After its worst quarter in history, the U.S. economy just posted its best quarter in history.
For July, August, and September, the gross domestic product (GDP), which measures total goods and services produced, grew at the record-shattering pace 0f 33.1% on an annualized basis.
The previous post-World War II record was the 16.7% growth in the first quarter of 1950. The new burst came after a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter.
“This record economic growth is absolute validation of President Trump’s policies which create jobs and opportunities for Americans in every corner of the country,” President Donald Trump’s campaign said in a statement. “The President built the world’s best economy once and he’s rapidly doing it again, proving that cutting taxes and reducing regulations and red tape clear the way for American ingenuity and our entrepreneurial spirit to thrive.”
“We have regained more than half of the jobs lost to the global pandemic in less than six months, while it took more than two years to regain half of job losses from a recession while Joe Biden was in charge. President Trump will continue to safely reopen the country, while Biden is the candidate of lockdowns, inviting another economic shutdown which would devastate working people and cause even more health problems above and beyond what the coronavirus has caused,” the campaign said.
The Trump campaign also blasted Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, saying he “has been an economic disaster for nearly five decades in Washington, backing disastrous trade deals and putting China’s interests ahead of American workers. Biden’s plans for a $4 trillion tax increase and Green New Deal regulations on every person, business, building, and farm in the nation would kill this recovery while it’s already in full swing. For voters, the choice is simple: It’s a Trump boom versus a Biden depression.”
Larry Kudlow, director of the United States National Economic Council, also lauded the numbers.
“We’ve never had anything remotely close to this,” Kudlow said Thursday on Fox News. “And let me add, this thing was kicking on all cylinders. Automobile production, for example, up over 1,100 percent in the third quarter, big numbers on consumer spending, big numbers on housing, big numbers on capital equipment machinery and manufacturing and so forth.”
Kudlow also said that inventories are depleted, “so inventories are going to be rebuilt. This quarter the momentum is going into the fourth quarter and will go into 2021, assuming policies are good. This is not a one time in fact this is going to go on. It’s a strong, strong recovery. The V shaped concept that I coined a while back, looking pretty good right now.”
The news wasn’t all good. Looking exclusively at the quarterly data, the nation’s GDP grew 7.4% in the third quarter, but it was a 9% decline a second quarter. Also, the economy is 3.5% smaller than it was compared to the end of 2019.
Kudlow said by late this winter or early spring, “we will regain all of the Lost output that we suffered during the terrible pandemic contraction, this past winter, and the first half of the year. So it’s an optimistic view.”