When President Trump delivers his State of the Union Address tonight, he’ll be speaking to a country that is stronger, safer and more prosperous than when he took office three years ago.
Under this administration, we’ve seen robust economic growth, with the best wage growth in a decade, an unemployment rate at a 49-year low, plus unemployment rates for women, Hispanics and African-Americans at all-time record lows.
During February’s Black History Month, it’s worth noting, as Tobias Hoonhout does at National Review, that a “new Gallup poll released Monday found that Americans have become considerably more optimistic about the state of race relations since Trump took office, with a 14-point increase over just three years. Satisfaction on ‘the state of race relations’ in the country rose from a mere 22 percent in January 2017, just before Trump took office, to 36 percent in January 2020, just weeks before Trump’s State of the Union address …Respondents’ satisfaction with ‘the position of blacks and other racial minorities in the nation’ also rose nine points over three years to 46 percent in 2020, as part of a larger trend which showed that Americans overall satisfaction with the direction of the country was at its highest point since 2005.”
The African-American community has been supportive of The First Step Act, spearheaded and signed by President Trump, which gives non-violent offenders a second chance at achieving the American Dream by reducing unnecessarily harsh sentences.
I also recently wrote for CNN about how there have been 1.2 million new jobs created for black Americans since President Trump took office, and that black household income has increased by 2.6 percent in 2018 to $41,361, the highest level in nearly twenty years. And President Trump in 2018 also approved $360 million in funding for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), more than any other president in history. The Trump administration has also helped ensure that HBCUs with religious affiliations "will no longer be restricted from accessing federal funding.
In foreign policy, President Trump helped strengthen NATO by pressuring allies to pony up an unprecedented $130 billion in new defense spending, the largest increase in a quarter century. As I noted for IWF, this saves money for American taxpayers and puts NATO on a more sustainable path. When President Trump took office, just four NATO allies were spending the minimum required 2 percent of GDP on national defense. But today, nine allies are meeting that threshold.
As he’s done in past years, President Trump will no doubt bring some inspiring State of The Union guests for his gallery, sharing their stories about their fight–under our president’s leadership–to protect freedom, grow our economy and strengthen our country’s forgotten men and women.