United States
Approximately 8.7 million private sector jobs were lost between January 2008 and February 2010 due to the Great Recession. The unemployment rate (U-3) began rising from 4.7% in November 2007 and peaked at 10.0% in October 2009 as the crisis deepened, approximately where it remained until November 2010. Thereafter, it began a steady decline through the remainder of his tenure, reaching 4.7% in 2016. Another measure of unemployment (U-6), which includes workers marginally attached to the labor force and those employed part-time for economic reasons, rose from 8.4% in November 2007 and peaked at 17.1% in November 2009, approximately where it remained until November 2010. Thereafter, it began a steady decline until reaching 9.4% in January 2017.^[49]
Measured from the month following his inauguration in January 2009, the U.S. added 11.6 million private sector jobs from February 2009 to January 2017. Measured from the crisis trough in February 2010, the U.S. added a total of 16.1 million private sector jobs over the remaining 83 months of the Obama presidency — the longest continuous period of private sector job creation on record.^[50] By comparison, no net jobs were added during the 2000–2009 period including the crisis impact, while 18 to 22 million jobs were added each decade from 1970 to 1999.^[51]
Non-farm job creation averaged approximately 200,000/month for 73 months from October 2010 to October 2016, a robust rate by historical standards. For example, job creation per month averaged 236,000 (Clinton), 209,000 (Carter), 167,000 (Reagan), 50,000 (G. H. W. Bush), and 13,000 (G. W. Bush).^[51][52]
The 2017 'Economic Report of the President stated, "Nonfarm job growth turned consistently positive beginning in October 2010. Since then, the U.S. economy has added jobs for 74 straight months, the longest streak of total job growth on record; over this period, nonfarm employment growth has averaged 199,000 jobs a month. Total nonfarm employment recovered to its pre-recession peak in 2014—the best year for job creation since the 1990s—and, as of November 2016, exceeded its pre-recession peak by 6.7 million jobs."^[2]
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated the size of an employment shortfall, defined as the number of workers below a full employment level. This shortfall steadily improved during Obama's tenure, from approximately 10 million in 2010 to 2.5 million as of December 2015, a figure roughly 1.5% of the 160 million person labor force. As the economy recovered towards full employment, a reduced labor force participation rate among prime working-aged persons (between ages 25 to 54 years old) accounted for a greater share of the shortfall. The overall labor force participation rate had been falling since 2000, as the country ages.^[21]
In December 2015, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported the reasons why persons aged 16 years or older were outside the labor force, using the 2014 figure of 87.4 million: 1) Retired: 38.5 million or 44%; 2) Disabled or Illness: 16.3 million or 19%; 3) Attending School: 16.0 million or 18%; 4) Home Responsibilities: 13.5 million or 15%; and 4) Other Reasons: 3.1 million or 5%.^[53] As of November 2016, BLS estimated that 90 million of the 95 million people outside the labor force indicated they "do not want a job now."^[54]
During the Obama presidency, critics asserted that his policies (particularly the ACA) were destroying full-time employment and creating "Obama's Part-Time America."^[55][56] However, from the month ACA was enacted in March 2010 to the end of the Obama presidency, full-time employment increased 12.5%, voluntary part-time employment (those who normally seek part-time work) declined 1.0%, and involuntary part-time employment (those who want full-time work but must settle for part-time) declined 35.4%.^[57]
Banking regulation[edit]

To address the excesses in the banking sector that precipitated the crisis, Obama signed into law the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which limited bank risk-taking and overhauled the outdated regulatory regime that was ineffective in monitoring the non-depository or shadow banking sector at the core of the crisis, which had outgrown the traditional depository banking sector. It also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). However, it did not breakup the largest banks (which had grown even larger due to forced mergers during the crisis) or separate investment and depository banking, as the Glass-Steagal Act had done. Nearly all Congressional Democrats but only a few Republicans voted for the law.^[1] On December 10, 2014, the President himself, together with JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, helped whip House votes in favor of the "cromnibus" spending bill, which included a provision that one lawmaker argued would significantly weaken the Dodd-Frank regulations.^[58]
Recovery[edit]

