{"id":13271,"date":"2026-05-01T20:14:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T20:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/after-back-to-back-letdowns-its-time-for-the-white-house-to-move-the-economic-goalposts-ms-now\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T20:14:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T20:14:47","slug":"after-back-to-back-letdowns-its-time-for-the-white-house-to-move-the-economic-goalposts-ms-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/01\/after-back-to-back-letdowns-its-time-for-the-white-house-to-move-the-economic-goalposts-ms-now\/","title":{"rendered":"After back-to-back letdowns, it\u2019s time for the White House to move the economic goalposts – MS NOW"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opinion<\/a>
Morning Joe<\/a>
RacheL Maddow<\/a>
Deadline: White House<\/a>
The weekend<\/a>
NEWSLETTERS<\/a>
Share this –
\t\t\t\t\t\tTrump administration officials keep making specific promises about economic performance. They also keep failing to deliver on those promises.\t\t\t\t\t
As this week got underway, Peter Navarro, the White House\u2019s top trade adviser, boasted<\/a> on Fox Business, \u201cInflation is going down.\u201d It would\u2019ve been great if that were true, but as is too often the case with the White House\u2019s economic claims, it was not.
The public learned in early April that the consumer price index, which is the most common way to measure inflation, surged in March<\/a>, making a bad situation worse. As April came to an end, the discouraging news continued, with the Commerce Department also showing a jump<\/a> in the core personal consumption expenditures price index, which reached its highest level in nearly three years.
The inflation data roughly coincided with the release of the latest data on economic growth: In the first quarter of 2026, spanning January through March, the gross domestic product grew by 2%, which was better than late 2025, though it fell short of expectations<\/a>.
At a White House event last week, Donald Trump once again <\/a>said the status quo is \u201cthe greatest economy we\u2019ve ever had.\u201d The president wasn\u2019t just wrong, he also offered a timely reminder about just how out of touch he\u2019s become: The latest national Associated Press poll<\/a> found only 30% of Americans approve of the Republican\u2019s handling of the economy, which is the lowest of his second term.
But as the public comes to terms with the latest in a series of economic disappointments, there\u2019s a related question White House officials should at least try to answer: Whatever happened to all of those assurances from last year?
As recently as August, for example, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confidently predicted to a national television audience<\/a> that the U.S. economy is \u201creally going to pick up in the fourth quarter\u201d of 2025. It did not<\/a>, and as the spring of 2026 continues, Americans are still waiting for conditions to \u201creally pick up.\u201d
Similarly, in early September, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during a CNBC interview<\/a> that Americans will see robust growth \u201csix months from now.\u201d
That was eight months ago. He\u2019s still wrong.
Earlier this month, Howard Lutnick predicted the economy would grow by 5% in the first quarter of the year.It only grew 2%, and it was largely because of AI investment, not the manufacturing and job creation boom Trump promised.
What\u2019s more, earlier this year, Lutnick predicted<\/a>, \u201cI think we\u2019re going to grow more than 5% GDP this quarter.\u201d We now know that growth wasn\u2019t even half that strong.
The point isn\u2019t to mock the false predictions; the point is to press the Republican administration on the results. In fact, the questions for the president and his team couldn\u2019t be more obvious: Why have you failed to meet your own expectations, and when do you expect to deliver the results you promised?
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."\t\t
\t\t\t\tLatest Post \t\t\t
\u00a9 2026 Versant Media, LLC<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OpinionMorning JoeRacheL MaddowDeadline: White HouseThe weekendNEWSLETTERSShare this – Trump administration officials keep making specific promises about economic performance. They also keep failing to deliver on those promises. As this week got underway, Peter Navarro, the White House\u2019s top trade adviser, boasted on Fox Business, \u201cInflation is going down.\u201d It would\u2019ve been great if that were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}