Ahead of big GDP report, Trump says US has 'best financial numbers on the planet'

With the release of second-quarter growth numbers just three days away, President Donald Trump is enthusiastic about growth, to say the least.

While not mentioning the upcoming gross domestic product report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Trump indicated in a tweet Tuesday that the economy is powering along.

Economists expect GDP to have grown 3.8 percent in the second quarter, after a 2 percent increase for the first three months of the year and a 2.3 percent gain for all of 2017.

If the FactSet estimate is correct, that would be the fastest growth since the third quarter of 2014, when GDP rose 5.2 percent. The Trump administration has set at least 3 percent growth as a target, a number the U.S. economy has not hit since the Great Recession for a full calendar year.

CNBC's Rapid Update tracker of economic forecasts projects GDP to rise 4.2 percent in the quarter, the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow is putting the number at 4.5 percent and the New York Fed's Nowcast is at a more subdued 2.7 percent.

The Trump tweet comes after Fox Business Network reported that the president has been telling associates that he sees the number around 4.8 percent.

Trump caused a stir in June when he tweeted about an hour before the monthly jobs report release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He said he was "looking forward" to the May report, which showed 223,000 new jobs, ahead of the 188,000. The number was later revised even higher, to 244,000.

Shortly after the economic tweet Tuesday, he sent another message that repeated his campaign slogan.

Trump's top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said during last week's Delivering Alpha conference that the economy could grow ahead of 4 percent for "a quarter or two" before cooling off.

Source: CNBC

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