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 was different in kind from the all the recessions since the Great Depression, as it also involved a banking crisis and the de-leveraging (debt reduction) of highly indebted households. Research indicates recovery from financial crises can be protracted, with lengthy periods of high unemployment and substandard economic growth.^[59] Economist Carmen Reinhart stated in August 2011: "Debt de-leveraging [reduction] takes about seven years ... And in the decade following severe financial crises, you tend to grow by 1 to 1.5 percentage points less than in the decade before, because the decade before was fueled by a boom in private borrowing, and not all of that growth was real. The unemployment figures in advanced economies after falls are also very dark. Unemployment remains anchored about five percentage points above what it was in the decade before."^[60]
Several key economic variables (e.g., Job level, real GDP per capita, household net worth, and the federal budget deficit) hit their low point (trough) in 2009 or 2010, after which they began to turn upward, recovering to pre-recession (2007) levels between late 2012 and May 2014, which marked the recovery of all jobs lost during the recession.^{[61][62][63][64]} Real median household income fell to a trough of $53,331 in 2012, but recovered to an all-time high of $59,039 by 2016.^[65]
The Great Recession had a particularly severe effect on state and local tax receipts, causing many states and localities to reduce spending and employment to balance budgets as mandated by their constitutions or statutes. This government contraction subtracted from real GDP growth, creating an economic drag, rather than government adding to real GDP as is typical.^[66] Obama noted this in June 2012, saying, "The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government -- oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don’t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in."^[67]
Healthcare reform[edit]

This chart illustrates several aspects of the Affordable Care Act, including number of persons covered, cost before and after subsidies, and public opinion.

Coverage rate, employer market cost trends, budgetary impact, and income inequality aspects of the Affordable Care Act.

The distributional impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) during 2014. The ACA raised taxes mainly on the top 1% to fund approximately $600 in benefits on average for the bottom 40% of families.

Main article: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
President Obama followed with the legislation that bears his name ("Obamacare"), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actof 2010. It was built on three related concepts, including: 1) Subsidies for low-income persons to help them purchase health insurance; 2) Guaranteed issue and community rating, meaning persons with pre-existing medical conditions could not be discriminated against; and 3) Coverage requirements, enforced via both individual and employer "mandates" with financial incentives supporting them, to ensure healthy people (with few medical bills) would participate to help keep insurance costs down for all.^[68] While the law received no Republican Congressional support, it was conceptually similar to the healthcare plan created by the conservative Heritage Foundation during the late 1980s and Romneycare.^[69] Healthcare historian Paul Starr said in December 2017: "If you trace the origins of the ideas in the ACA, it was basically a bi-partisan bill passed on strictly partisan lines."^[70]
By creating state-level marketplaces or exchanges, enough people could form pools to obtain cost-effective coverage. Furthermore, the law provided federal funding for states that chose to expand their Medicaid programs. The vast majority of congressional Democrats voted for the law, while no Republicans in the House or Senate did so.^[71][72] Republicans, mainly in the House of Representatives, attempted on as many as 60 occasions to repeal, defund, or delay the law during Obama's tenure, but to no avail.^[73]
Coverage[edit]

By 2016, the law covered approximately 24 million people with health insurance via a combination of state healthcare exchanges and funding for the state-level expansion of Medicaid to more people.^[4] It lowered the rate of those without health insurance from approximately 16% in 2010 to 9% by 2015.^[5] Poltifact cited various estimates that only about 2% of the total insured population (4 million out of 262 million) received notices that substandard policies would have to be changed, although Obama was roundly criticized for claims that "if you like your health plan, you can keep it."^[74]
However, despite federal financial incentives to do so, many states with Republican governors chose not to expand Medicaid to their residents under the ACA, which adversely affected coverage for lower-income citizens while reducing costs. According to the Urban Institute, those states that expanded Medicaid (32 of them, including Washington, D.C.) had a 7.3% uninsured rate in the first quarter of 2016, while those that did not (19 states) had a 14.1% uninsured rate among adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years old.^[75][76]
Healthcare costs[edit]

Throughout his tenure, healthcare costs continued to moderate. For example, healthcare premiums for those covered by employers rose by 69% from 2000 to 2005, but only by 27% from 2010 to 2015.^[6] To put these trends into perspective, the 2017 Economic Report of the President stated,

Because of slow growth in costs in employer coverage...the average costs for a family with employer-based coverage in 2016 were $4,400 below where they would have been had costs grown at their pace over the decade before the ACA became law.

