You are right JD. The US economy under Trump is going gangbusters just as the MAGA policies as implemented promised and were designed to achieve. But improvement in the economy could have been caused by all sorts of things other than those MAGA policies.

Who knows maybe the numbers are fudged. Or it could have been aliens. Or the illuminati. Or the free-masons. Or the deity.

There are all sorts of scenarios where Trump's policies actually achieving what they promised had nothing to do with those policies.

So you keep believing that JD and looking around askant every time you fall for the next excuse for Trump's successes. BTW inflation figures were released for December overnight. They remain low. It seems the tariffs don't cause inflation after all. Who'da thunk it.

mhaze,

You've acknowledged that economic outcomes can arise from multiple drivers and aren't automatically attributable to a single policy set. That's the only point I've been making.

The question is what follows from that acknowledgment - whether favourable aggregates alone are sufficient proof of strategic competence, or whether attribution still needs to be argued rather than assumed.

I've never denied that the US economy improved, nor claimed Trump had zero influence. What I've disputed is the move from noting favourable outcomes to treating them as proof of strategic competence and coherence without any articulated causal account beyond intent -> outcome.

Pointing to low inflation or tariff outcomes after the fact doesn't resolve that. Avoiding one predicted effect does not, by itself, establish planning discipline, restraint, or foresight. It shows an outcome - not how, why, or under what constraints it arose.

If your position is that favourable aggregate results are sufficient proof of policy success regardless of mechanism or alternative drivers, then we're no longer disagreeing about Trump. We're disagreeing about standards of inference.

On that, I think the disagreement is now very clear.