When you surf over to WhiteHouse.gov, you’re greeted with video of inspiring shots of the president and text claiming that “Under President Donald Trump’s second administration, the United States has surged into a new era of prosperity, marked by record-setting economic growth and trillions in new private-sector investments fueled by tax reforms, deregulation, and a renewed focus on American innovation.” Scroll down the page, and a box appears, prompting you to sign up for a newsletter with the words “WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN AGE!” in all caps.
There is one room in Washington where a “golden age” exists: the Oval Office, into which Trump has crammed gilded junk onto every wall and into every corner. But for those who don’t share the president’s gaudy aesthetic, the golden age is nowhere in evidence.
Trump’s answer to that disgruntlement is to just tell people they’ve never had it so good.
On Thursday, the Commerce Department released the latest GDP figures, showing that the American economy grew at a 1.5% rate in the second quarter of 2026. That’s not a catastrophe; our economy is both enormous and resilient, and can absorb a remarkable amount of poor decision-making from Washington. But it’s not great either — and it’s a hundred miles from a golden age.
Wage growth is barely keeping up with inflation, which is sitting at 3.5%, well above the Fed’s 2% target. That’s why its rate-setting committee opted to keep interest rates where they are, so too bad if you’re hoping to buy a home anytime soon. The share of GDP going to workers is lower than at any point since the government began measuring it in 1947. Consumer confidence, depending on the survey, is either near all-time lows or merely low.
It’s not a recession, at least for now. But Trump has delivered the Meh Economy.
Given the alternatives, that might not seem so bad. Trump’s economic stewardship has combined bad ideas familiar from previous Republican administrations (e.g., tax cuts for the wealthy) with some ill-considered policies of his own. There’s his erratic tariffs, which have cost consumers billions and slowed economic growth. He has waged war on green energy, one of the fastest growing sectors of the world economy.
The Republicans’ Big Beautiful Bill is causing millions to lose health coverage and food assistance, while food banks struggle to meet demand. His crackdown on immigration, on top of its moral failings, has been an economic disaster in multiple ways including worker shortages in key industries, lower income from tourism and fewer international students coming to boost the U.S. economy. To top it off, his absurd war in Iran created a global energy crisis and sent gas prices spiraling upward.
What distinguishes this White House from its predecessors is how ludicrous its claims about the present and the future are.
This is the president who got elected because people were mad about inflation, and said on the campaign trail, “When I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.” In the story he told, inflation would disappear (it hasn’t), tariffs would bring a manufacturing boom (they haven’t), and everyone would thank him for creating such boundless prosperity.
They certainly aren’t doing that. In a new CNN poll, 65% of respondents said Trump’s policies have made the economy worse, while only 22% said they’ve made the economy better. In Nate Silver’s polling average, Trump’s net approval on the economy is -27.7%.
Trump’s answer to that disgruntlement is to just tell people they’ve never had it so good. “We had the best economy in the history of our country in my first term,” he said recently. “We’re blowing it away now, despite our little diversion to the lovely country of Iran … the economy is booming.”
His aides, rather than lie quite so obviously about current conditions, will say that good times are right around the corner. “I think 2026 is going to be a blockbuster year,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last November. “You’re going to see the greatest growth the United States of America has ever seen,” said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in December. When the year began, Lutnick said that growth in the first quarter would be 5%, and exceed 6% by year’s end. First quarter growth was actually 2.1% — not bad, but nothing like a blockbuster. “We really could be looking at numbers north of four, north of five, north of even six” percent growth, National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett said in May.
This is not the first administration that has struggled to convince voters their economic policies are working (remember the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer” of 2010?). What distinguishes this White House from its predecessors is how ludicrous its claims about the present and the future are. In a career as a real estate developer, TV personality and purveyor of small-time grifts, the president learned that there is power in lying about the facts and promising the moon. But an administration can only get away with that for so long. And since people experience the economy in their own lives, the picture the White House paints has to have at least some relationship to reality.
If it doesn’t, Americans may decide that not only can’t they trust what the administration says, but that the president has no idea what he’s doing. There are a lot of ways to measure the economy, and some of them (like the stock market) even look pretty good, even as many others look mediocre or worse. But a “golden age”? To believe that, you’d have to be the kind of sucker Donald Trump has always depended on.
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