U.S. President Donald Trump continued on with his Twitter habit this weekend, opting for the social media platform to make public statements on the country’s situation and direction. The sentiments he shared Saturday morning were familiar reaffirmations of the way he and his base view the world and little else.
After some other musings on how — somehow — his political opponents are some of the worst leaders the country has ever seen, he turned to Fox & Friends and the economy. He asserted, beyond all reason, that he has enacted an economic utopia for the United States, dramatically turning the country’s fortunes around.
He said:
‘The Economy is stronger and better than ever before. Importantly, there remains tremendous potential – it will only get better with time!’
The statement — which he predicated with praise of Saturday Fox & Friends guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy — is just hyperbole. If an observer were to ask the president for more details about how the economy is supposedly the strongest it’s ever been, he’d no doubt stick closely by his sentiments, but it doesn’t even take digging into the numbers to tell that his assertion is off. Just on the surface, it’s wild. He’s pretty much claiming that he’s the best president the United States has ever had, and that the current state of affairs in the United States is the best it’s ever been, period. That’s opinion masquerading as fact.
The numbers certainly don’t back him up, either, though.
For one, there were a number of quarters during the Obama administration when the GDP growth rate was higher than it was in the second quarter of 2018, the most recent period for which numbers are available. While in the second quarter of this current year, growth hit 4.1 percent, in the second quarter of 2014 — under Obama — growth hit 5.1 percent. The growth rate was higher or comparable to Trump’s 2018 numbers other times during the Obama administration as well. Obama took office after the economic meltdown of the Bush era but turned things around so that the economy just began its tenth year of growth — most of which unfolded when Donald Trump was not in office.
There’s another problem, too — the high growth rate recorded during 2018’s second quarter might not last. A number of sources have pointed out that the Trump administration’s tariffs and threats of tariffs may have prompted some foreign buyers to speed up their imports of American goods. Thus, they can get around any retaliatory tariffs their home countries impose.
That issue is in addition to the jobs that have already been lost and continue to be threatened by the president’s aggressive global trade maneuverings.
Congressional Budget Office estimates have the yearly growth rate, in light of this and other issues, hitting 3.1 percent in 2018 but falling to 2.4 percent just next year.
Trump is certainly not deterred, though. He’s so emboldened that he’s claimed it a possibility for the growth rate to hit 8 or 9 percent in coming years. The president’s pipe dreams just don’t match up to reality, however.
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
