WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden said on Wednesday he did not believe the U.S. economy will fall into recession either this year or next year, his most confident prediction on the fate of an economy that is still rattled by fears of a downturn.
Asked in an interview on the PBS NewsHour program whether he thought there would be a recession this year, Biden responded: “No, or next year. From the moment I got elected, how many of the experts are saying within the next six months there’s gonna be recession?”
Economists for months have been warning of a possible recession as the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates in order to tame decades-high inflation.
Biden himself has said a recession was possible, and earlier this week he told reporters that the risk was very low.
On the whole, economic data in recent months has moved in the president’s favor, particularly after inflation spiked to a 40-year high last summer and government reports showed the U.S. economy could be heading into a recession.
Strong job numbers last week, which occurred despite layoffs in the technology sector as well as in interest-rate-sensitive sectors like housing and finance, poured cold water on market expectations that the U.S. central bank was close to pausing its monetary policy tightening cycle.
(Reporting by Eric Beech and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Leslie Adler)