U.S. economy continues to improve under Biden-Harris administration
Average economic growth under former President Trump was the slowest in over 40 years.
According to data released by the Department of Commerce on July 25, the U.S. economy grew an estimated 2.8% during the second quarter of 2024, a rate that was higher than the 2.1% economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal had predicted.
“Today’s GDP report makes clear we now have the strongest economy in the world,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “The Vice President and I will keep fighting for America’s future—a future of promise and possibilities, of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things.”
Biden noted that in addition to the GDP figures, nearly 16 million jobs have been created since he and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in January 2021, and household wages have increased while the rate of inflation has been on the decline.
The Biden-Harris administration has calls its policies designed to spur economic recovery the Investing in America agenda. Laws implementing those policies include the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
In April and May, Harris started off the administration’s nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour highlighting efforts to spur economic growth through federal funding to communities.
The administration has authorized assistance to small businesses around the country and has advocated minority-owned businesses to have increased access to capital.
“We are dropping trillions of dollars on the streets of America right now, to build back up our roads and our bridges, our sidewalks, to invest in the clean energy economy, to deal with the climate crisis in a way that is about building up adaptation and resilience,” Harris said at a May event in Wisconsin.
Under former President Donald Trump, the economy grew at an average of 0.95% per year.
This was well below the 4% growth per year Trump had promised during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump did not meet his stated goal even before the COVID-19 pandemic began. In a July 2020 assessment of the data, Politifact categorized Trump’s campaign rhetoric as a “promise broken.”
Average U.S. economic growth under Trump was the slowest in over 40 years, ranking below growth rates under Presidents Barack Obama (1.62%), George W. Bush (2.2%), Bill Clinton (3.88%), George H.W. Bush (2.25%), Ronald Reagan (3.48%) and Jimmy Carter (3.25%).
