Washington, June 21: The US economy is doing “amazingly” well, President Donald Trump has said, stressing that America is witnessing “record-setting” numbers in terms of jobs.
Trump made the comments on Saturday while responding to a question on the US economy, which has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.
The country’s unemployment rate for April was 14.7 per cent, which was the highest since 1948. With the addition of 2.5 million jobs, the monthly rate dropped to 13.3 per cent for May.
The economy had lost 22.1 million jobs in March and April when most parts of the US were under lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak. In May, some businesses have reopened and rehiring of workers has picked up. Trump had described the numbers as an affirmation of the good work his adminstration is doing.
“The US economy is doing amazingly well,” Trump told reporters.
“I would say that the numbers that we’re doing are record-setting numbers. We have record-setting job numbers,” he said.
“We have record-setting, as you know, retail sales numbers; that just came out. The US economy is doing very, very well,” Trump asserted.
Earlier Kevin Hassett, senior adviser to the president and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, told CNN that the country’s economy is coming back way faster than one thought.
“Right now I think economists need to be humble and recognise that when we’ve got 17 states where credit card spending is above where it was last year already, that it suggests that this economy is really, really coming back way faster than I thought,” Hassette said.
At the same time, he conceded that the economy would be hit if there was to be a second wave of the coronavirus.
“If there is a second flare-up that’s, you know, bigger than what we’ve seen and the economy does have to move towards more shutdown,” he said.
President Trump is focused on building a great economy, the strongest economy that the US has ever had, he told reporters at the White House on Friday.
“I think that he had an enormous amount of success doing that through January. I think that the virus has upended that. But the comeback is way faster than anybody thought. Again, the average economist missed by ten million jobs in the last jobs report. And I think the reason why we’re coming back so fast is that the economy was so strong in January,” he said.
“I’ve not ever had him say, oh we need to do this because I want to win the election. I have never heard him say that once,” he said responding to a question.
Trump is seeking his re-election to the White House in the November 3 elections.
The US is the worst-affected country from the pandemic.
According to the Johns Hopkins University data, there are over 2.2 million coronavirus cases in America with more than 119,000 deaths. (PTI)
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