US growth figures won’t get any better than they are now for Trump | Larry Elliott

Expect the US economy to slow in 2019 as tariffs start to bite and higher interest rates take effect

For once there can be no dispute about what Donald Trump says. The president has been boasting for months about how well the economy is doing and the latest set of official figures show that the president is absolutely right. The US is booming.

It was not just that headline growth - American GDP was expanding at an annualised rate of 4.1% in the second quarter - that was strong. All the important components of growth were up too: consumer spending by 4%, business investment by 7.3%, exports by 9.3%, federal government spending by 5.3%.