“Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner took on the litany of false claims that Donald Trump made about the U.S. economy during a speech in Detroit on Tuesday.
“The Trump economic boom has officially begun,” the president told the audience at the Detroit Economic Club, touting what he pitched as the undeniable success of tax cuts, tariffs and trade deals.
“He’s like King Cnut, you know, trying to part the waters and claim something’s happening that isn’t happening,” Rattner said Wednesday, responding to Trump’s claim of an “economic boom.”
“For example, he claims that he brought $18 trillion of new investment into the United States, but his own website only says it was $9.6 trillion — and that’s probably exaggerated,” he continued. “He’s trying to, by just simply making up these facts, somehow convince the American people that he’s on track.”
Rattner focused on one affordability issue that’s taking a toll on millions of Americans across the country: the rising costs of housing.
“It was interesting because he didn’t mention housing until he was about 40 minutes into the speech, and then it was simply three sentences,” Rattner said. “I think he may recognize that this is a problem, and he hasn’t got really a solution.”
The “Morning Joe” economic analyst started by explaining the root of the issue. “Essentially, if you go all the way back to 2000, housing has generally gone up faster than incomes,” he said, noting that the cost of buying a house has gone up more than 280% over the past two decades.
However, Rattner argued that the proposals the president has offered to date, such as implementing a 50-year mortgage and preventing investment firms from buying single-family homes, will do little to reverse this crisis.
“There has been a bit of a trend of large investment firms buying groups of houses and then renting them out,” he said. “But let’s put that in perspective: Big investors own less than 1% of the houses. Most of them are owned by families, individuals, a few smaller investors.”
“Somebody might own a couple of houses or a small apartment building, but big investors are not a major factor in this,” Rattner explained.
The former Treasury official then moved on to Trump’s mortgage plan. “They’ve thrown out the idea of a 50-year mortgage instead of the 30-year mortgage, with the concept that it would stretch out payments, make payments per month lower and thereby make it more affordable,” he said.
While Rattner admitted that monthly payments would go down on a typical mortgage under the proposal, he explained they would only do so by about $200. “That is not going to solve the housing problem either,” he said.
You can watch Rattner’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.