US Commerce Secretary wants to remove government spending from GDP

Government Spending Could Be Excluded From GDP Data, Commerce Secretary Says

The Trump administration could exclude government spending from future gross domestic product (GDP) reports, says Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent,” he said. For example, the U.S. government purchasing a tan…

Was This Kuznets Idea "Stupid"?

On his blog yesterday, Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw stated that the idea of excluding government spending from GDP is “amazingly stupid.” Unfortunately, he didn’t say why. It would be nice to know why.

Economic growth is slowing — so Trump wants to redefine “economic growth”

The Trump administration doesn’t like the latest data on GDP growth. So Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick want to change how GDP is measured, to remove government production from the metric.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick Wants to Strip Public Spending from GDP Tally. Why It Makes No Sense.

US Economic Decline Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

A focus on GDP and national accounts gives a misleading picture of US economic power. In the age of globalization, production can be based in countries like China while most of the profits flow back to American firms, reinforcing US economic hegemony.

Sudden changes in statistics suggest manipulation, and this could also apply to the US Secretary of Commerce's announcement that in the future government spending on GDP will no longer be taken into account statistically.