With­in a day after Don­ald Trump’s tri­umphal vis­it to Indi­ana, where he claimed cred­it for ​“sav­ing” 800 jobs at a Car­ri­er fac­to­ry, the Depart­ment of Labor released its first month­ly unem­ploy­ment report since his elec­tion vic­to­ry — and one of the last that will come out dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama.

Dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, Trump repeat­ed­ly warned that if he became pres­i­dent, com­pa­nies mov­ing U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing plants abroad would suf­fer puni­tive tar­iffs of 35 or even 45 per­cent when they tried to sell their over­seas prod­ucts here. More than once he specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned Car­ri­er Corp., which builds cool­ing and heat­ing units. After post-elec­tion con­ver­sa­tions with com­pa­ny offi­cials that includ­ed his run­ning mate, Indi­ana gov­er­nor Mike Pence, Trump declared that he had ful­filled his promise by ​“sav­ing” those Car­ri­er jobs.

Yet rather than pun­ish Car­ri­er for tak­ing most of its Indi­ana jobs to Mex­i­co, Trump and Pence actu­al­ly reward­ed the com­pa­ny with $7 mil­lion in state tax booty — plus any addi­tion­al promis­es con­cern­ing the bil­lions in Pen­ta­gon con­tracts held by Car­ri­er’s par­ent com­pa­ny, Unit­ed Tech­nolo­gies. Spend­ing Indi­ana tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, Trump did pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of what he had promised.

The next day came the lat­est proof of the steady suc­cess of Oba­ma and his eco­nom­ic team, with yet anoth­er month­ly tick upward in job growth and anoth­er tick down­ward in unem­ploy­ment — now at 4.6 per­cent, its low­est point in almost a decade. Even with all the caveats about slow wage growth, reduced work­force par­tic­i­pa­tion, and con­tin­ued man­u­fac­tur­ing loss­es, the revival of the Amer­i­can econ­o­my under Oba­ma is the envy of the world.

Among the achieve­ments that led to Amer­i­ca’s low unem­ploy­ment rates was the preser­va­tion of well over a mil­lion auto indus­try jobs, in the same bat­tle­ground states where Trump carved his excru­ci­at­ing­ly nar­row win. When Oba­ma decid­ed to bail out auto, he faced enraged oppo­si­tion from Repub­li­cans claim­ing to defend ​“free mar­ket” prin­ci­ples. (The auto indus­try repaid its fed­er­al loan, with inter­est.) Yet Repub­li­cans now praise Trump for wield­ing gov­ern­ment pow­er to cajole a pri­vate com­pa­ny so he could ​“save” well under a thou­sand jobs.

Over the past year, Trump has uttered lots of big­ger promis­es that will be much hard­er to fake than the Car­ri­er deal. He vowed to cre­ate 25 mil­lion jobs, for instance, and rebuild the nation’s infra­struc­ture — with­out increas­ing the deficit. But to accom­plish even half of what he has pledged, Trump will have to over­come more than a cen­tu­ry of Amer­i­can eco­nom­ic history.

Dur­ing the years since 1900, unem­ploy­ment has con­sis­tent­ly increased under Repub­li­can pres­i­dents, while employ­ment has increased under Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents, as NYU pro­fes­sor James Gilli­gan proved years ago using data from the Nation­al Bureau of Eco­nom­ic Research (run by Rea­gan econ­o­mist Mar­tin Feld­stein) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The par­ti­san con­trast is stark enough for any vot­er to under­stand: When­ev­er a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent left the White House, unem­ploy­ment was high­er than when his term began, while the oppo­site was true when­ev­er a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent com­plet­ed his term.

So when George W. Bush took over from Bill Clin­ton, the unem­ploy­ment rate was at 4.2 per­cent (defined by econ­o­mists as close to full employ­ment); when Oba­ma took over, the unem­ploy­ment rate was 7.8 per­cent and rapid­ly ris­ing. And now Trump will inher­it a job­less rate of 4.6 per­cent, per­haps even lower.

Can Trump break the pat­terns of a cen­tu­ry? Despite his pop­ulist rhetoric, what he pro­pos­es is scarce­ly dif­fer­ent from his Repub­li­can pre­de­ces­sors: He intends to deliv­er gigan­tic tax cuts to the wealth­i­est house­holds in the coun­try. Even his infra­struc­ture plan is anoth­er enrich­ment scheme for the super-rich, designed to attract investors by grant­i­ng them an 82 per­cent tax cred­it. But only projects that can deliv­er a return by charg­ing tolls or fees will draw such invest­ments, while tril­lions of dol­lars in des­per­ate­ly need­ed projects will lan­guish with­out pub­lic funding.

While Don­ald Trump’s pro­posed cor­po­rate tax cut may well bring home mon­ey for busi­ness invest­ment, the his­to­ry of tax cuts as eco­nom­ic panacea is dis­ap­point­ing at best. Every sig­nal sug­gests that he will pur­sue the same plu­to­crat­ic approach favored by all pres­i­dents of his par­ty. The ​“suc­cess” of the Car­ri­er deal will be long for­got­ten if and when he deliv­ers the same bit­ter results.

To find out more about Joe Cona­son and read fea­tures by oth­er Cre­ators Syn­di­cate writ­ers and car­toon­ists, vis­it the Cre­ators Syn­di­cate web­site at www​.cre​ators​.com.