According to newly released data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. economy contracted by 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022. It’s the second straight quarter of economic contraction following the 1.6 percent decline in the first quarter of 2022 – indicating that the country is officially in a recession.
While consumer spending increased by a modest one percent in the second quarter, declines in investments, inventories, and state and local government spending drove overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of overall economic activity, towards a net decline. As expected, historic inflation under President Joe Biden continues to take a toll on the American economy. The consumer price index (CPI) increased by 8.6 percent in the second quarter – the fastest quarterly pace since 1981.
These figures represent a marked turnaround from the economic resurgence that Biden inherited when he first assumed office. America’s GDP grew by 33.8 percent and 4.5 percent in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, when President Donald Trump was still in office; that growth continued into the first year of the Biden presidency until dropping off in the first half of 2022.
Biden’s handling of the economy has long been criticized. A June poll, for instance, pegged Americans’ approval of Biden’s handling of the economy at just 29 percent, with an even lower 23 percent approving of his handling of inflation.
Biden administration has since resorted to semantics to push back against the commonly accepted definition of “recession” to refute the entire notion that the U.S. is in a recession. Biden’s National Economic Council Director and White House economic advisor Brian Deese claimed during a recent interview, for instance, that “we’re certainly in a transition, and we are seeing slowing as we all would have expected. But I think if you look at the full data and the type of data that NBER looks at, virtually nothing signals that this period in the second quarter is recessionary.”
It directly contradicts what numerous media outlets, experts, and even Deese himself had previously considered a recession – drawing criticism from Republican officials.
“Joe Biden inherited a recovery and created a recession,” the Republican National Committee (RNC) said in an email blast. “Don’t just take our word for it … Biden’s own advisors, CNN, the Washington Post , PolitiFact, and USA Today have all defined recession as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.”
