New data from the Commerce Department reveals that the U.S. economy grew much slower than expected in the final three months of 2025, while core inflation surprisingly rose to kick off 2026, as reported by MS Now. This is a significant revision, and it really throws a wrench into the narrative we’ve been hearing about the economy.
Gross domestic product (GDP), which is our main measure of all the goods and services produced across the entire U.S. economy, only rose at an annual rate of 0.7% for the fourth quarter. If you remember, the original expectations for that period, covering October through December, were for a much healthier 2.5% growth. We then saw a preliminary tally come in at a disappointing 1.4% a month ago.
What’s even more concerning is what this means for the entire year. With this new information, we now know that the economy grew at just a 2.1% pace across all of 2025. That’s a noticeable drop from the 2.8% growth we saw in 2024. When you exclude the unique circumstances of the pandemic, 2025 actually represents the weakest economic growth the United States has experienced in nine years.
This new data comes despite a lot of confident predictions from Republican officials throughout last year
Republicans repeatedly insisted that good news was just around the corner, and Americans wouldn’t have to wait much longer for satisfying results. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, confidently told a national audience as recently as August that the U.S. economy was “really going to pick up in the fourth quarter” of 2025. Well, as we can clearly see now, it certainly did not pick up.
The White House hasn’t yet offered a persuasive explanation for why the economy seems to have worsened after the Republican administration returned to the Oval Office. On the contrary, we’ve heard some pretty optimistic takes from leading figures.
Vice President JD Vance recently celebrated what he called the “Trump boom” in the economy during a national television appearance. Just a week before that, Peter Navarro, who is a key White House voice on trade and economic policy, told a national audience that the U.S. economy was “perfect.”
It’s tough to reconcile those kinds of statements with the actual numbers we’re seeing now. The official data paints a very different picture than the one being described by some administration officials. In fact, if you look at the raw data, economic growth and job growth were actually significantly stronger during Joe Biden’s final year in office compared with the first year of President Trump’s second term.
This new information really makes you wonder about the disconnect between the official narrative and the economic reality on the ground.
Published: Mar 13, 2026 06:15 pm