Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the U.S. economy is right where the Trump administration wants it: zeroing in on sustained 3 percent growth.
“I think the economy is doing fabulous,” he told Fox Business Network in an interview that aired Monday.
“Our objective is to create economic growth,” he said. “When we got here, everybody told us why the economy couldn’t grow at better than 2 percent. We said our objective is sustained 3 percent GDP or higher. We’ve had several quarters of that, and we are well on our way to sustained growth.”
.@stevenmnuchin1: “I think the economy is doing fabulous… We are well on our way to sustained growth.” https://t.co/4OfC5Qi7oU pic.twitter.com/oV9n5zyy97
— FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) April 30, 2018
Mnuchin and other top U.S. official are in China this week for talks on trade. The Trump administration has threatened tariffs on as much as $150 billion worth of Chinese goods to punish China for its failure to respect U.S. intellectual property rights.
Mnuchin said increasing the cost of imports in a way that hurts U.S. consumers is “not a worry of mine,” a possible sign he thinks the U.S. and China can find a way to deescalate the threat of a trade war.
“I’m cautiously optimistic about the meetings,” he said. “I don’t really want to predict what’s going to happen and what’s not going to happen.
