White House touts ‘enormous amount of momentum’ going into second half of 2018
Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett on the state of the U.S. economy and the trade truce with Europe.
In a big win for the Trump administration on Friday, the U.S. economy advanced at its fastest pace since 2014.
The Commerce Department announced on Friday that second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) advance by 4.1%, and first-quarter GDP was revised to 2.2% from 2%.
President Trump touted his economic success on Friday during a press conference at the White House, calling the number “very sustainable” driven by pro-growth policies.
The average annual growth rate has been 2.8% over the past four quarters and is now on track for 3.1% growth in 2018 – a level that has been met with criticism by some economists.
However, the Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Kevin Hassett said recent growth set the stage for a stronger economy in the second half of the year.
“We are looking at an enormous amount of momentum,” Hassett told FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto on “Cavuto: Coast-to-Coast.” “So I would guess the next time we write down our forecast for a year that it will go up by a couple of tenths.”
Hassett attributed the president’s hard line on trade as a contributor to higher growth.
“We’ve looked at… private data on inventories and we see that, for example, the Chinese increased their inventories of soybeans a lot, perhaps in anticipation of some kind of trade dispute,” he said.
Trump’s implementation of the tax overhaul and deregulation also boosted the number, he said.
“There’s a lot of reshoring of activity because the U.S. has become a really attractive tax climate again,” said Hassett.