Why revised economic data is so important

On Friday, we’ll learn how the economy has been doing under President Trump . . . and under former President Obama . . . and also under former presidents George W. Bush , Bill Clinton , George H.W. Bush and so on.

That’s my long way of saying the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on Friday is going to correct — “revise” is the polite word — the economic data that goes into the nation’s gross domestic product all the way back to 1928, when Herbert Clark Hoover had the misfortune of being elected president.

The revisions tend to get smaller as time goes on. But the more recent ones could be very interesting.

The media will be all over the announcement of the GDP for the second quarter. It’s likely to show excellent growth.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is guessing that Washington will report an annualized GDP expansion of around 4.5 percent.

The New York Fed thinks it will be a still-good 3 percent or so.

Trump and his people — including daughter Ivanka — are already crowing about 4 percent growth.

Trump’s critics, of course, will see things differently.

They will point out that 1) the growth was achieved only by cutting taxes, a move that could hurt the nation’s long-term debt situation, 2) that economic spurts like this have occurred before only to peter out, and 3) economic growth was helped by all the hush money the president paid out to his paramours.

No. 3 is a joke — kinda. My point is that the critics will find some way to disparage the fact that the economy is doing pretty well.

Trump haters are worried that if Americans believe the economic growth is sustainable, the president and the Republicans will do well in the November mid-terms.

And the critics are right to worry about that.

Politics aside, people should really pay attention to the revisions coming out Friday. Why? For one thing, the corrections that go back to the Obama era might explain why Trump was able to win the White House with his jobs and economy message.

Another reason is this: If the BEA revises upward the economic growth in the first quarter of 2018, the second quarter might not look as good as the Republicans are hoping.

This is only a game of fiddling with the numbers, but the BEA can move growth forward from the second quarter into the first quarter, when the GDP expanded at an annualized rate of only 2 percent.

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