President Trump’s top economic adviser claimed Sunday that economic growth this year could clock in north of an explosive 6%, close to triple the expectations of most mainstream forecasts.
White House Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett theorized that the recent capital-spending surge in March, which appears to be driven in part by an artificial intelligence-related investment bonanza from corporations, will turbocharge growth.
“I think we really could be looking at numbers north of 4, north of 5, north of even 6 because there’s so much capital stock growth right now,” Hassett told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” when asked about economic growth expectations for 2026.
“Once we turn those factories on, you’re going to see really growth unlike anything we have seen before.”
While the US economy has recently enjoyed considerably faster growth than most of its developed-nation peers, it’s been nowhere near 6% gross domestic product growth.
The last time the US came close to that figure was in 2021, when the pandemic rebound propelled the economy to 5.7% annual GDP growth, a feat that was then met with an inflationary hangover.
Before that, the US hadn’t topped 6% annual GDP growth since 1984.
GDP growth for the first quarter of 2026 clocked in at 2%, which topped the rest of the Group of Seven bloc of nations.
But to get to 6%, the US economy would need to grow at just under roughly 7.5% or higher during the next three quarters.
Hassett argued, “Remember that the 2 percent number that you saw for GDP growth, the reason why it was 2 percent and not 4 or 5 percent was that we imported a record number of capital goods because we’re building all these factories.”
He credited the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which largely renewed most of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, for the capital-investment boom.
Many reputable forecasts for US growth in 2026 peg it at between about 2.2% and 2.6%, which is roughly where it has been over the past couple of years.
Critics have said the US is being dragged down partly by business volatility from the tariffs during Trump’s first year in office.
More recently, the US has been dealing with economic fallout from surging oil prices thanks to Iran wreaking havoc on the Strait of Hormuz, where over a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil once flowed annually.
Against that backdrop, inflation came in at 3.5% for the year ending in March on the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric.
That’s considerably higher than the Fed’s longstanding 2% inflation goal.
Still, hiring surged to the highest levels since 2024 in March, according to a recent government survey.
