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In a recent tweet, Donald Trump wrote:

“President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP,” stated President Obama. I guess I have a magic wand, 4.2%, and we will do MUCH better than this! We have just begun.

Did Trump get the GDP growth of America to 4.2%?

Oddthinking
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DjangoBlockchain
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1 Answers1

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The second-quarter GDP growth at the annualized rate is indeed at 4.2% (up from 2.2% for the first quarter of 2018), according to CNBC, based on stats from the US department of commerce.

CNBC indirectly attributes some of this to actions taken by Trump (though it doubts that these will be long-term beneficial for the GDP):

But the robust growth in the second quarter is unlikely to be sustained given the one-off drivers such as a $1.5 trillion tax cut package, which provided a jolt to consumer spending after a lackluster first quarter, and a front-loading of soybean exports to China to beat retaliatory trade tariffs.

Quarterly (as opposed to annual) GDP of above 4% are not that uncommon; it for example happened 4 times under Obama. For an overview of the quarterly GDP 2011-2018, see here.

It should also be noted that the Obama quote seems to be entirely made up.

kingledion
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tim
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    What do you mean "entirely made up"? - Obama did say "What magic wand do you have?": https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1039296436809154563 at 00:13 – 123iamking Sep 13 '18 at 12:50
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    @123iamking You can't just take one common phrase out of an entirely different context and fabricate a new quote out of that. That's not how quoting works. That's not even how paraphrasing works. 'Trump needs a magic wand to bring back manufactoring jobs' (paraphrased) != "President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP". Anyway, the previous comments regarding how quoting works were deleted for a reason. If there are still questions about it, you might want to open a new post. – tim Sep 13 '18 at 12:59
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    The quote does make sense to me: to get a high percent of GDP (4% in this case), you need to bring back manufacturing jobs. – 123iamking Sep 14 '18 at 00:52