President Donald Trump celebrated the Q2 4.1 percent GDP news on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday, adding that trade deals coming in will push future GDP numbers higher.
Trump said he was “thrilled to announce” the U.S. 4.1 percent GDP growth rate for Q2.
“We are on track to hit the highest annual growth rate in over thirteen years,” said Trump. “As the trade deals come in one by one, we’re going to go a lot higher than these numbers. And these are great numbers.”
Trump forged a trade agreement at the White House on Wednesday with European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker that included not only promises to work toward a “zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods” trade deal, but also that Juncker committed the EU to begin immediately purchasing more U.S. soybeans, an industry facing retaliatory tariffs from other nations like China.
He pointed out that over the previous two administrations the U.S. averaged a meager 1.8 percent GDP growth. “By contrast, we are now on track to hit an average GDP annual growth of over three percent and it could be substantially over three percent,” said Trump.
“Each point, by the way, means approximately three trillion dollars and ten billion jobs,” said Trump. “It doesn’t sound like much, it’s a lot.”
“If economic growth continues at this pace, the United States economy will double in size more than ten years faster than it would have under either President [George W.] Bush or President [Barack] Obama,” President Trump continued.
“Perhaps one of the biggest wins in the report…is that the trade deficit, very dear to my heart because we’ve been ripped off by the world, has dropped by more than 50 billion dollars, 52 billion to be exact,” said Trump. “That’s added and adding one point to GDP. That’s a tremendous drop.”
“By increasing growth to three percent over the next ten years, that would mean 12 million new American jobs and 10 trillion dollars of new American wealth, at least,” said the president. “That’s not including the fact that since I was elected we’ve created approximately seven trillion dollars of new wealth.”
“The year before I came into office, private business investment grew at only 1.8 percent last year and jumped to 6.3 percent…and this year it’s growing at 9.4 percent,” Trump noted. “There hasn’t been an increase like that in many, many years, decades.”
Trump then said that the most important thing, something confirmed to him by White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow and economic advisor Kevin Hassert, “these numbers are very, very sustainable, this isn’t a one-time shot.”
“I happen to think we’re going to do extraordinarily well in our next report, next quarter,” said Trump.
“When I came in to office 1.5 million fewer prime-aged Americans were working than eight years before,” said Trump. “We had lost almost 200,000 manufacturing jobs under the previous administration.” He said manufacturing jobs are not obsolete, but rather, “they’re the greatest jobs we have.”
“More than 10 million additional Americans had been added to food stamps past years, but we’ve turned it all around,” said Trump.
“Once again we are the economic envy of the entire world,” said president Trump, who cited the words of other world leaders. “When I meet the leaders of countries, the first thing they say invariably is Mr. President, so nice to meet you, congratulations on your economy, you’re leading the entire world.”
“America is being respected again and America is winning again because we are finally putting America first,” he added. “We have added 3.7 million new jobs since the election. A number that is unthinkable if you go back to the campaign. Nobody would have said it. Nobody would have even in an optimistic way projected it.”
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook
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