Kevin Hassett
During a March 12 appearance on Fox, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett rosily predicted strong growth for the American economy in the first quarter of 2025 and dismissed consumer confidence surveys indicating fears of a looming recession. Hassett boldly stated: “I'll give you an expectation that GDP growth is going to be 2-2.5% in the first quarter, at least,” even as the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow estimate at the time predicted a contraction.
Now that the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ advance estimate has shown that GDP “decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025,” Fox anchor Sandra Smith has acknowledged that it was “a reversal from 2.4% growth in the fourth quarter [of 2024].”
However, Smith also downplayed the contraction, saying, “Some might say that wasn’t as big a drop as anticipated considering the sharp change in policies.”
Yet, as University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers noted on April 21, dozens of economic forecasters had been consistently downgrading their expectations of economic growth since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
