“No. 1, the Fed was not good,” he said.
The president also mentioned the six-week strike at General Motors last fall and the continuing turmoil at Boeing, the nation’s largest aerospace manufacturer and largest manufacturing exporter, after accidents involving two of its 737 Max airplanes killed 346 people.
“With all that, had we not done the big raise on interest, I think we would have been close to 4 percent,” he said.
Most economists disagree. The economy has not expanded by 3 percent or more in a full calendar year since 2005. As Mr. Herzon said, “We’re continuing along in this 2 percent economy.”
Nonetheless, expect Mr. Trump to claim economic success and the Democratic candidates to highlight the economy’s soft spots.
Boeing’s troubles are taking a toll.
Boeing has historically recorded bonanza sales in December, with the company selling an average of 234 airplanes over the past five years, Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, noted in a newsletter. Last month, it sold just three. Strong sales of military aircraft offset the decline.
Still, Boeing’s halt in 737 Max production will ripple throughout the economy in the coming year. This week, Arconic, one of the airplane manufacturer’s suppliers, said it expected to lose $400 million in Boeing sales and cut jobs. Another contractor, Spirit AeroSystems Holdings, recently announced that it was cutting 2,800 jobs this month. Hundreds of other companies are also grappling to manage the impact.
Kathy Bostjancic, chief United States financial economist at Oxford Economics, said she expected Boeing’s disrupted production to shave half a percentage point off G.D.P. in the first three months of this year.
And remember …
The Commerce Department will revise the fourth-quarter results twice in the months ahead as more data comes in.