LETTER: Give Biden a break on the economy

It seems that we have forgotten how the pandemic wreaked havoc on our economy. The pandemic hit the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency and continued for more than two years into Joe Biden’s administration. When Mr. Trump left office, unemployment was 6.3 percent with a negative 3.5 percent GDP for 2020. By April 2020, 22 million jobs were lost with an unemployment rate spike to 14.8 percent as the economy shut down.

When Mr. Biden took office in January 2021 there were more than 3,000 COVID deaths every day. As the vaccines took hold, the economy began to open up in early 2022. Unfortunately, the world-wide supply chain had been severely disrupted and couldn’t respond quickly as the spending public came out of seclusion. As a result, the inflation rate went up to 9.1 percent in June 2022 due to a greater demand than supply. This required the Fed to increase the prime interest rates.

Now, inflation is getting under control with rates around 2.5 percent and the Fed has begun reducing the prime lending rate. Unemployment has been around 4 percent for 24 consecutive months, and the stock market has hit record highs.

When people say that the economy was better under Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden, it’s important to remember the three years of COVID that severely impacted our economy. According to economists, our economy has recovered much better than most of the industrialized world.