29.01.2026

Behind the bombast

Growth exploding? Productivity surging? Incomes up? Is the US economy really booming, as Trump claimed in Davos? Michael Roberts paints a rather more nuanced picture

Amid all the bombast and threats over Greenland in his Davos speech, Donald Trump made a series of boasts about the success of the US economy, which was, of course, down to him: “Growth is exploding, productivity is surging, investment is soaring, incomes are rising, inflation has been defeated,” he told the gathering of the world’s political and financial elite. “We are the hottest country anywhere in the world” (and he was not referring to global warming).

Trump said that the US economy was growing “phenomenally” at over 4% a year in real terms and the forecast for the next quarter was even higher - over 5% a year. Inflation was falling fast, allowing the Federal Reserve to cut its policy interest rate, which it should have done but for the reluctance of that ‘dumbo’ Fed chair, Jay Powell, whom Trump was keen to say would be replaced very soon. Under his presidency, he had reduced the bureaucracy of the federal government, getting rid of 270,000 jobs. The federal fiscal deficit was coming down fast. And, above all, he had stopped the influx of ‘illegal’ immigration that rocketed under Biden. Now the US was ‘enjoying’ net emigration.

Well, let us consider these claims. US real growth of gross domestic product in the third quarter (Q3) of 2025 came in at annualised rate of 4.4% - the highest in two years and much higher than expected. This 4%+ growth seems tremendous - but the devil is in the detail. First, this is an annualised rate, meaning that the quarter-over-quarter increase was about 1.1%. On a year-on-year basis (Q3 24 to Q3 25), real GDP growth was only 2.3% - slightly up from 2.1% in Q2.

Second, final sales to private domestic purchasers excludes trade and government, and so measures the state of the domestic private sector economy. That rose only 3% on an annualised basis. And year over year, growth was just 2.6%, down from 2.7% in Q2. So the apparent acceleration in real GDP growth was mainly due to net trade, and that was due to a reduction in imports from Trump’s trade tariff hikes.

Third, the growth in real GDP hides the fact that investment growth slowed to just an annualised rate of 1% in Q3, mainly due to a sharp decline in house purchases. And it was actually down 0.2% year-on-year (yoy). Business investment growth also slowed sharply from 9.5% in Q1, and 7.3% in Q2, to 2.8% in Q3, with investment in buildings falling absolutely and growth in information investment slowing by two-thirds after the breakneck pace of Q2 (15.0%). On a year-on-year basis (Q3 24 to Q3 25), productive investment growth was 4.0% yoy.

And then there is the comparison between real GDP growth and real gross domestic income (GDI) growth - the latter measuring income actually received by workers and capitalists. GDI rose only at a 2.4% annual rate in Q3, compared to the headline GDP figure of 4.3%. The GDI yoy rate was 2.4% - the same as real GDP growth yoy. As for the average American income, as measured by real personal disposable income (ie, after tax), that was flat in Q3 and is up only 1.5% yoy - the slowest rate in three years. So the headline growth figure that Trump boasted about is misleading. Underlying real GDP growth is much more modest, running at just above 2% a year - not bad, but hardly a blockbuster. And income growth for working families is slowing to a standstill.

It is true that the Atlanta Fed ‘GDPNow’ model estimate for real GDP growth for the fourth quarter of 2025 is an annualised 5.4%. And the year-on-year figure is likely to be higher than in Q3 because of the significant contraction in GDP in the first-quarter of 2025 due to the ‘front running’ of companies buying goods and services in advance of Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs that were imposed last April. Even then, year-on-year real GDP growth is likely to be under 3% a year, not 5%-6%, as Trump boasted.

K-shaped

Moreover, this real GDP growth does not transfer into real income growth, especially for the majority of Americans. As many have argued, the US economy is ‘K-shaped’, meaning that rising incomes are confined to the top 10% of US income earners. Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month¹ show that the labour share of the nation’s GDP hit the lowest point since the BLS began measuring such things in 1947. In that year, the labour share - that is, the pay and benefits that American workers claimed - stood at 70% of the nation’s income: “… had the bottom 90% been able to retain their 1975 share of the nation’s taxable income, each of those workers would have seen their annual income boosted by $28,000.” No wonder consumer confidence among the bottom third of earners has dropped to its lowest on record.

The reason that most Americans do not feel the same as Trump boasts about the US economy is because of the rising cost of living, squeezing incomes. Trump claims that “inflation has been defeated”, yet the official consumer price inflation rate remains stubbornly high at 2.7% yoy - still some way above the US Federal Reserve target of 2%. The so-called ‘core’ personal consumption expenditure inflation rate, closely followed by the Fed, is actually even higher at 2.8% yoy. Food price inflation remains above 3% a year. And, as I have previously argued,² the official inflation rate underestimates the real rate.

Will the inflation rate fall from hereon in 2026? This is disputed. It seems that, so far, Trump’s import tariff hikes have not had a significant effect on consumer price inflation. But goods price inflation has reached its highest level since 2023 - higher than at any point in the 2010s. Trump’s claim that these tariffs are paid by foreign exporters is, of course, nonsense. Tariffs are charged on imported goods when they land in the US, so US importers pay the tariff. A recent study found that of 25 million import shipments, worth nearly $4 trillion, foreign exporters absorbed just 4% of the tariff increases. In other words, for every $100 in tariff revenue, $96 comes from American pockets. But it seems that importers (US manufacturers, etc) are not yet passing most of this rise in tariffs onto American households.

