The tax cut has done nothing for economic growth
By Jennifer Rubin
June 28, 2018 at 2:30 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/ampht...onomic-growth/
Republicans insisted that the tax cut would not expand the debt and would spark an economic boom.
Neither of these things happened.
We already knew from the Congressional Budget Office’s recent report that the debt has swelled. Now we know that growth in the first quarter of 2018 was tepid. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Economic growth was slower at the beginning of this year than the government previously reported, as consumers pulled back spending and the housing market weighed down output.
Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., expanded at a seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate of 2% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That was weaker than an earlier estimate of 2.2% growth.
Republicans will assure us that next quarter, by gosh, we’ll see an economic explosion. But here is the rub: The cause of the lagging growth was consumer spending. As President Trump’s tariff war hits the price of consumer goods, consumers are unlikely to be buying more; they will buy less because goods will be more expensive.