Joe Biden’s economic record is shabby. Inflation, bare shelves, supply chain issues, gas prices, food prices, you name it, the nation’s economic picture was much better under Donald Trump. The recent news that inflation jumped 7 percent in December, the biggest rise in forty years, proves that point. Economist Stephen Moore explains.

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Moore: Most economists and analysts saw the jobs report for December as a disappointment – but not Joe Biden. Instead, shortly after the announcement he rushed to the cameras and took a victory lap on the economy.

Biden boasted that no president in recent times has had a better first year in office when it comes to the kitchen table issues affecting Americans wallets. That may have been a jaw-dropper for most Americans given that the latest polls by Scott Rasmussen show Biden’s approval rating on handling the economy underwater at below 30%.

The president also declared “supply side economics” and Trump’s strategy of deregulation and tax rate cuts a failure compared to his strategy of blitzing the economy with government debt-financed spending. Not so fast.

Biden got one thing right; the job market is strong today with an unemployment rate now below 4% and millions of jobs available as the post-COVID business recovery rolled forward in December. But Biden should be careful when he spikes the football at the three-yard line, because job growth has been rapidly slowing on his watch and could even go negative again at the end of this month due to the fast spread of omicron and the reclosing of many businesses and schools.

Remember, this is the man who boldly and repeatedly promised while campaigning for president that he would “defeat the virus.” This isn’t just a health policy failure by team Biden. He lectured while Donald Trump was in the Oval Office that no real economic recovery was possible until the virus was eradicated. “The virus is in charge,” the Democrats said. Now with the new contagion affecting more Americans than ever and new rounds of lockdowns and mandates, the economy is slumping again. Polls show that a majority of Americans also disapprove of the way Biden has dealt with this virus.

Biden boasted of adding 6.4 million new jobs this year. But we lost more than 20 million jobs during the pandemic. And since the pandemic peak in the summer of 2021, employers added back 12.6 million in Trump’s last seven months in office.

In other words: Trump added almost twice as many jobs in a little more than half the time. So much for the failures of Trump’s supply-side tax-cutting strategy.

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Biden also credited his American Rescue Plan and the $1.9 trillion it dumped into the economy starting in March. But the economy was adding an average of 1.3 million jobs a month before passing Biden’s wasteful spending package versus half a million jobs per month since his first debt bill saturated the economy. This may be one reason why so many Americans are longing for the days of Trump’s Make America Great Again tax, trade and regulatory policies.