The 5 Worst Prime Ministers and Presidents of All Time

In the 1960’s my grandparents had 5 kids, two houses, a car, a few boats for the cottage, vacations to Hawaii every few years, and all on salaries of a security guard for the General Motors plant and a bowling alley attendant. 

Think of a married couple you know, who have low tier blue collar jobs like my grandparents, and are able to afford two homes, a car, 5 kids, and vacations every couple of years. If you’re having a hard time thinking of this, you’re not alone. It’s doesn’t exist.

In this article, we are going to review the 4 worst politicians between Canada and the US by looking at the economic events during their tenure and how they wrecked the future for all generations to come.

There are countless reasons to find disappointment in our politicians, but in this article, I am focusing on the impact these politicians had on the financial health of everyday Americans and Canadians. I have 3 Canadian Prime ministers and 2 US Presidents that top the list on making the world worse for all of us.

Before we start we should review two economic concepts. Monetary policy and fiscal policy are both economic tools used to influence a country’s economy, but they are implemented by different entities and have different objectives. Monetary policy is primarily managed by a central bank and focuses on controlling the money supply and interest rates to influence inflation and economic growth. Fiscal policy, on the other hand, is determined by the government and involves adjustments to government spending and taxation to achieve macroeconomic goals like managing unemployment and stimulating economic activity. This is the lever all of these political leaders are adjusting during their tenure.

Canada – Pierre Trudeau

Number one on our list is Pierre Trudeau. During his Prime Ministership and leader of the Liberal party, Pierre Trudeau’s government was characterized by substantial budget deficits. The 1970 budget marked the start of consecutive deficits, and by the end of his first tenure, the deficit had ballooned to $12 billion. 

In addition, purchase parity between the US and Canada began to diverge during his tenure

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is a popular macroeconomic analysis metric used to compare economic productivity and standards of living between countries.

It compares different countries’ currencies through a “basket of goods” approach. That is, Purchasing power parity is the exchange rate at which one nation’s currency would be converted into another to purchase the same amounts of a large group of products.

In this chart you can see that Purchasing power parity peaked just after Pierre Trudeau became Primeminister in 1968 followed by a downward trend until bottoming out in 1984 at the end of his tenure. As a result, for the last 4 decades, Canada US Purchasing power parity has hovered around 85 cents.

Why does this matter? It means that when Canada buys a car, it costs us 15% more to do so, in spite of large portions of them being manufactured in Canada. Canada and the US have almost identical economic influences, but thanks to Pierre Trudeau, Canada has done a much poorer job at managing them.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2016065-eng.htm

US – Herbert Hoover

Let’s move to the US. Although this influences your grandparents more than your parents, someone has to take the fall for the Great Depression, and that particular shame belongs to Herbert Hoover. President Hoover occupies the bottom rung with a truly abysmal 77.1% cumulative stock market loss during his tenure, according to Kiplinger.

https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/602714/best-and-worst-presidents-according-to-the-stock-market

In case you need a refresher, Hoover took office just months before the 1929 stock market crash that ushered in the worst bear market in U.S. history.

I don’t think we can blame the whole crash on Hoover, although He played his part in bringing about the whole mess. More than a thousand economists signed a letter warning him not to sign his tariff act into law … yet he did it anyway. This helped to turn what might have been a garden-variety recession into the Great Depression.

In the end, Hoover may not have caused the Great Depression, but his decisions — especially signing his tariff act, turned a financial stumble into a full-blown economic collapse. It’s a textbook example of how protectionist policies can backfire spectacularly.

Fast forward to today, and we’re watching history flirt with repetition. Donald Trump’s reintroduction of sweeping tariffs — this time targeting China, Canada, and beyond — echoes the same economic nationalism that sank Hoover’s presidency and the global economy. Tariffs may sound like tough-guy trade policy, but they often raise consumer prices, spark retaliation, and disrupt supply chains.

Canada – Justin Trudeau

A recent report from Statistics Canada makes something pretty clear: government red tape is piling up, and it’s weighing down the economy. Using a metric developed with help from KPMG and Transport Canada, the report found that regulatory requirements have grown by about 2.1% every year from 2006 to 2021. That steady creep has made it harder for businesses to grow, invest, and hire — dragging down productivity and overall economic output.

And the damage under Justin Trudeau’s leadership is hard to ignore. Over the past nine years, Canada’s GDP per capita — a key indicator of how well people are actually doing — has barely budged, growing just 1.7%. Meanwhile, in the U.S., it’s climbed 18.6% over the same period. In simple terms: if we had kept pace with the U.S., Canadians would be earning significantly more right now.

