Asked for comment on Friday, a White House official did not specifically address Biden’s claim that the United States has the fastest growing economy in the world. In contrast, the official noted that the 5.7% increase in real gross domestic product of the United States in 2021 was the fastest for the country since 1984. The official also noted that the International Monetary Fund has predicted that, from the fourth quarter This year, the size of the US economy will be larger than its pre-pandemic level at the end of 2019 than any of the other six countries in the international forum known as the Group of Seven: Canada, France, Germany, Italy , Japan and the United Kingdom. These comments are accurate. But Biden said on Kimmel’s show, three times, that the US economy is growing faster than any other country in the “world”, not just growing faster than six specific countries. And that is inaccurate. “Clearly the US was the G-7 economy that did better in terms of GDP growth since the launch of COVID, but it is not literally the fastest growing economy in the world during this period,” said Gian Maria. Milesi-Ferretti. , a former member of the International Monetary Fund who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Hutchins think tank at the Center for Fiscal and Monetary Policy.
How the US is compared
Biden took office at the end of January 2021. Among the dozens of countries that recorded the fastest real GDP growth from the US in 2021 were Ireland (13.5%), Chile (11.7%), Turkey (11 %), Colombia (10.6%), India (8.7% for the financial year beginning in April 2021), Greece (8.3%), Israel (8.2%), China (8 , 1%), the United Kingdom (7.4%), France (7%) and Italy (6.6%)), according to data published by the IMF and the governments of the countries. (Many countries’ growth rates were higher than usual in 2021 as their economies recovered from the 2020 pandemic-induced financial crisis.) An economic outlook released this week by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development predicted that the US will grow by 2.5% in 2022. This was lower than the OECD forecast for 2022 for 11 other members of the Group of 20 international forum: Saudi Arabia (7.8%), India (6.9% for fiscal year), Indonesia (4.7%), China (4.4%), Australia (4.2%), Spain (4.1%), Canada (3.8%), Turkey (3.7%) ), The United Kingdom (3.6%), Argentina (3.6%) and South Korea (2.7%). We will add a warning. There are several ways to measure growth – among other things, you can choose different start and end points and different indicators of economic activity – and there are several complications involved in the data. Laura Veldkamp, a professor of economics at Columbia University School of Business, said there was “no way” Biden could claim that he was using “faster growth” in the usual way, referring to a percentage change. He said, however, that he would personally describe the President’s claim as “misleading” and not false, as “the word growth in the conversation can mean many things”. We will respectfully stick to our harshest conclusion. If Biden was referring to an unusual or obscure developmental measure, he could have explained it. Neither did the White House when asked to comment.
