Instead, the U.S. economy reflects the performance of private individuals and businesses.

Heather Long of the Washington Post posted this chart on X:

This chart is very simple, and everything about it is correct. It relays annual real GDP growth rates from the Bureau of Economic Analysis for each year going back to 2016, with the columns colored by which party held the White House.

Even the title, “U.S. economic growth was strong under Biden,” is correct. Growth between 2.5 and 3 percent is strong by the standard of countries with highly developed economies in the 21st century.

But the much more interesting finding from this chart is not that growth was strong under Biden. It’s that it was basically the same under Trump, with the pandemic recession interrupting and throwing off 2020 and 2021.

The pandemic recession was extremely short — two months, from March to April 2020, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research — and extremely severe, with the unemployment rate spiking higher than at any point since the Great Depression. That means it tanked annual GDP growth in 2020, the year it occurred, and led to catch-up growth in 2021, the year after.

Trump and Biden each had three non-pandemic-affected years in office, and the growth rates in those years were nearly identical: 2.5 percent, 3.0 percent, and 2.6 percent for Trump, and 2.5 percent, 2.9 percent, and 2.8 percent for Biden. Trump had the best single year of the six, and Biden had a slightly better average in his three than Trump did in his, so they can both brag about something if they want to.

The takeaway here ought to be that, barring the pandemic recession, the U.S. economy since 2017 has been growing at a consistently healthy annual rate despite having been governed by two very different presidents. That’s a really good thing! You don’t want to live in a country where the overall rate of economic growth changes depending on who the president is.

You do want to live in a country where the overall rate of economic growth stays consistent as people do productive things to meet the needs and wants of other people. They should not have to think much about which party controls the White House as they do that. And sure enough, for the vast majority of people in the U.S., the occupant of the White House simply is not a pressing concern in their day-to-day.

That means we don’t have to color in the columns on charts of economic growth based on which party holds the presidency. It’s about as meaningful to GDP growth as which team won the Super Bowl. Despite politicians’ best efforts to screw it up, the U.S. economy operates largely without any regard to party control in Washington, instead reflecting the performance of private individuals and businesses. And thank goodness for that — have you seen our past few presidents?