It’s a familiar cycle. President Trump declares all is well or going to be well, and the black pillers and Democrat talking heads try to beat his predictions into submission with endless nightmare predictions and scenarios. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear they were rooting for the country to fail so they could ‘get one over’ on Trump. Oh, wait…that’s exactly what they’re doing. Fortunately for the country, they’re consistently wrong and Trump is consistently right.
Take the economy. The Commerce Department finalized second-quarter GDP growth on Wednesday at 2.2 percent. The previous estimate was 1.5, and economists expected that number to hold. It didn’t. It got revised upward by seven-tenths of a point, which in a $30 trillion economy is not a rounding error. That’s serious money.
Meanwhile, the inflation data landed the same morning and moved the opposite direction. Headline PCE came in at 0.3 percent month over month against an expected 0.4, and 3.4 percent year over year against an expected 3.7. Core PCE was 0.2 monthly against 0.3, and 3.0 annually against 3.3. Every figure beat the forecast, and beat it on the favorable side.
WATCH:
NEW — INFLATION LOWER THAN EXPECTED, GROWTH HIGHER THAN EXPECTED!
"Better than expected"
"Lower than we thought"
"Excellent"
"This looks like it is lighter than expected."
"Less inflation than we thought."
"We're getting MORE GROWTH than we thought, and we're getting LESS… pic.twitter.com/146kbnYqUw
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 30, 2026
Put those together and you have the combination that wasn’t supposed to happen. For two years the consensus forecast from the doomsayers has been that tariffs would produce the worst of both worlds — prices pushed up by import costs while growth stalled under the weight of them. Stagflation was the word, deployed constantly and confidently. What actually happened was more growth than projected and less inflation than projected, simultaneously. Trump. Right. Again.
The engine underneath is consumer spending, which grew at a 3.8 percent annual pace after managing just 0.7 percent in the first quarter. That’s a genuine turn, and it matters more than the headline number because consumption is roughly 70 percent of American economic activity. People don’t spend like that when they’re bracing for layoffs. They spend like that when they think next year looks all right.
Now, to be fair, 3.4 percent inflation is still above where anyone wants it, and fuel prices remain higher than they should be. Nobody filling a tank anywhere in the country this week feels like that problem is solved. But economically speaking, the direction we’re headed is right and the trend is favorable.
The trajectory is the case, and it’s a strong one. Growth accelerating past forecasts. Core inflation at 3.0 and falling. Consumers confident enough to spend. Manufacturers adding shifts — PACCAR has put more than two thousand people to work since the auto tariffs took effect, a thousand of them in Denton, where the president will stand on Thursday.
Five weeks out, this is the ground Republicans should want to fight on. It’s concrete, it’s checkable, and the numbers arrived from a career staff at Commerce rather than a communications shop.
And they can thank President Trump for handing them some gravy talking points on the campaign trail.
