4 Percent GDP. Nuff Said

At this point, we actually can’t assume that you’ve seen the good news. The GDP numbers are in for the second quarter, and they’re beyond good. In 2016, Trump threw around some aggressive numbers. He has now surpassed them.

We’ll share the details in a moment, but first we need to appreciate the dedication that comes from mainstream media. Such huge GDP growth would have been the talk of the town in any other administration — even Bush. Now, they’ve put a tight a lid as possible on it. If there is anyone left out there who subsides on mainstream headlines, they have no idea just how great our economy looks right now.

Even our own tag is a low number. The official report cites the growth for this past quarter at 4.1 percent. Before we start celebrating, we’ll remind you of just what this number actually means. The GDP did not grow by 4.1 percent last quarter. Rather, if last quarter’s numbers held steady for an additional 3 quarters, it would herald 4.1-percent growth for the year.

That said, this is a huge number. It’s the biggest single-quarter growth rate we’ve seen since 2014. It’s the largest real-dollar growth in history — as in no economy in any country has ever grown by as many dollars as ours did last quarter. That even includes the combined GDP records of the entire EU.

More specifically, the official report shows that the economy is firing on all cylinders. Consumer and business indexes are soaring. Exports hit record numbers. Business investment grew by 7.3 percent, and personal spending increased by 4 percent. These numbers all show that the tax cuts did exactly as promised. Businesses have used the extra cash to invest and grow, and people have enjoyed having extra money in their pockets.

It’s almost entertaining to watch the liberals try and spin this into bad news. They really held nothing back this time around. The two most common spins are that the growth rate isn’t sustainable and that this is only the product of increased soybean exports. We’ll give you a moment to stop laughing before we refute those claims.

Let’s start with soybeans. First, exports have increased in the face of tariffs. That’s in exact opposition to what every liberal economist claimed would happen. Even if you want to say that they only increased to beat the tariffs, the idea that soybeans accounted for 4.1-percent GDP growth is beyond laughable. All of U.S. agriculture combined accounts for less than one percent of our GDP. If the entire industry doubled (which it didn’t), it would still lead to less than two-percent quarterly growth.

Realistically, surging soybean exports (which did happen) contributed so little to the growth that it can be counted as negligible. In fact, even though exports grew over the second quarter (as opposed to first quarter exports), they were still at a total deficit. If you look at GDP growth that excludes exports, it rings in at 4.3 percent. This spin is just plain stupid, and anyone who falls for it probably shouldn’t be trusted with a vote in our election processes.

The other claim is a little harder to debunk. They say that this growth isn’t sustainable. In order to prove them wrong, we would have to be able to predict the future. We obviously can’t do that, but we can look at trends to see if sustainability is at least realistic. This all boils down to a bad assumption on the part of Democrats. They saw economic growth steadily decline from 2014 through 2016. Based on Obama-era economics, sustainable growth is in fact impossible.

Thankfully, we’re not in the Obama era anymore. Since Trump took office we have seen consistent quarter-to-quarter and year-end GDP growth acceleration. You might look at a slow first quarter and think it was a bad sign, but the first quarter is traditionally the smallest of the year, and 2018’s first quarter beat the previous three years by a large margin. If you just look at the trend under Trump, there’s no question that four percent is sustainable.

There’s really no way to spin it. Trump’s economy is exploding, and it’s good news for everyone. The anti-Trump crowd hates good news, so the harder they try to make a good thing look bad, the more certain you can be that we’re in really good shape. At this point, it’s safe to say that Trump has made America great again. Now, it’s a matter of how many records we can break.

~ American Liberty Report


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