My retrospective on the Trump economy in @WSJopinion, what the macroeconomic data can't tell us, but also what economics can can tell us in four lessons. One tweet per lesson: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-policy-lessons-of-the-trump-economy-11609284164?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Lesson 1. Presidents often get credit or blame for the economy even though uncontrollable events often matter more than policy. The pandemic is an obvious example, but so is the pickup in global growth that helped the US economy in 2017 and 2018.

Lesson 2. Presidents are often at the mercy of the business cycle. Is unfair to blame Obama for low growth over his eight yrs because it includes an inherited recession. Also unfair to blame Trump for the slowing job growth in 2017-19 as we were getting closer to full employment.

Lesson 3. Economic data often say more about short-run, demand-side policies than they do about longer-run, supply-side effects that motivate much policy making. Pre-pandemic economic policy looked like a response to recession with rate cuts and sizable fiscal expansion.

Lesson 4. We are generally better off inferring the effects of policies from a range of evidence and experience than from a single example. Economic evidence/experience shows that Trump's immigration restrictions likely hurt long-run growth more than his tax cuts helped.