MW Trump says the U.S. economy has 'super-high growth.' Is he right?
By Jeffry BartashRobert Schroeder
Trump's track record is comparable to Biden's on a key measure of the economy
President Donald Trump spoke at the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump touted "super-high growth" as he rattled off what he called his many economic achievements in an hourlong speech in Detroit Tuesday.
In a shot at his Oval Office predecessor, Trump said former President Joe Biden gave the U.S. "a colossal stagflation catastrophe," and he claimed the situation is now in the rearview mirror.
"We have quickly achieved the exact opposite of stagflation, almost no inflation at super-high growth," Trump told the Detroit Economic Club.
What do the data say?
The economy has been expanding faster than expected, but the U.S. hasn't achieved "super-high" growth, nor has inflation vanished.
Gross domestic product, the official scorecard of the economy, fell in the first quarter of 2025 for the first time in three years. GDP then rebounded with strong gains of 3.8% in the second quarter and 4.3% in the third quarter.
Yet some of that growth has been inflated by businesses and consumers buying more imports earlier in the year to get ahead of tariff-related price increases.
In any case, GDP also grew by close to 3% a year in the final two years of Biden's presidency. So the track records of Biden and Trump are comparable.
The rate of inflation, meanwhile, had already slowed sharply before Trump took office. It had fallen to 3% in January 2025 from a 41-year peak of 9.1% in 2022.
Inflation has since been stuck at close to 3%, leaving it well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
Speaking after the release of fresh inflation data on Tuesday morning, Trump also hammered home a demand for his nominee for Federal Reserve chair, saying he wanted his pick to lower interest rates when stocks are doing "great."
Read: CPI Report Today: Inflation is not getting much worse but consumers are still getting hit
Trump, who is in the process of deciding who he'll nominate to head the U.S. central bank after current Fed Chair Jerome Powell's term ends in May, said in his speech, "I want somebody that when the market is doing great, interest rates can go down because our country becomes stronger."
Trump has frequently called for lower interest rates and did so again as recently as Tuesday morning in a post on Truth Social.
U.S. stocks SPX fell Tuesday afternoon, weighed down by shares of JPMorgan and Visa. Trump has called for credit-card companies to cap interest rates, although the proposal is getting a cold reception from top Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Trump's latest remarks on the Fed and interest rates come as a broad range of lawmakers, central bankers and social-media creators are backing Powell in the wake of the Department of Justice's threat to seek a criminal indictment over his testimony to Congress about Federal Reserve building renovations.
-Jeffry Bartash -Robert Schroeder
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January 13, 2026 16:15 ET (21:15 GMT)
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