President Biden and his aides escalated a campaign Monday to try to convince American voters that the country has not entered a recession, before releasing new data this week that could show the economy continues to shrink.
“God willing, I don’t think we’re going to see a recession,” Mr Biden said after a virtual meeting with high-tech manufacturing and union leaders. The event aimed to promote a China competition law that the Senate could pass this week.
Fears of a recession have prompted many of Mr Biden’s aides to brief reporters on the overall health of the economy, including the government’s view that a hot job market is one of many signs that the economy is under threat. economy is not plunged into a downturn.
The technicalities of what constitutes a recession have given the White House and Republicans some very nerdy talking points before the gross domestic product data is released on Thursday. Growth in the first quarter was negative 1.6 percent, and the new data is expected to show that the US economy grew little or perhaps contracted again in the second quarter.
Republican lawmakers have increasingly accused the president of redefining commonly understood terms to try to make the economy appear healthier than it is.
“News flash for Joe Biden,” the Republican National Committee said in a press release Monday. “You can’t change reality by arguing over definitions.”
Government officials have repeatedly rejected that claim and have made an effort to explain the criteria the National Bureau of Economic Research uses to determine whether an economy was in recession. The group isn’t necessarily calling out a recession after the country reports a second consecutive quarter of negative economic growth, a common definition of one.
On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during her daily briefing that that shorthand definition was just a journalists convention, not a professional evaluation. “The definition used by economists differs,” she said.
That’s true – not every recession includes two full quarters of negative growth, and in 1947 the economy shrank for two quarters without an explanation of a recession. But usually two quarters of the contraction leads to a recession call.
As proof that the United States has not entered a recession, Ms. Jean-Pierre cited low unemployment, continued consumer spending and business investment. “All those indicators show us that we are not in a recession or pre-recession right now,” she said.
