I don't know why there's a hot dog here
...But apparently, America is doing great...But apparently, America is doing great
Yet again, America’s economy has shown up the rest of the world. For all the chaos of the past year, its GDP has chugged along merrily at 2% annual growth. True, that is hardly a blockbuster pace and—like everywhere else—consumers in America are grumbling about high prices. But Uncle Sam’s peers are doing much worse. In Britain, France, Germany and Japan economic growth ranges from roughly zero to about 1%. America’s outperformance began decades ago, but in the 2020s it has become vast. And it is likely to last. The latest IMF forecasts show American growth besting the rest all the way to 2030 and beyond.
we got more bounce in California than all y'all combined
America's "world-beating performance has lately come despite a handicap: Donald Trump’s erratic and harmful policies."
outside AI-related sectors, policy uncertainty has pushed American business investment into a slump worse than Britain’s after the vote on Brexit. See-sawing tariffs and hostility to immigration, even for skilled workers, have also weighed on the economy. Without this MAGA tax, growth could have been closer to 3% in 2025, not the 2% America got.
Many of America’s advantages are hard to emulate. The country’s continental scale, single language, natural-resource wealth and the fiscal space that comes from issuing the world’s safe asset give it a unique economic advantage over Europe.
Hm, yes. Also something about debilitating climate policies and crippling welfare state/tax regimes (#1495232, #1495638). Case in point:
America’s shale-fracking revolution and liquefied natural gas exports have reshaped global energy markets and made its economy more able to withstand the effects of Mr Trump’s war in the Middle East.
Yes, this is true (again, see Sweden...#1495232), but hardly something that orange man started or bears sole (or even majority) responsibility for:
Mr Trump’s style of government, if it lasts, will eventually sap the foundations that have made America so rich, by threatening the rule of law and encouraging firms to put lobbying for favours before innovation and the sound allocation of capital.
and.... let's go nowhere:
Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, the National Rally in France and Nigel Farage in Britain are all proposing to copy parts of Trumpist economics. Interventionism is in vogue; the barriers to trade and migration are rising. Even enemies of Trumpism increasingly answer it with a leftist statism of their own. Yet, if America has been dented by the MAGA tax, those policies would knock other countries sideways
I do hate articles that just end nowhere... What am I to take away from this now?
What's The Economist supposed to do, admit all the dumb bullshit they've supported for decades is dumb bullshit?
The point about lobbying is interesting, mostly because my understanding is that there are far fewer lobbyists in DC now than there were pre-Trump because he gutted so much of the administrative state that used to deliver favors for special interests.
I share the disdain for erratic and arbitrary policies. Why no mention of all the arbitrary and erratic regulation that Trump has stopped enforcing? Do the authors think that's irrelevant to how the economy is performing?
I would have more respect for the E Communist if they admitted all the dumb policies they supported for the last 20 years
I won't renew my subscription regardless
Do you all think the war in Iran will affect all this?