The Peterson Institute reckons that in 2026 this will change and consumer price inflation will not fall, but accelerate to 4% a year:

The pass-through of tariffs to consumer prices has been modest to date, suggesting US importers have been absorbing the bulk of the tariff changes. That will change in the first half of 2026. The many reasons for the lagged pass-through include businesses pricing based on when their inventories arrived (and have since run out) and concerns around being seen as raising prices too rapidly (so they are instead gradually increasing them).³

If such acceleration were to happen, the Federal Reserve would be forced to consider raising its policy interest rate - not reduce it, as Trump is demanding. Because inflation is “defeated”, he is demanding that the Fed cuts its policy interest rate, which sets the floor for all borrowing rates in the US. He wants the current Fed chair, Jay Powell, out of his job. Powell finishes his term in May and the likely replacement is to be BlackRock executive Rick Rieder, who, along with other Trump supporters, will aim to cut rates in the latter half of 2026. But, if inflation is rising by then, US treasury bond yields will also rise and the dollar will come under downward pressure - hardly good news for Trump just before the mid-term Congressional elections.

Anyway, contrary to the conventional wisdom that central bank monetary policy can ‘control’ inflation, all the evidence shows that monetary policy has little effect on inflation, because price rises depend much more on changes in supply than demand.⁴ What the Fed can do is to lower borrowing rates for more speculation in financial assets - and this is what Trump really wants.

But maybe inflation will not accelerate despite the import tariffs. The US job market has slowed down significantly. In 2025, payroll employment rose by 584,000, corresponding to an average monthly gain of 49,000 - only one-quarter of the increase of two million in 2024. Indeed, in the latter half of 2025 there were zero job increases and the unemployment rate ticked up.

Trump boasted that his import tariffs would bring back manufacturing jobs from overseas to the USA. But US industrial jobs are down by 65,000 over the last year - a dramatic reversal from 2024, when it went up by 250,000 jobs. A major slowdown has hit all blue-collar sectors this year, including construction, mining and utilities - though manufacturing and transportation are driving the vast majority of US job losses.

Trump claims that his draconian visa restriction policy and the horrendous ICE attacks on American citizens would end the flow of immigrants into the country. And he was right. Deportations reduced the US population by between 600,000 and 1.1 million people in 2025, compared to increases under Biden of 2.5 million people each year in 2022 and 2023, and by 1.5 million in 2024.

But this is not leading to more jobs for native-born Americans. Employment in the sectors most dependent on migrant labour - agriculture, food processing, residential construction, health and childcare - has remained essentially flat. There is no evidence of native-born workers filling these positions. On the contrary, while Trump argues immigrants have stolen jobs from American workers, labour market data says otherwise. The native-born unemployment rate worsened last year, while the rate for foreign-born workers held steady!

What about corporate profits? Will this boost investment and thus economic growth? Corporate profit mark-ups (profits per unit of output) remain near historic highs at 22.4%. And corporate profits in Q3 2025 were up sharply by $166 billion. But again the headline figures are misleading. Despite the sharp Q3 rise, non-financial corporate sector profits are still down 2.5% from Q3 last year. Most profits are concentrated in the tech, banking and energy giants, while the rest of the US corporate sector is making little.

More hits

But what if the productivity of labour were to rise sharply? That would lower unit labour costs for American companies, enabling them to absorb rising import prices and still sustain reasonable profits growth. US labour productivity rose at an annualised 4.9% in Q3 2025 - the strongest pace in two years. As a result, unit labour costs fell 1.9% in Q3, following a decline in Q2, the first back-to-back declines since 2019. So has the AI productivity boom started to arrive and save the US economy and Trump through 2026, as companies can then effectively grow without the need to add new workers?

Once again, this headline quarterly figure is misleading. Productivity is up only 2.3% yoy to Q3 2025 - less than half the annualised rate. Still, that is a much better pace in productivity growth than the US has experienced up to now. Growth in labour productivity per hour is quite volatile. The average annual rate of productivity growth in the 2000s was 2.7%, but only 1.3% a year in the long depression of the 2010s. It has since recovered to 2.1% a year so far in the 2020s, but that is an average rate still below the 2000s.

Real GDP growth depends on two factors: growth in both the number of employed workers and their productivity. In 2025, US employment growth staggered to a standstill, as net immigration reversed and no new jobs are being created. Indeed, if AI is having any effect, employment may fall in 2026. So, even if annual labour productivity rises (because jobs are being shed) to say 2.5%-3%, the US economy will hardly be booming. Moreover, all the income gains will be snuffled up by the top 10%.

And there are more hits to come for the majority of American households. Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” fiscal bill is now in operation. He talks of no taxes on tips and other small measures, but the big hits are cuts to corporate profit taxes and to Medicaid and food stamps. The Congressional Budget Office reckons the bill will reduce the incomes of the 40% lowest-income Americans, while the top 20% make large gains.

Finally, if the AI bubble should burst later this year,⁵ all bets are off!

Michael Roberts blogs at thenextrecession.wordpress.com