Under Trump, China’s Economic Growth Nearly Doubled the Growth of the US

Photograph Source: PAS China – Public Domain

Donald Trump seems to get very confused when talking about economics. The U.S. did have respectable growth under his administration, but it was not especially good by any standard metric. We also were very far from being the fastest growing economy in the world.

Contrary to what Trump seems to believe, China’s economic growth hugely outpaced U.S. growth under his watch. China’s economy grew by a cumulative total of 25.4 percent in the years from 2017 to 2021, compared to just 9.3 percent for the United States.

Source: International Monetary Fund.

As a share of world GDP (purchasing power parity), China went from 16.15 percent at the start of the period to 18.42 percent at the end. By contrast, the U.S. share fell slightly from 15.98 percent in 2017 to 15.87 percent in 2021.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.