President Biden attempted to allay concerns about the performance of the U.S. economy on Thursday after the Commerce Department announced that the economy shrank over the first quarter of 2022.
“I’m not concerned about a recession,” Biden told reporters at a press conference at the White House.
“I mean, you’re always concerned about a recession, but the GDP, you know, fell to 1.4 percent,” Biden added. “But here’s the deal: we also had last quarter consumer spending and business investment and residential investment increase at significant rates,” and “unemployment’s the lowest rate since 1970.”
Biden said that the U.S. was seeing “enormous” economic growth alongside Covid disruptions.
“I think we’re—what you’re seeing is enormous growth in the country that was affected by everything from Covid and the Covid blockages that occurred along the way,” Biden said. “Now, you always have to be, take a look and, no one is predicting a recession now. They’re predicting there—some are predicting there may be a recession in 2023. I’m concerned about it.”
Gross domestic product declined during the first quarter of 2022 at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent. Meanwhile, the Consumer Price Index rose 8.5 in March from the same month in the previous year, the highest 12-month increase in four decades, and the Federal Reserve announced mid-March that it would raise interest rates in an attempt to bring down inflation.
A report by Deutsche Bank economists to clients on Tuesday warned that a “major recession” is coming and could be “worse than expected,” although the authors noted their outlook was more pessimistic than other economists’ views.
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