MAGA media follow Trump’s lead in blaming economic contraction on Biden

The American economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.3% during the first quarter of 2025, after growing at a rate of 2.4% during the fourth quarter of 2024 under former President Joe Biden, and the Trump administration is desperately spinning blame for the contraction on its predecessor.

President Donald Trump’s supporters in the media quickly followed suit, decrying the supposed “hangover from the Biden administration” for economic contraction on Trump’s watch. Their dissembling continues a glaring pattern of distracting from troubling economic news under Trump by pointing to Democrats, and crediting Trump for good economic performance under Democrats. This has included airing decades-old clips of Democrats talking about trade with China to suggest they agree with Trump’s extreme tariffs.

There is no significant debate among economic analysts about which presidency is responsible for the sudden reversal of the economy’s previous upward trajectory. They posited that the economy contracted in the first quarter of 2025 as individuals and businesses shifted their consumption activity, boosting imports in an effort to “front run” price increases brought on by Trump’s import tax regime. As one economist said to The Washington Post, “Growth has simply vanished. … There is simply no way for policy advisers to sugarcoat this.”