President Donald Trump now "owns" the U.S. economy. It's up to him to follow through on his campaign pledge to re-energize the nation's labor muscle with more jobs, higher wages and prosperity for all.
If recent federal data is any indication, Trump should be able to outperform his predecessor's anemic eight-year economic record.
On March 30, the Commerce Department officially closed the books on Obama's eight years of economic hope and change.
To classify the Obama economic engine from 2009-2016 as a dud wouldn't be entirely accurate. It was more like a steady sputter with more people being left behind than moving forward.
In terms of gross domestic product (GDP), Obama's two terms produced a paltry 1.6 percent gain -- the worst average growth rate performance of the last 12 U.S. presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman (1946-52).
Why is GDP important? It is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period. In essence, GDP represents the economic health of a country.
Since World War II, the average GDP for the U.S. economy is 3 percent.
Obama took office during the worst recession since the Great Depression, when job layoffs reached a peak of 800,000 a month in 2007-09. For 21 months, the U.S. economy shed jobs, reaching a total of nearly 9 million lost in a broad swath of industries.
Democrats point to Obama's success in lowering the unemployment rate from a high of 10.
However, the numbers don't reflect the millions of Americans whose jobs vanished permanently, forcing them to leave the job market never to return. Obama has presided over the lowest U.S. worker participation rate (62.7 percent) since the 1930s.
With only one way to go but up, it's reasonable to believe that Obama's economy would improve greatly. But it hasn't. The administration's regulatory addiction shut down industries (coal, oil-pipeline projects) and handcuffed others, causing more job reductions.
Americans -- young and old -- have remained frustrated by the diminishing prospects of finding jobs suitable to their experience, training and education levels. Trump's upstart election victory can be traced to Rust Belt voters who've seen and felt the worst of it.
Since his election, Trump has given new marching orders to U.S. corporate leaders and Americans themselves to return jobs to this country and buy U.S.-made goods, respectively. He's lifted his predecessor's job-killing regulations and seems readily engaged in creative economic initiatives.
Time will tell if Trump can deliver. But he'd have to be the biggest failure in modern U.S. presidential history to not beat Obama's GDP performance.