One of the early signs of trouble came in late September, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, touting gross domestic product data that had just been released, declared via social media that Joe Biden’s economy “could never reach 3%” growth.
That didn’t make any sense. On a quarterly basis, the economy under Biden topped 3% several times. (It also topped 4%, 5% and, in early 2021, 6% growth.) On an annual basis, Lutnick was also completely wrong: GDP growth for all of 2021 was 6.2% — the strongest in nearly four decades.
Given that the Department of Commerce, which Lutnick ostensibly leads, is responsible for compiling and releasing GDP data, the secretary’s apparent confusion was difficult to defend.
Last week, he made matters considerably worse.
After preliminary data showed the economy grew at a 4.3% annual rate in the third quarter (July through September), Lutnick appeared on Fox News and boasted: “What that means is that Americans overall — all of us — are going to earn 4.3% more money. We’re making a raise.”
But that wasn’t even close to being true. Indeed, the secretary’s on-air comments reflected ignorance about what the numbers themselves mean: Wages and economic growth are both important metrics, but they routinely rise and fall separately and independently. This isn’t complicated: 4.3% GDP growth does not mean a 4.3% “raise” for American workers.
The broader question is whether the head of the Commerce Department is genuinely confused about this, or whether he’s pretending to be genuinely confused about this.
If it’s the former, how did Lutnick manage to get this job? (For that matter, how did he run an investment bank?) If it’s the latter, why would he deliberately choose to appear ignorant about basic information his own department released to the public? This is, incidentally, the same commerce secretary who recently struggled to understand how percentages work while trying to defend Donald Trump’s absurd claims about 700% price drops, which followed an infamous exchange in which Lutnick said food companies can avoid tariffs on bananas by producing bananas in the United States — seemingly unaware of the fact that this isn’t possible. And did I mention the time when Lutnick suggested that only criminals would complain about missing a Social Security check? Because he did that, too. Back in April, The Wall Street Journal reported that Lutnick’s rhetorical record was proving to be so “challenging” to the White House that officials asked him to start saying less. He might need a reminder.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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