Real GDP per capita in Canada
byu/Opposite-Bad1444 incanadian

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per capita basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment, and entrepreneurship.

As a result, the country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With abysmal GDP and business investment numbers, Justin Trudeau’s incompetence has kneecapped Canada.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/worst-kept-secret-red-tape-strangling-canadas-economy

US – Ronald Regan

For much of the post–World War II era, the United States saw a steady decline in the federal debt-to-GDP ratio, falling from over 100% in 1946 to around 30% by 1981. This decline was fueled by a combination of robust economic growth, moderate inflation, and relatively restrained fiscal policy — even amid the costly Cold War and Vietnam War periods.

However, this long-term trend reversed sharply beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan during the 80’s, whose economic platform — later dubbed “Reaganomics” — prioritized:

• Massive tax cuts, especially for high earners and corporations (e.g., the top marginal income tax rate dropped from 70% to 28% by 1988),
  
• Significant increases in defense spending, and
  
• A belief in supply-side economics, which assumed tax cuts would pay for themselves through higher growth (this did not fully materialize).
  

You can probably already see the issue. Cutting government revenue at the same time as increasing government expenses isn’t smart economic policy. As a result of Reganomics, when Reagan took office in 1981, the federal debt held by the public was about 25% of GDP and by the time he left office in 1989, it had nearly doubled to over 40% of GDP, despite strong economic growth during parts of the 1980s.

This marked a fundamental shift. Running structural deficits during peacetime was something that had been rare post-WWII.

President Bill Clinton took office in 1993 and reversed some of this trend. With a mix of tax increases, spending restraint, and a booming economy (particularly from the tech boom): The result was that the U.S. briefly returned to budget surpluses from 1998 to 2001 — the first surpluses since 1969 – and, as a result,  the debt-to-GDP ratio fell from about 48% in 1993 to 32% by 2001.

Clinton was the only modern president post-Reagan to leave office with a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than he inherited.

The Permanent Shift Afterward:

Every president after Clinton — Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden — has seen rising debt-to-GDP ratios due to a combination of:

• Tax cuts (Bush 2001 & 2003, Trump 2017)
  
• Wars (Afghanistan, Iraq)
  
• Financial crises (2008)
  
• Pandemic spending (2020–2021), and
  
• Structural deficits baked into the federal budget
  

By 2024, the U.S. federal debt held by the public stood at approximately 97% of GDP, and total gross federal debt exceeded 120% of GDP — rivaling post-WWII highs.

I’m picking on Regan for starting this trend, but there is an obvious acceleration since 2000 that needs to be reversed. 

Canada – Brian Mulrooney

I’m giving the honourable mention to Brian Mulrooney, the Canadian Prime Minister from the mid 80’s to mid 90’s, who implemented the federal GST. The 7 per cent GST was supposed to be a replacement for the federal Manufacturers’ Sales Tax, which was introduced in 1924. Set at a rate of 13.5 per cent, the MST had been applied to manufactured goods at the wholesale level and was a hidden cost that the public was generally unaware of. It does make sense to get rid of MST since it disincentivizes the sale of Canadian manufactured exports. However, 13.5% on manufactured goods is not the same as 7% GST placed on all sales. The result was a new permanent way for the government to dig into the coffers of every Canadian.

Comparatively, the US still has no federal sales tax. Some states have it, but unlike Canada, there is no federal version, which means they aren’t handicapping their economy at the till. 

Conclusion

So here we are — staring at the financial wreckage left behind by decades of policy failures, political hubris, and economic delusion. Your grandparents, with their modest jobs and modest dreams, could build a life that feels completely out of reach today for working-class families. Thanks to our politicians, their structural decisions have chipped away at affordability, productivity, and opportunity.

And the worst part? These weren’t one-off mistakes. They were turning points that reset the baseline — permanently. Structural deficits, hyper-regulation, inflated housing costs, and eroding purchasing power are now features of our North American economies, not bugs.

So next time someone says, “Well, times have always been tough,” you can remind them: no, actually — grandpa had it better. Because politicians broke the system and then told us to be grateful for scraps.

Next time a prime minister or presidential candidate tells you that he or she is going to save the environment, tax neighbouring countries, or invade a middle eastern country, think critically and vote like your grandkids are watching

Additional Sources

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/major-changes-canadas-federal-personal-income-tax-1917-2017

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/purchasing-power-parity-ppp

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-x/11-626-x2016065-eng.htm