By LAWRENCE S. WITTNER
In mid-2015, announcing his candidacy for president of the United States, Donald Trump declared that he would “be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”
Subsequently, the Republican billionaire hammered away at this theme. The nation’s loss of factory jobs, he argued, was the fault of Democrats, but, as he told a Detroit audience, he would “restore manufacturing in the United States.” Addressing a campaign rally in Warren, Mich., he asserted: “If I’m elected . . . you won’t lose one plant, I promise you that.”
With Trump’s election, however, just the opposite occurred. During the four years of Trump’s presidency, the United States lost 2.7 million jobs. As a result, he was the only president since 1939, when the U.S. government began compiling such employment statistics, to preside over a net loss of jobs.