Trump's dangerous and foolhardy economic games have done it again.
Yes, the madman who we've been told is tanking the economy and the market just grew the economy by 3% in one quarter despite everyone predicting failure.
From CNBC:
The U.S. economy grew at a much stronger-than-expected pace in the second quarter, powered by a turnaround in the trade balance and renewed consumer strength, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday ...
That topped the Dow Jones estimate for 2.3% and helped reverse a decline of 0.5% for the first quarter that came largely due to a huge drop in imports, which subtract from the total, as well as weak consumer spending amid tariff concerns.
Remember, these numbers are from April to June, after Trump announced "Liberation Day" on April 2nd, which started the aggressive push on tariffs that caused everyone to freak out.
In the end, it turns out that it only grew the economy.
Over the past three months, Trump has been engaged in multiple rounds of saber rattling and often intense negotiations with U.S. trading partners that have jangled nerves but nonetheless coincided with a subdued but solid pace of economic growth.
The talks have largely resulted in tariffs well above where they were at the beginning of the year but not as severe as initially proposed.
Oh ... almost like Trump was negotiating deals with other countries with the end goal of ending up somewhere in the middle? Like the Art of the Deal?
The GDP tally showed strength across key areas of the economy, as well as evidence that inflation is ebbing though not eradicated.
The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve's key inflation metric, showed a gain of 2.1% for the quarter, just above the central bank's 2% target. Core PCE inflation, which the Fed considers a better gauge for longer-run trends as it excludes volatile food and energy prices, increased 2.5%. The respective numbers for the first quarter were 3.7% and 3.5%.
The Fed meets later Wednesday and is expected to hold its key overnight borrowing rate steady in a 4.25%-4.5% range, where it has been since December.
We'll see what the Fed comes up with, but it's safe to say that, despite his first-term success, Trump is still working hard to prove the haters wrong.
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