Trump Gains on Biden on the Presidential Economic Ledger
GDP revisions also mean the previous administration no longer recorded the worst growth since Herbert Hoover’s. The current one is on track to post the strongest growth since the Clinton years.
Inflation is hurting the public’s perception of the Biden-era economy.
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Last week, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis released its once-every-five-years “comprehensive update” of the National Income and Product Accounts, of which gross domestic product is part. One interesting result was that Donald Trump’s time in office now looks better, in terms of economic growth, than it did before. By my preferred measure, the inflation-adjusted growth in the average of GDP and gross domestic income, the economic growth rate during the Trump administration now almost matches growth so far under Joe Biden. To be more precise, it’s 2.061% a year for Trump compared with 2.146% for Biden.
Gross domestic income is a measure of economic activity that in theory should equal gross domestic product but never quite does in the National Income and Product Accounts. In the 2010s, it was proposed that averaging GDI and GDP would give a more accurate picture of economic growth than GDP does alone. This approach has taken something of a hit lately as GDI greatly undershot GDP this year, then much of the difference was revised away in GDP’s favor in the comprehensive update. I’m sticking with GDP/GDI average for now, but here’s the same chart for just GDP.