Is Trump’s forecast of 15% economic growth even possible?

Yahoo Finance Video

Fri, February 13, 2026 at 4:30 AM GMT+9

President Trump believes the US economy could grow by as much as 15% under a Federal Reserve led by his nominee for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh. B. Riley Wealth chief market strategist Art Hogan and Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Ines Ferré react to the administration’s latest economic outlook.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Opening Bid.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

All right, I’m sure you saw the President Trump’s comments recently. Uh, I believe they were to Larry Cudlo in a in an interview that the economy, he thinks the economy could grow 15%. Unclear if he was joking around, but how should investors view a comment like that? Is that from from where you sit, is that even possible?

00:14 Art

Uh, that would be like saying at the beginning of the season, the Jets are going to win the Super Bowl. Probably not going to happen, right?

00:23 Speaker A

Totally impossible.

00:23 Art

Right. So I think when you take a step back and say, you know, did he confuse um, the GDP growth with something um, something else that he was thinking about that might have a 15 handle? Perhaps. I think that if you look at over the course of the last uh hundred years, the only time we had a GDP of 15% was when we were hyper spending on World War II. Other than that, we kind of sit in a world where it’s somewhere between two and 3% and that world actually works. That drives really good earnings.

00:54 Art

So, if we can be north of mean, which is 1.8% GDP growth, which we have been for the last three years, have something, you know, between two and a half and 3%, that’s going to drive significant earnings. Taking a number like 15 is just a hyperbolic way of getting clicks, I think.

01:10 Speaker A

Art, you were getting some FTWs by the producers, uh the Alfies producers in our Slack channel. That is for the win because I was going to try to stump you too, uh on when the economy last grew 15%. Art, you nailed it.

01:23 Speaker A

Uh, show it. Fire it up there team. There we go. Um, you pointed it out Art, but also too here as well coming out of the uh what, the COVID pandemic. So, uh it has happened before Ines, maybe we’re going back there because everybody’s spending billions to build AI data centers.

01:44 Ines

Well, who knows if it’s 15% really, but uh, look, a lot of Wall Street uh many Wall Street strategists are talking about a real acceleration especially going into the second half of this year. And if you take a look also at the one big beautiful bill, that’s going to be a tax incentive for companies. Companies will be able to spend more.

02:08 Ines

I mean as long as the stock market can stay near all-time highs, that’ll be good for tax receipts. It it just is a matter of everything going in line. And as Art mentioned, you are seeing those uh parts of the economy or the sectors that are uh in acceleration mode, energy, uh consumer staples even, uh industrials, all of these that that talk to the thesis of a strong economy or a growing economy.

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