(PatrioticPost.Com)-Despite President Donald Trump’s administration overseeing the longest economic expansion in all of American history, the economy has come to a grinding halt following the outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus.
Even low taxes and regulation cuts can’t help an economy when businesses are forced to close!
As a result, the United States economy shrunk by 4.8% in the first quarter, according to new data, and led to American businesses laying off more than 26 million people. This is the biggest unemployment crisis the United States has seen since the time of the Great Depression.
The figures came from the Commerce Department, who announced on Wednesday that the country’s Gross Domestic Product saw a quarterly drop for the first time since 2014. The 4.8% contraction is the highest since the economy shrank in 2008 during the credit crunch.
“Forecasters say the drop in the January-March quarter will be only a precursor of a far grimmer GDP report to come on the current April-June period, with business shutdowns and layoffs striking with devastating force,” the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
The report also said that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that GDP will continue to drop at a 40% rate in this current quarter.
The news comes after the Labor Department announced last week that a further 4.3 million people applied for unemployment benefits in the week ending April 18. That means the total number of unemployment applications since the end of March has reached 26.3 million.
President Donald Trump has shown he is eager to begin reopening the U.S. economy on a state-by-state basis, to reverse the damage down to the economy.
On April 28, he tweeted that many states now “moving to SAFELY & QUICKLY reopen!”
Many States moving to SAFELY & QUICKLY reopen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2020
Even so, Goldman Sachs released a forecast last week predicting that unemployment will rise to 15% nationally. According to James Bullard, the St. Louis Fed president, it’s also possible that unemployment could rise as high as 42%.
Do you think it’s time for the American economy to get moving again?
