Let’s set aside the fact that Trump pledged on the campaign trail that the economy would grow at 4 percent annually on his watch. That 3 percent figure is actually interesting in the context of America’s recent economic history.

Analyst Daniel Clifton pointed out on Twitter that, since the mid-1960s, the annual GDP growth in real dollars — that is, dollars adjusted for inflation — rose fairly consistently at a 3.1 percent clip. When the Great Recession hit, though, that stopped. He provided a graph that looked something like this.

The gap between where the blue line would have projected the economy would be in 2016 vs. where it was is about 2.2 trillion in 2009 dollars, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

More important than the big dip in 2009, though, is that the rate of recovery from that point forward wasn’t at the 3.1 percent pace. If we used a dotted line to project 3.1 percent annual growth from 2009 forward, it looks like this.

We can zoom in a bit to show the difference. Since 2009, the economy has grown not at a consistent 3.1 percent uptick, but, instead, at a 2.2 percent annual rate. Still consistent, just lower.

Clifton’s assessment? If GDP growth does start improving at a 3.1 percent rate again, “bad policy will be blamed” for the red line on the third graph above.

Trump’s assurance that the economy would get to that point is itself a question mark. Yes, GDP data released this week showed a 3 percent growth rate for the second quarter. But in the first quarter, it was under 2 percent. The economy grew at least 3 percent in one quarter during six of Barack Obama’s eight years in office — but he never hit that 3 percent growth rate annually.