While these slower cost increases began before the ACA, they continued or further improved after its implementation.^[2]
The ACA also provided subsidies to help lower-income families afford insurance. By 2017, nearly 70% of those on the exchanges could purchase insurance for less than $75/month after subsidies.^[7] CBO estimated that subsidies paid under the law in 2016 averaged $4,240 per person for 10 million people receiving them, roughly $42 billion. For scale, the subsidy for the employer market, in the form of exempting from taxation those health insurance premiums paid on behalf of employees by employers, was approximately $1,700 per person in 2016, or $266 billion for the 155 million persons in the employer market. The employer market subsidy was not changed by the law.^[4]
Budgetary impact[edit]

The law was evaluated multiple times by the Congressional Budget Office, which scored it as a moderate deficit reducer, as it included tax hikes primarily on high income taxpayers (over $200,000 roughly the Top 5%) and reductions in future Medicare cost increases, offsetting subsidy costs.^[8] The CBO also reported in June 2015 that, "Including the budgetary effects of macroeconomic feedback, repealing the ACA would increase federal budget deficits by $137 billion over the 2016–2025 period."^[8] CBO also estimated that excluding the effects of macroeconomic feedback, repeal of the ACA would increase the deficit by $353 billion over that same period.^[8]
The 2017 Economic Report of the President also stated that ACA has improved healthcare quality, saying

Since 2010, the rate at which patients are harmed while seeking hospital care has fallen by 21 percent, which is estimated to have led to approximately 125,000 avoided deaths through 2015. Payment incentives created in the ACA have also driven a substantial decline in the rate at which patients return to hospital after discharge, corresponding to an estimated 565,000 avoided readmissions from April 2010 through May 2015.^[2]

Public opinion[edit]

According to Gallup, the overall popularity of the law fell and then improved during Obama's tenure, but more disapproved of it (52%) than approved of it (44%) as of November 2016. Popularity was divided along party lines, with Democrats having a much more favorable view of the law.^[77] Individual elements were considerably more popular than the law overall, although the mandate requiring people to have insurance remained highly unpopular.^[78][79]
Control of Congress

FACTS not Fox fiction.

[SS Minnow]

It's called a Democracy, no decapitation aloud...

Its spelled allowed in the context you are using it. As in, you are allowed to voice your opinion, but nobody really cares. And what is this democracy you speak of?

[XstreamVking]

Haha, perfect callout by SS Minnow.

[FMP]

Of the 330m people in the US, I was told well over 110 million are some form or another of welfare?
Prior to Trumps election.
Which then changes the true total unemployment % to , you do the math 1/3 .
Actually the 18+ age group is about 77% of that 330 , so maybe a bit higher total UE%.

[GRH]

It's called a Democracy, no decapitation aloud...

Actually it's called a "republic"....

[SS Minnow]

Of the 330m people in the US, I was told well over 110 million are some form or another of welfare?
Prior to Trumps election.
Which then changes the true total unemployment % to , you do the math 1/3 .

Not really. Of the 330 million, how many are employable, as in of working age, not retired, or physically and mentally capable.
And then your 110 million that are on welfare, what do those numbers include? Retired, disabled, children?
Finally, not all forms of welfare are for the unemployed. There are lots of employed people that collect benefits. Think Seattle when they raised the minimum wage to $15 a while back. When this happened, the fast food workers no longer qualified for benefits which made their minimum wage raise not effective except that many were then laid off only to be back on benefits.

So in closing, it appears that you are as good at interpreting statistics as you are at picking outboard motors.

[FMP]

The numbers were given to me by a staunch Republican. The unfortunate % within those values he didn't differentiate. But was 100% confident Pres Obama but over 100m on welfare.
I'll give him your number and he'll chew you a new hole.

[SS Minnow]

The numbers were given to me by a staunch Republican. The unfortunate % within those values he didn't differentiate. But was 100% confident Pres Obama but over 100m on welfare.
I'll give him your number and he'll chew you a new hole.

I am not disputing the numbers, just that it equals what you claimed by ways of unemployment.