Day 1,106: Trump economy: GDP plummeting, deficit soaring over $1 trillion

Republicans remain suddenly ever-silent about out-of-control spending.

Donald Trump has goosed the economy for three years, despite Barack Obama leaving it humming. Trump gave trillion dollar tax cuts to corporations and the uber-wealthy, pressured the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, created a devastating trade war with China and pretended to resolve it, among other things.

Now, Trump is set to leave a devastating wake of deficits for the next generation, as the alleged “fiscally responsible” Republicans remain hypocritically silent.

The Congressional Budget Office recently forecast annual federal deficits of more than $1 trillion for 2020, and each of the next 10 years. By 2030, CBO says, the deficit will hit $1.7 trillion. Economists generally think a fiscal deficit of around 3% of GDP is healthy and manageable. U.S. deficits over the next decade will average 4.8% of GDP.

For perspective, the U.S.’s deficit topped out at $1.4 trillion at its worst point during the recession in 2009. Trump is threatening that figure while the U.S. enters its second decade of growth and after Obama got the annual deficit as low as $442 billion in 2015.

Meanwhile, the economy is already showing plenty of signs of slowing down, which is problematic considering the aforementioned monumental lingering deficits.

The U.S. economy grew 2.3% last year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That’s a slowdown from the previous year, when the economy grew 2.9%. And it’s well short of the 3% growth target set by the White House.

[Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip] Swagel’s forecasts for the rest of the decade are less rosy, with annual GDP growth slumping to an average of just 1.7%.

“That growth rate is lower than the historical average because of long-term demographic trends,” Swagel said. “The United States is an aging society. That means the growth of our labor force will be slower in the future than it has been in the past.”

Trump once touted the possibility of “four, five, and even six percent” GDP growth.

The economy that Trump claims he deserves sole credit for is like virtually everything else in his life: built by someone else, shined up by him and with long-term viability wholly ignored and shoved off onto someone else to figure out.

1,106 days in, 356 to go

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