US economic growth revised down to 2.2% in fourth quarter
The U.S. economy grew by 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, down from earlier estimates of 2.6 percent, according to federal data released Thursday.
Overall, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth remained unchanged at 2.9 percent in the latest estimate from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).
That’s equivalent to the overall growth reached in 2015 and comes in just below the 3 percent annual growth target the Trump administration had set.{mosads}
President Trump had promised that his economic policies, including tax cuts and deregulation, would lead the economy to grow at a sustained rate of 3 percent or more.
The Federal Reserve and Congressional Budget Office are predicting that growth will slow in 2019, and average about 1 percentage point lower over the coming decade than the White House’s predictions.
Trump and Republicans have been trumpeting that growth reached 3.1 percent when measured from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018, though the latest BEA estimate reduced that figure to 3.0 percent.
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