Against election backdrop, economic growth exceeds expectations

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During the Republican National Convention last week, each night had its own theme, starting with “Make America Wealthy Again” on the party gathering’s first day. As it turns out, however, voters won’t have to put the White House in the GOP’s hands to achieve such a goal. NBC News reported: Economic activity in the U.S. was considerably stronger than expected during the second quarter, according to an initial estimate Thursday from the Commerce Department. Real gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced during the April-through-June period, increased at a 2.8% annualized pace adjusted for seasonality and inflation. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for growth of 2.1% following a 1.4% increase in the first quarter. The latest data is roughly in line with the kind of quarterly GDP reports we saw across much of Donald Trump’s pre-pandemic presidency — when Republicans said Americans saw the greatest economy in the history of humanity. In fact, all of this comes against a backdrop of the 2024 election cycle, as the former president and his allies try to convince the public that the economy is dreadful, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Indeed, circling back to our coverage from a couple of weeks ago, there’s a lot for Americans to like about the current state of their economy. The job market remains strong, unemployment remains low and wages are up. And when it comes to inflation, the latest Consumer Price Index report showed price increases slowing sharply — including the first month-to-month decline in more than four years. What’s more, there’s an international context to consider. The World Bank last month not only noted that the Biden-era economy is the world’s strongest, it also concluded that the global economy is in better shape in large part because of the United States’ recovery. “Globally, overall things are better today than they were just four or five months ago,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist. “A big part of this has to do with the resilience of the U.S. economy.” Gill’s report further credited “U.S. dynamism” with helping to stabilize economies abroad. A Washington Post report added, “The United States is the only advanced economy growing significantly faster than the bank anticipated at the start of the year.” Around the same time, The Atlantic’s Rogé Karma described the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world.” If the United States’ economy were an athlete, right now it would be peak LeBron James. If it were a pop star, it would be peak Taylor Swift. Four years ago, the pandemic temporarily brought much of the world economy to a halt. Since then, America’s economic performance has left other countries in the dust and even broken some of its own records. ... There are many ways to define a good economy. America is in tremendous shape according to just about any of them. Four years ago, Trump told supporters that Democratic policies would “unleash an economic disaster of epic proportions” and force the country “into depression.” Everything he said and predicted was wrong — and the former president hasn’t even tried to explain why his predictions were so hilariously misplaced.