Biden Caught Making False Statement About U.S. Economic Contraction

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America via Wikimedia Commons

Presidential candidate Joe Biden took the opportunity to comment negatively on the recent economic contraction numbers but he had one problem, his statement was false.

According to The Washington Free Beacon:

“Today, we learned that the last three months were the worst period for economic growth our nation has experienced in the 70 years since we started measuring it—a drop of nearly 33 percent,” Biden said. “And the already unthinkably high numbers of American workers filing for unemployment each week continues to go in the wrong direction.”

The nation’s gross domestic product actually shrank by 9.5 percent from April to June, largely due to extended shutdowns because of the coronavirus pandemic. GDP shrank by an annualized rate of 32.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but the economy is highly unlikely to similarly contract over the next nine months, making it an unreliable metric.

President Donald Trump’s campaign criticized journalists and media outlets, such as NBC News, who reported the annualized figure as the quarterly one.

“These economic numbers reflect April through June, when much of the economy was essentially closed down to save millions of American lives,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said in a statement. “The media is also grabbing onto the annualized number which supposes that the economic conditions will remain the same for an entire year, which it undoubtedly will not.”

Biden slammed Trump’s approach but the White House continues to be bullish on reopening the economy and the economic recovery the US will see in the second half of the year.



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