COMMERCE/ECONOMY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump exulted in data on Friday [7-27-18] that showed economic growth accelerated in the second quarter, reeling off a list of statistics to make a case, during a midterm election year, that his administration should get the credit for the humming economy…The Commerce Department estimated that growth in the second quarter of 2018 rose to 4.1 percent, the fastest quarterly rate since 2014. Economists have questioned whether growth can continue at such a pace, but Mr. Trump and his advisers argued it was more than a ‘one-time shot,’ citing, among other factors, gains in business investment and productivity that they said resulted from deep cuts in corporate taxes…Mr. Trump’s economic victory lap came amid gathering legal clouds for the president. The special counsel in the Russia investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s Twitter posts for evidence that he obstructed justice; The Wall Street Journal reported that the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, had been subpoenaed to testify in the investigation of Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen…On Friday, Mr. Trump did not take questions about those or other issues in his appearance on a sun-drenched morning. Instead, he offered a long list of rosy statistics about jobs, trade deficits and the gross domestic product. He made no reference to the budget deficit, which has ballooned because of his tax cuts, though he promised during the campaign to eliminate it.”
–Mark Landler, “Trump Claims Credit for an Economy He Calls the ‘Envy of the Entire World’,” The New York Times online, July 27, 2018