The Tide Keeps Rising The Trump policy mix continues to pay economic dividends.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tide-keeps-rising-11556319160
With the comeback in financial markets this year, we probably should have seen it coming. But the headline rebound in first quarter growth to 3.2% reported Friday is still a pleasant surprise that shows again that the U.S. economy is remarkably resilient when government doesn’t get in the way.
The Keynesians who predicted an imminent recession are pointing out flaws in the GDP details, and they’re right that volatile categories like net exports (1.03%), inventory growth (0.65%) and state and local government (0.41%) contributed substantially to growth. Strip out those categories and growth would have been 1.3%.
Yet the government shutdown took some 0.3% off growth and that won’t be repeated in the second quarter. Auto sales took 0.49% off GDP in the quarter, but sales rebounded in March heading into the second quarter. Overall consumer spending contributed a relatively small 0.82% to GDP, perhaps due to the fall in consumer confidence after the stock market swoon in the last months of 2018. With job growth strong and wages rising, consumers should contribute more to the expansion the rest of this year.
Private business investment kicked in a relatively measly 0.27% in the quarter, which is disappointing. But the nearby chart shows how much private capital investment has driven the rebound in growth since 2017. Business investment fell through the floor in the last half of 2015 and 2016, offset in part by a robust housing market. But that has reversed since Donald Trump took office, with business investment taking the lead as housing slowed and moved into negative territory in late 2018 and the first quarter of 2019.
What changed? Well, the economic policy mix. The Trump Administration lifted the threat of new regulation and harassment of business in 2017, which liberated long-stifled animal spirits. Then came the Trump tax reform with its sharp reduction in business tax rates and immediate 100% expensing of new investment. This was targeted precisely to stimulate the weak capital investment that had stymied growth in the Obama years.
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