NOTE: The following is a brief excerpt from the Justin Fox Column in Today's Bloomberg. Please visit Bloomberg.com for the entire article.
From today's Bloomberg
Economics
GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover
The pandemic was partly to blame, and there are some measures that make his record look better. But it was not a stellar performance.
By
Justin Fox
August 2, 2021, 5:30 AM CDT
GDP: A Trump obsession.
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”
It was the whopping-yet-still-disappointing 6.5% annualized growth number for the second quarter that got most of the attention when the U.S. gross domestic product report came out Thursday. But the data release from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis also included revisions to GDP and related measures back to 1999, making this an opportune time to take another look at economic growth under Donald Trump and his predecessors.
This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance. There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results may be felt long after he’s left Washington. Still, it’s a widely used metric and Trump was downright obsessed with it, so here goes.
Presidents and GDP Growth
Annualized real growth from first quarter in office to last
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
OK, maybe that GDP obsession didn’t work out so well for Trump. The chart starts with Dwight Eisenhower because his was the first presidency for which the BEA has full quarterly GDP data. Annual GDP numbers go back to 1929, and if you measure from Herbert Hoover’s first year in office (1929) to the year he left (1933), annualized growth was negative 7.4 percent. So Trump did a lot better than that! But his was the worst GDP performance since then (measured the same way as with Hoover, annualized GDP growth was 9.1% under Franklin Roosevelt and 1.8% under Harry Truman).
...
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Justin Fox at justinfox@bloomberg.net
From today's Bloomberg
Economics
GDP Growth Under Trump Was the Worst Since Hoover
The pandemic was partly to blame, and there are some measures that make his record look better. But it was not a stellar performance.
By
Justin Fox
August 2, 2021, 5:30 AM CDT
GDP: A Trump obsession.
Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”
It was the whopping-yet-still-disappointing 6.5% annualized growth number for the second quarter that got most of the attention when the U.S. gross domestic product report came out Thursday. But the data release from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis also included revisions to GDP and related measures back to 1999, making this an opportune time to take another look at economic growth under Donald Trump and his predecessors.
This is, let’s be clear from the start, not a perfect way of measuring presidential economic performance. There are lots of things that determine economic growth rates other than who is in the White House, and when a president does make a difference the results may be felt long after he’s left Washington. Still, it’s a widely used metric and Trump was downright obsessed with it, so here goes.
Presidents and GDP Growth
Annualized real growth from first quarter in office to last
Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
OK, maybe that GDP obsession didn’t work out so well for Trump. The chart starts with Dwight Eisenhower because his was the first presidency for which the BEA has full quarterly GDP data. Annual GDP numbers go back to 1929, and if you measure from Herbert Hoover’s first year in office (1929) to the year he left (1933), annualized growth was negative 7.4 percent. So Trump did a lot better than that! But his was the worst GDP performance since then (measured the same way as with Hoover, annualized GDP growth was 9.1% under Franklin Roosevelt and 1.8% under Harry Truman).
...
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Justin Fox at justinfox@bloomberg.net
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