For the second time in three years in office, the economy under President Joe Biden surpassed every annual GDP growth rate of his predecessor, growing at a 3.1% rate, higher than pundits’ predictions, CNBC reports. Fourth quarter 2023 growth was estimated at 3.3%.
The rate is a jump over the 2022 of 2.1%, but lower than the accelerated 5.9% rate in Biden’s first year in office, when he had to implement policies to boost the economy after the disastrous pandemic response from the Trump administration, which saw a -2.8% annual shrinkage in 2020. Trump’s other annual GDP growth rates didn’t exceed 3.0%, a benchmark Trump frequently cited in the 2016 campaign as the standard for US economic growth because the Obama administration never exceeded it. Trump’s annual growth rates: 2.2% in 2017; 2.9% in ’18, 2.3% in ’19, and the 2020 economic contraction of -2.8%.