The U.S. economy contracted in Q1 2025, and Democrats have swiftly pinned the blame on President Donald Trump, just 100 days into his second term. Their rapid criticism conveniently ignores the economic legacy of Joe Biden’s presidency, which they seem eager to erase.
For nearly four years, Biden deflected responsibility for inflation that surged on his watch, blaming Trump’s policies. Now, Democrats are acting as if Biden’s tenure, a period of economic volatility, never happened, focusing instead solely on Trump’s early months to score political points.
The Q1 2025 retraction, reported at 0.3%, has become a lightning rod for Democratic attacks, as the left didn’t hesitate to blame Trump for the news.
“It’s only been 100 days, but Donald Trump already managed to shrink the economy and spark widespread fears of recession,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a post on X.
“Americans who hired Donald Trump for the economy must be ready to fire him now,” Schumer said. “Today’s GDP number shows Donald Trump is running America the same way he ran his business — straight into the ground. This decline in GDP is a blaring warning to everyone that Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ failed MAGA experiment is killing our economy.”
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Schumer continued, “Donald Trump must admit his failure and reverse course, and immediately fire his economic team.”
This narrative ignores the fragile economy Trump inherited in January 2025. Biden’s presidency was plagued by persistent inflation, supply chain issues, and a ballooning national debt. Moreover, economic data under Biden often faced downward revisions, a clear sign of underlying weakness. Initial GDP growth estimates were repeatedly adjusted lower. In fact, back in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revised its employment data, revealing that the administration overestimated monthly job growth in 2024 by an average of approximately 626,000 jobs. This adjustment follows a previous correction where the BLS acknowledged an overstatement of 818,000 jobs between March 2023 and March 2024.
Make no mistake about it, the economy Trump inherited was in shambles. Biden’s presidency was defined by soaring inflation, with the Consumer Price Index hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022. Biden consistently blamed everything and everyone but himself for his disastrous economy, despite economists pointing to Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and restrictive energy policies as key drivers.
For nearly four years, Biden’s team dodged accountability, casting Trump as the economic villain while Americans grappled with rising costs for groceries, gas, and housing. Now, when Trump has only been in office for a little over three months, they want to pretend the Biden presidency never happened.
Let’s cut through the spin. With Trump back in the White House, Democrats have gone from blaming Biden’s economic failures on Trump, Biden’s predecessor, to blaming a single quarter of contraction on Trump, Biden’s successor. By whitewashing Biden’s failures, they’re trying to pin any slowdown entirely on Trump, setting up their narrative for 2026. But the challenges Trump inherited didn’t appear overnight, and they won’t be fixed overnight. If Democrats want to talk about accountability, they should start by owning the economic mess they left behind and giving Trump more time to clean it up.
