America Second

As Donald Trump has embarked on his quest to put America first again, the United States surprisingly came in second in terms of one major economic indicator: for the first time since the financial crisis, the U.S. economy failed to outgrow the Eurozone. While the real gross domestic product of the Eurozone grew by 1.7 percent in 2016, U.S. GDP growth dropped from 2.6 percent in 2015 to 1.6 percent in the past 12 months.

During his campaign, Trump said his goal was to push economic growth to 4 percent – a goal that most economists deemed unrealistic at the time. Ironically, Trump’s aversion against immigration may ultimately hurt his chances of reaching his goal. With unemployment currently standing below 5 percent, the U.S. labor market is near capacity. Whenever that is the case, the economy can’t expand much more, economists say. Maybe those visas for highly-skilled immigrants aren’t such a bad idea after all.