(AP) — All that’s left is for President-elect Donald Trump to put his name on it — if he wants.
Trump won the White House in large part because of voters’ frustration with high prices and a sense that the United States needs major changes. But when he enters office in January, Trump will inherit an economy primed for growth.
The unemployment rate is low, inflation is easing and President Joe Biden’s administration has teed up a ready-made list of infrastructure projects that could go from theoretical to reality over the next several years. There’s the TSMC computer chip plant in Arizona, the new Hyundai electric vehicle factory in Georgia, and a modernized I-375 in Michigan, among thousands of projects underway that will take years to complete.
All of that means it could be Trump, rather than Biden, who gets to tell Americans that he built the country back better. If he decides to let the projects proceed, that is.
Biden, himself, acknowledged last week that the positive economic impacts from his policies would occur after his term ends in January.
“Much of the work we’ve done is already being felt by the American people, but the vast majority will not be felt, will be felt over the next 10 years,” he said in remarks in the Rose Garden. “It’s going to take time, but it’s there. The road ahead is clear.”
Trump wants to reverse Biden’s policies, but construction is already ongoing
While Trump on the campaign trail railed against Biden’s record, he has offered few details on what initiatives he might scrap. Trump said in September that he would “rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act ” and said on Joe Rogan’s podcast that tariffs would do more for manufacturing than the funding provided by the CHIPS and Science Act.
But Biden aides privately told The Associated Press that they expect Trump to continue the planned projects and take credit for Biden’s accomplishments, just like the Republicans in Congress who’ve celebrated plant openings and infrastructure developments in their districts but voted against them.
The administration has spent millions of dollars to put up road signs to promote Biden’s role in the projects; all Trump would need to do is re-label them with his own name. Biden aides feel confident that Trump won’t want to cut programs that are helping states he won in this year’s election even if Republicans try for a token repeal of some provisions to help fund some of their own tax cut plans.
When asked about this possibility, Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump-Vance transition, said: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
Natalie Quillian, a deputy chief of staff for Biden’s White House, said that the administration’s programs are already starting to make a positive difference for the economy.
“We have already announced investments for 70,000 infrastructure and clean energy projects, catalyzed nearly $1 trillion in private sector investment, lowered prescription drug prices, and created 1.6 million construction and manufacturing jobs,” she said. “Over the coming months, we will continue to run through the tape and ensure Americans benefit from this president’s agenda for years to come.”
Trump is entering the White House as the economy is improving
Trump is also inheriting by many measures an increasingly healthy economy, despite his claims that conditions are miserable.
The Republican won the election with the unemployment rate at a healthy 4.1%, inflation at 2.4% and the Federal Reserve cutting its benchmark rates in ways that could support additional growth. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summarized the situation last week by saying the economy is “strong overall.”
Voters, though, felt the economy was weak. They penalized Democrats for inflation that reflected supply chain challenges after the pandemic, the impact of government aid that also energized job growth, and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine causing spikes in energy and food prices.
Voters appeared to care less about the overall rate of inflation, though, than the changes in price levels that occurred over the past four years. Nearly 9 in 10 identified inflation as an important factor for their choice in this year’s election, with Trump winning the clear majority of this group, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 120,000 voters.
Still, economists who’ve advised and worked previously with Trump felt the economy was not as solid as the top-line numbers suggest. They stressed the high level of government debt that has been driving growth, even though Trump himself showed little appetite for cutting deficits during his previous time in the White House.
“Government spending is keeping the economy afloat,” said Joseph LaVorgna, who was the chief economist of the White House National Economic Council during Trump’s presidency.
LaVorgna also noted that much of the recent job growth has come from government and healthcare hiring, instead of from manufacturing and other for-profit sectors.
Possible pressure to embrace renewable energy and EVs
There is a recognition among some Republican lawmakers that the energy tax credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act were positive and should be preserved. Eighteen GOP House members sent House Speaker Mike Johnson a letter in August asking him to preserve the tax credits.
Economists supporting Trump also note that sales growth for EVs could jump under the incoming administration, which has the support of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Trump has wanted to remove Biden’s incentives for EVs, which are part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But after getting Musk’s backing, Trump said that he’s “for electric cars ... because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”
That simple shift of Trump talking up EVs could remove politics from the issue and cause the incoming president to fulfill a goal set by Biden, said economist Stephen Moore, an informal Trump adviser and economist at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“With Biden gone, the EV industry will make a comeback,” Moore said. “Biden made EVs toxic because half the country hated Biden, half loved him. The people who hated Biden wouldn’t buy an EV out of conscience.”
