Trump is badly missing his own economic targets

Trump and his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, had an ambitious plan to boost growth and slash deficits. Try to guess what happened.

One way to evaluate President Trump’s stewardship of the economy is to use his own benchmarks. And by those standards, Trump may never accomplish the mission he set for himself.

When Trump took office in 2025, his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, laid out a “3-3-3 plan” for rejuvenating the economy. The three threes stood for:

• Pushing real GDP growth to 3%

• Cutting the annual federal deficit to 3% of GDP

• Pumping an additional 3 million barrels of oil per day

Those were stretch goals nobody expected Trump and Bessent to hit any time soon. But progress toward those goals would be an accomplishment in itself. Stronger growth would make more Americans better off and bring in more tax revenue to help lower the annual deficits in the federal budget. More oil production would mean lower energy prices and a stronger hand for the United States in global energy markets.

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A year and a half into Trump’s term, those targets seem further out of reach than ever. And Trump’s own policies are partly to blame. Let’s take them one at a time.

GDP growth. During Joe Biden’s last year in office, 2024, real GDP growth adjusted for inflation was 2.4%. GDP growth fell to 2% in 2025 and the latest data shows the economy growing at just 1.5% on an annualized basis. Growth has gotten weaker under Trump, not stronger.

Deficits. Bad news here, too. In Biden’s last year, the annual deficit was 6.2% of GDP. That dropped to 5.8% of GDP in Trump’s first year, but the Congressional Budget Office estimates it will be back to 6.2% in 2026. CBO expects that number to drift higher, indefinitely.