Biden and Trump spar on economy in first presidential debate

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off in their first presidential debate of the 2024 general election season. Top of mind and top of the debate - the economy. The last time Biden and Trump faced off was October 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. The US economy is in a very different place today and that’s where the debate started. In a wide-ranging debate from inflation and job creation to an odd exchange about golf skills, we break down the top five takeaways for your bottom line.

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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump finally faced off in their first presidential debate of the 2024 general election season.

It's actually the first time that a president and a former president have faced off in a presidential debate.

And then, of course, the last time we saw them facing off in debate was October of 2020 when the economy was in a very different situation.

And that's exactly where the debate started.

So in terms of top takes ways for our Yahoo finance audience, the economy, national debt, Social Security, black unemployment and the climate crisis was some of the key issues that came up, of course, under the economy, talking about inflation, really blaming each other for inflation, Trump is claiming that Biden inherited a perfect, wonderful economy, of course, speaking in a lot of superlatives.

But President Biden really saying it was actually corporate greed that is still fueling inflation in terms of national debt?

Both accuse the other of ballooning it to the level that it is right now.

Um, Social Security.

Both were asked about their attempts and what they would do to really limit the fact that Social Security as it is now without any action, will actually run out for the current, uh, cohort of people who are actually going to qualify for it.

Um, in the next 20 years or so, and one of the ways that President Biden said he would address that is by the Ta uh, wealth tax on those earning more than $400,000 a year former President Trump saying he would instead go with tariffs as a way to really fuel the economy and put more money into Social Security.

Some debate there as to whether or not he would cut Social Security.

President Biden did allude to that.

At least some of president, former President Trump's colleagues were amenable to that.

Also talked about black unemployment.

A lot of people wondering, Are they better off than they were four years ago?

Some mixed messaging we got here, President Biden claiming that, um, black voters were in a better position than they were.

But inflation had disproportionately hit them hard.

Former President Trump denouncing that, saying that that black voters were not in a better place, also talking about the climate crisis.

Of course we know the president.

Biden touting his green New deal Um, former President Trump saying, Look, we It was made more sense to pull out of the Paris accords being that the US was paying more money, and he named some countries, including India, saying that they weren't paying their fair share.

Other commentary that came up are the topics abortion, immigration, geopolitics and the January 6th attacks.

Wondering or not if we would see a repeat if the election results would be accepted.

Former President Trump really sort of skirted around that a little bit, obviously saying he would denounce the violence but didn't clarify what he saw as January 6th, if that did fall under that sort of umbrella now, some of the testiest exchanges came, uh, of the topic of who's the worst president who's to blame for inflation age concerns, which then spiralled into a a strange conversation, uh, an argument about golf skills and who's got the the worst golf handicap and whether or not they would battle it out on the golf course as long as, uh, former President Trump carried his own golf bag.

Not really the most helpful thing for people who are perhaps decided, and I think people really were looking for more specifics as to who's best equipped to lead the country in the next four years.

I'm not sure that it moved the needle for them much, but it certainly was some testy exchanges.

We got a little bit more insight.

And of course, this was our first look at these two candidates here, and we're going to be looking forward to the next scheduled debate, which is set for September 10th.

I'm Michelle Kuo for Yahoo Finance.