Elon Musk’s super PAC spent around $200 million to help elect Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the group’s spending, funding an effort that set a new standard for how billionaires can influence elections.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO provided the vast majority of the money to America PAC, which focused on low-propensity and first-time voters, according to the person, who was not authorized to disclose the figure publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
America PAC’s work was aided by a March ruling from the Federal Election Commission that paved the way for super PACs to coordinate their canvassing efforts with campaigns, allowing the Trump campaign to rely on the near-unlimited money of the nation’s most high-profile billionaire to boost turnout in deep-red parts of the country. That allowed the campaign to spend the money they saved on everything from national ad campaigns to targeted outreach toward demographics Democrats once dominated.
The plan worked for both sides. Trump saw key turnout surges in battleground states, and at the end of the campaign, the president-elect credited Musk’s role in the race. “We have a new star,” Trump said at his election night party in Florida. “A star is born — Elon!”
“The FEC ruling cleared the way for us to gain more benefit from soft money enterprises that were going out and doing this work anyway,” said James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director.
Blair worked as the main bridge between the Trump operation and groups like America PAC — a far cry from the early days of super PACs having to decide their strategy without communicating officially with the campaigns they were backing.
“By conserving hard dollars, we were able to go wider and deeper on paid voter contact and advertising programs,” Blair said. That, he added, included broad ad campaigns aimed at a national audience, as well as — critically — more targeted campaigns looking to boost turnout among Black and Latino men, two areas where Trump saw sweeping gains in 2024.
It wasn’t just Musk’s money that helped Trump. The billionaire businessman became one of Trump’s highest-profile surrogates in the final months of the campaign, often joining the former president onstage. His support gave Trump a clear opening into the universe of younger men who look up to Musk.
Trump also benefited from Musk’s ownership of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and the company’s work to end many of the rules that hampered Trump before he was kicked off in 2021. Like many conservatives, Musk is a fierce critic of social media efforts to counter disinformation, arguing that those efforts amount to pro-government censorship.
Musk is now expected to play a key role in a second Trump administration. The president-elect has said he will place Musk, whose rocket company works with the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, in charge of a new government efficiency commission.
A challenge to conventional wisdom
The work between the Trump campaign and America PAC has potentially longer-lasting implications.
It could yield a wholesale shift in the way presidential races are run, overturning longstanding conventional wisdom about campaigns lacking total control of their field program, the impact billionaires can have in politics, and the effectiveness of paid canvassing operations.
One reason for skepticism is that this model had failed spectacularly for past campaigns, most notably during Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ run in the 2024 Republican presidential primary against Trump.
DeSantis, more than any other candidate in the primary, relied on an outside group to buttress his campaign. The group, Never Back Down, was beset by internal issues, and despite spending $130 million to tout the Florida governor, it was swamped by Trump and his campaign operation in Iowa.
One of the most persistent issues, however, was the blurring of lines around what is legally permissible between the campaign and the outside group, an issue that worried some within the governor’s official campaign.
That, however, was before the FEC ruling, meaning Trump and Musk’s group were operating in an entirely different universe than a few months earlier during the primary.
The ruling “allowed a much more direct line of communication regarding canvassing,” Blair said. “That is a real difference and a critical difference.”
Musk’s outside group was founded in May, but it wasn’t until Musk endorsed Trump in July, after the former president survived an assassination attempt, that the group more clearly began its turnout work. A week later, in an interview with a conservative podcaster, Musk acknowledged the new committee and a host of top Republican operatives with ties to DeSantis joined the effort.
The group ran ads that warned if people sat out the election, “Kamala and the crazies will win.” The highest-profile part of America PAC’s work was a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes that landed the group in court before a judge said it was allowed to continue. The sweepstakes and subsequent court cases drew considerable attention, but much of America PAC’s work happened under the radar.
Door knocking was arguably America PAC’s most impactful work, with Trump experiencing boosts in turnout in key rural areas in battleground states. The work, however, was not without controversy.
A report from The Guardian found America PAC’s efforts were rife with paid canvassers faking their work and saying they had knocked on doors that they had not visited. Multiple reports from Wired alleged that some of those paid canvassers worked in poor conditions, including riding in the back of a rented U-Haul van and facing threats to meet unfeasible quotas. Canvassers were fired after the Wired report, leading to a lawsuit against America PAC.
A spokesperson for America PAC declined to comment on the record for this story.
Musk, meanwhile, indicated in an election night conversation on X that his PAC will stay involved in politics, “preparing for the midterms and any intermediate elections, as well as looking at elections at the District Attorney and sort of judicial levels.”