‘Good parts are Trump economy, bad parts are Biden economy’: Is Trump passing blame to former president for his policies?

US President Donald Trump seems to be taking credit for good reports but deflecting the blame for his economic failures, which have surfaced recently, to former president Joe Biden.

In an interview with NBC’s host Kristen Welker that aired on Sunday (May 4), Trump said, “I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job.”

“He did a terrible job on everything, from his autopen, which I’m sure he knew nothing about, some of the things he was supposedly signing,” he added, without elaborating on how his economic policies differed from Biden’s.

In his first 100 days in office, Trump jas rattled the global economic and trading structure with his sweeping tariffs on scores of countries, a move he claims would bring back manufacturing facilities to the US. 

Although Trump halted the tariffs for most countries for 90 days, the US economy significantly shrank in the first quarter of 2025, starkly different from the 2.4 per cent growth recorded in the last quarter of 2024.

“Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. “Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

In April, there has been an increase of 177,000 jobs in the US, though federal job cuts have not yet shown up in employment statistics. The average hourly income has also increased.

Despite Trump’s insistence that his policies will work in the long run, his approval ratings have fell to 39 per cent for handing the economy, according to a poll by CNN released last week.

“Ultimately, I take responsibility for everything,” Trump told Welker.

“But I’ve only just been here for a little more than three months. But the stock market, look at what’s happened in the last short period of time. Didn’t it have nine or 10 days in a row, or 11 days, where it’s gone up? And the tariffs have just started kicking in. And we’re doing really well. Psychologically, I mean, the fake news was giving me such press on the tariffs. The tariffs are going to make us rich. We’re going to be a very rich country.”