Musk, Lutnick Play With Fire When It Comes to GDP
Howard Lutnick, chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, left, and Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla, during a campaign event for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden in New York on Oct. 27.
Photographer: Adam Gray/BloombergWhen two of US President Donald Trump’s top lieutenants issued a call to remove government spending from the nation’s most-watched gauge of economic growth, they waded into an old and fierce debate that goes far beyond statistics.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said he would “separate” out public spending from the headline GDP growth number. Governments had “messed with” GDP data in the past, he said in an interview last Sunday, and an overhaul was needed to strip out unproductive government outlays. Days earlier, Elon Musk said if that isn’t done, “you can scale GDP artificially high by spending money on things that don’t make people’s lives better.”