WASHINGTON – Despite promising growth as high as 6%, President Donald Trump presided over an economy that grew at just 1.9% in the third quarter — a figure that Trump said signaled an economy “in deep trouble” when it happened under his predecessor.
The Commerce Department report released Wednesday was the second of the past four indicating a growth rate below 2%. That will likely result in an overall growth rate of under 2% for all of 2019, the year before Trump runs for reelection.
As it stands, Trump’s growth rate in 2019 has averaged 2.33%, which is slightly lower than former President Barack Obama’s 2.37% average during the four years of his second term, according to a HuffPost analysis of Commerce Department data.
“The king gets more naked every day,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who is now running against Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.
“It’s sadly revealing that Donald Trump is now touting the same quarterly growth number he attacked our administration for experiencing during the recovery,” said Andrew Bates, spokesman for the Democratic presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, inherited a strong economy from us, the same way he’s obtained everything in his life, and is now squandering it.”
Most economists put much of the blame for the slowdown on Trump’s trade war with the rest of the world, which has increased costs to American consumers, who have paid billions of dollars in import taxes, while reducing U.S. exports to other nations because of retaliatory tariffs. American manufacturers and farmers have been particularly hard hit.
The Commerce Department report released Wednesday was the second of the past four indicating a growth rate below 2%. That will likely result in an overall growth rate of under 2% for all of 2019, the year before Trump runs for reelection.
As it stands, Trump’s growth rate in 2019 has averaged 2.33%, which is slightly lower than former President Barack Obama’s 2.37% average during the four years of his second term, according to a HuffPost analysis of Commerce Department data.
“The king gets more naked every day,” said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who is now running against Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.
“It’s sadly revealing that Donald Trump is now touting the same quarterly growth number he attacked our administration for experiencing during the recovery,” said Andrew Bates, spokesman for the Democratic presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, inherited a strong economy from us, the same way he’s obtained everything in his life, and is now squandering it.”
Most economists put much of the blame for the slowdown on Trump’s trade war with the rest of the world, which has increased costs to American consumers, who have paid billions of dollars in import taxes, while reducing U.S. exports to other nations because of retaliatory tariffs. American manufacturers and farmers have been particularly hard hit.
