On Wednesday, the Atlanta Fed announced that their GDPNow model estimates Q2 2018 real GDP growth to be 4.5% year-over-year.

On June 27, the #GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth in Q2 2018 is 4.5% https://t.co/gUnb7280Ha pic.twitter.com/ggJZ6isakE — Atlanta Fed (@AtlantaFed) June 27, 2018

During the 2016 Presidential Campaign season, when then candidate Donald Trump pledged GDP growth north of 4%, many mainstream economists and pundits threw water on the idea, saying that it was simply impossible to achieve such growth rates in a globalized economy. CNN released an article just after President Trump’s victory in November 2016 entitled “Trump promises 4% growth. Economists say no way.” The American Enterprise Institute, an establishment-aligned conservative think-tank, released on article in September 2016 entitled “Trump wants 4% (or higher) US growth. Easy. Just massively increase immigration”.

Despite constant skepticism from both sides of the aisle about his lofty growth targets, President Trump has managed to increase the GDP growth rate by more than 100% while also pursuing mercantilistic trade policies and increasingly selective merit-based immigration policies.

On April 4th 2016, when few in the pundit-class thought that Donald Trump had a serious chance of becoming the Republican nominee, the Washington Post published an article entitled “There is math, there is fantasy math, and then there’s Donald Trump’s economic math”. In the article, its authors Jeff Guo and Jim Tankersley said “Such growth is, to put it mildly, inconceivable” when talking about then-candidate Trump’s GDP growth targets.

TRENDING: OUTRAGEOUS! Ohio State University President Sends Ignorant Text Message to Students Following Breonna Taylor Decision -- And a Crazy-Ass Video!

Almost every single aspiration and goal that President Trump has proposed has been met with immediate skepticism and criticism from the media, but few none of Trump’s ideas were met with more dismissive laughs from the media than his proposed economic policies. Nonetheless, America’s economic standing in the world is stronger than ever.