U.S. President Trump Promises to Create 25 Million Jobs Over 10 Years

Image: By Michael Vadon (Donald Trump) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

In his inaugural address, President Donald Trump stated his vision for the United States, telling the citizens of his country to hire American and buy American. It espouses his doctrine that he calls “America First.”

According to his speech, this means creating 25 million jobs over the next 10 years, which is more than the 23 million jobs created during President Clinton’s administration.  The new U.S. President also vows to bring back the citizens’ dreams, their wealth, their borders and their jobs. This drew the most applause during his inaugural speech.

Economic resurgence

Trump promises to revive the economy and gave the citizens hope with his economic promises. His speech was meant to lift the economic anxiety of most Americans, who felt that the situation today was worse than when the U.S. was under the Great Recession. At that time, millions lost their homes and about 1 in 10 residents did not have jobs.

He promised to turn some of the manufacturing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin into their former glory.

During Pres. Obama’s administration, five million jobs in manufacturing were lost since 2000. However, the former president was able to add 11 million jobs in the service sector – from business to technology jobs in hotels and retail business. These jobs did not have much effect on the middle class incomes though, which became the focus of Pres. Trump’s promises.

The promised jobs

Many economists are saying that it will take a miracle to create 25 million jobs. Incidentally, 2,000 workers at General Motors (GM) plants in Ohio and Michigan lost their jobs on the day Pres. Trump was inaugurated.

It might be difficult to generate millions of jobs, but Pres. Trump laid down his plans, although there are no specifics. He only said that he would be building new airports, railways, bridges and highways. From his website and his campaign speeches, Trump said that he will renegotiate trade agreements with Mexico and China, rollback on regulations and giving individuals and businesses huge tax cuts.

In reality

Wall Street rallied, consumer confidence rose and even small businesses welcomed the economic plans. However, reality will not be denied, as there are some facts that cannot be discounted, and they present challenges to the new president. One is that the population in the U.S. is getting older and the so-called Baby Boomers are on the verge of retiring. More robots are replacing jobs. Moreover, the current U.S. debt is at $19 trillion and the economic growth in the U.S. as well as the rest of the world is still slow. Economists fear that there will be a trade war, which is something that they want to avoid. When the Great Depression happened, America placed tariffs on goods coming from outside the United States, which did not have satisfactory results.

Analysts say that many voted for Trump because they thought that he could bring change on many fronts. Trump did say that he would bring economic change, but analysts are giving a wait-and-see attitude because delivering on those promises is going to be a very huge undertaking.