WASHINGTON – Hoping to turn the page on a tumultuous opening chapter to his presidency, President Donald Trump insisted on Monday there is “no chaos” in his White House as he swore in retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as his new chief of staff.
While Trump is looking for a reset, he pushed back against criticism of his administration with this tweet: “Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!”
In fact, economic growth averaged 2 per cent in the first half of this year, a pace Trump railed against as a candidate and promised to lift to 3 per cent.
Trump in May put forward a budget for next year that projects growth to steadily advance in the coming years, hitting a sustained pace of 3 percent annually by 2021. The Congressional Budget Office and most private economists are less optimistic, believing growth rates have the potential of improving only slightly from the lackluster rates seen in the current recovery, the weakest in the post-World War II period.
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The stock market first hit a record under President Barack Obama and has kept growing. The unemployment rate, too, started to decline on Obama’s watch. And wage gains have been weak.
U.S. stocks have pushed higher during Trump’s first six months in office, with the benchmark S&P 500 Index up about 9 percent.
But that record trails the 16.2 percent gain in the S&P seen during Democratic former President Obama’s first six months in office in 2009, and also trails the market’s 13.4 percent advance at the start of Obama’s second term in 2013.
Initial gains this year were driven in part by optimism Trump would cut taxes and regulations, and spend more on infrastructure projects, stimulating an economy still sluggish after the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession.
But with little to show for so far on those promises, the market has advanced at a slower pace in the past several months, and analysts and investors have attributed the latest gains to robust corporate earnings, low interest rates and a revived global economy.
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The economy has continued to add jobs since Trump took office, but the pace – about 174,000 a month since February, his first full month in office – is about 40,000 jobs fewer than the 214,000 jobs added on average each month during Obama’s second term.
-with a file from the Associated Press.