President Biden and his aides convince U.S. voters on Monday that the country is not in recession before this week’s release of new data that could indicate that the economy continues to shrink. Escalated the campaign.
“I don’t think God is happy and there will be a recession,” Biden said after a virtual meeting with tech executives and union leaders. The event was aimed at promoting China’s competition bill, which the Senate could pass this week.
Concerns about the recession have led many of Mr. Biden’s aides to briefly explain to reporters the health of the economy as a whole.
The technical details of what constitutes a recession have given the White House and Republicans some very geeky issues before GDP data was released Thursday. Growth in the first quarter was reported to be minus 1.6%, and new data are expected to indicate that the US economy has grown very little or probably shrank again in the second quarter.
Republican lawmakers are increasingly accusing the president of redefining commonly understood terms in an attempt to make the economy look healthier than it is today.
The Republican National Committee said in a news release on Monday, “Joe Biden’s breaking news.” “You can’t change reality by discussing definitions.”
Struggling to explain the criteria the National Bureau of Economic Research uses to determine if it is in recession, government officials have repeatedly rejected the claim. The group does not necessarily declare a recession after the country reports negative economic growth for the second consecutive quarter. This is a general definition.
On Monday, White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during her daily briefing that the definition of the shorthand was merely journalist practice, not expert evaluation. “The definitions used by economists are different,” she said.
That’s true — not all recessions include the entire two quarters of negative growth, and in 1947 the economy shrank two quarters without a declaration of recession. But usually two-quarters of the contraction leads to a call for a recession.
Jean-Pierre cited low unemployment, continued consumer spending and business investment as evidence that the United States was not in recession. “All of these indicators show that we are not in a recession or pre-recession situation at this time,” she says.
