By S.A. Miller
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence listens as U.S. President Donald Trump announces that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will move its embassy there, during an address from the White House in Washington, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque – RC1EFF081CE0
(The Washington Times) – President Trump’s economic team on Wednesday declared the end of the “new normal” of the Obama-era’s stagnant wages and lackluster economic growth, forecasting a return to the robust and dominant American economy that will last into the next decade.
The first economic report by the president’s Council of Economic Advisers said tax cuts, deregulation and other pro-growth policies would increase economic growth to 3.1 percent in 2018 and keep it above 3.1 percent through 2020.
The gross domestic product (GDP) has been hovering around 2.5 percent following the Great Recession of 2007, which was deemed the “new normal” that replaced historic norms of 3 percent and higher.
“The headline of our growth chapter is that there is not a new normal to look to, there is just normal,” said Kevin Hassett, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. “That normal is happening because we’ve restored economic policies to where a sensible, rational country would put them.”
The report also forecast that the labor market would continue to strengthen in the near term, with the unemployment rate falling to 3.7 percent in 2019 from the current 4.4 percent. It called the declining unemployment a “predictable consequence” of strong growth.
