Why do pessimistic pundits keep getting Trump’s economy so wrong?

Even more surprising than the blockbuster 4.3% economic growth rate recorded in the third quarter of 2025 was the fact that some 90% of the nation’s professional economists got it all wrong.

These economic whiz-kids’ faulty forecast comes on the heels of their predictions last week that inflation was going to be above 3%. Instead, the actual number was 2.7%.

Welcome to the gang that can’t shoot straight.

Maybe it’s time for this cadre of Keynesian economists to send their PhDs back to the Ivy League schools they got them from, and just admit they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Their overly glum predictions were the pattern throughout President Donald Trump’s first term, and now during Trump 2.0.

At the start of both of Trump’s terms, even Nobel prize-winning economists like Paul Krugman — long the economic sage at The New York Times — predicted a stock market crash and even perhaps a second Great Depression with Trump in the Oval Office.

Instead, in the first term the economy boomed.

You’d think by now they’d have learned their lesson.

But this group-think pessimism was widespread this time last year as well, after Trump won election a second time. Yet the economy is surging forward again.

Part of the problem is that these economists want it to be so.

They root against America when Trump is president, in part because when his policies work, they clash with their big-government orthodoxy.

No one likes to admit they’re wrong — especially when it comes to their core beliefs.

Many of the economists said Trump’s tariffs would cause a wildfire of inflation.

It’s true that tariffs on particular items like coffee and beef caused those prices to rise.

But other products fell in price — including gas at the pump, airline tickets, cellphones and eggs.

One reason the tariff taxes didn’t cause overall inflation is that the rest of the pro-growth Trump agenda — tax cuts, deregulation, drill-baby-drill gas production, and DOGE budget savings — reduced inflationary pressures.

What’s undeniable is that regardless of what the polls may say, the economy is starting to fire on all cylinders.

The GDP report shows that despite worries about “affordability,” consumers are spending at a blowout pace.

More good news: The private economy this quarter grew about five times faster than the government sector.

That reverses the course of much of the Biden term, when make-work government jobs grew faster than private jobs.

Stocks are at a record high and the average 401(k) plan is up by nearly $21,000 this year.

That’s thanks to the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the Dow Jones at or near record highs.

Incomes have outpaced inflation this year by about $1,200 per household. Hispanic and Asian workers are seeing even faster gains.

There are 7 million job openings for those who have the necessary skills.

Trump just announced that in his first year in office, his administration has repealed more than 100 extraneous and costly regulations for every new rule put in place.

Our oil and gas output is higher than at any time in American history.

Trump says he has international agreements to bring $8 trillion more capital into the United States — and while that sounds like an exaggeration, even if he’s off by 90% that’s still a lot of investment money flowing to these shores.

All this has happened while the economies in the rest of the developed world, especially Britain and Europe, are flatlined and China’s growth is slowing.

The lesson the gang of doomsdayers in the economics profession should take from all this is simple: Don’t bet against the wonders of the American economic engine of growth.

Especially not when we have a pro-business president who puts America first.

Have they finally learned to stop betting against Trump?

Probably not.

Stephen Moore, a former Trump economic advisor, is the co-founder of Unleash Prosperity. His latest book is “The Trump Economic Miracle.”