Kit Lowe

Former WSJ journo Jon Hilsenrath responds on LinkedIn ATTENTION MR. BESSENT, 2.0: YOU ARE COMING UP SHORT ON YOUR OWN '3-3-3' GOALS Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been attacking financial journalists on Twitter [X] this morning. It's petty, but let's judge a man not by what he says. Let's judge him on what he accomplishes. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Bessent laid out a '3-3-3' economic agenda for his prospective administration. This was a promise to achieve annual economic growth of 3%, reduce the federal budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product, and increase daily output of oil by 3 million barrels per day. President Trump's economic co-pilot is failing on every count: -- Growth in economic output as measured by real gross domestic product slowed to a 1.95% annualized rate during President Trump's first 18 months in office. That's a slower growth rate than the average 3.2% rate when Biden was in office, though the Biden rate was bolstered by a post-Covid pandemic recovery. The Bessent 1.95% growth rate is a touch slower than the 2.0% growth rate during Obama's eight year term in office. -- The budget deficit is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be 5.8% in the fiscal year that ends in September, nearly double the Treasury Secretary's promised rate. In order to reach 3% of GDP, the budget deficit would need to be nearly a trillion dollars smaller. Instead, it will rise next year, in part because of the cost of funding the war in the Persian Gulf. I see little evidence that the present administration, or anyone in Washington for that matter, has a credible plan to reduce the red ink that's spilling forth like a geyser from Washington on a daily basis. -- Domestic oil production averaged 13.71 million barrels daily in May, up 0.57 million from 13.14 million in January 2025. Again, short of the goal. Implicit in the promise on oil production was a promise that energy costs would ease. They have not. On one count that matters to many Americans, the economy is delivering a number with a "3" in it: The inflation rate was 3.7% higher in June that it was a year earlier, as measured by the Federal Reserve's preferred personal consumption expenditure price index. I have no desire to get political, but when a politician attacks honest people who I know and respect, that bugs me. It's petty, and meant purely as distraction.