... one thing has been consistent since the early 1990s: America has grown faster than other big rich countries, and it has rebounded more strongly from bumps along the way. The faulty diagnosis of the competitiveness council back in 1992 should stand as a corrective for those now peddling gloom. America’s growth since then has been best-in-class, and its strengths today give grounds for optimism about the country’s economic power and potential. That America’s share of global gdp in ppp terms has decreased is less a comment on its own trajectory than on the growth spurts of the two most populous countries, China and India. China’s output per person remains less than a third of America’s; India’s is smaller still.

Even more striking is how America has outperformed its peers among the mature economies. In 1990 America accounted for about two-fifths of the overall gdp of the g7 group of advanced countries; today it is up to about half (see chart). On a per-person basis, American economic output is now about 40% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—roughly twice as large as the gaps between them in 1990. Average wages in America’s poorest state, Mississippi, are higher than the averages in Britain, Canada and Germany.

And America’s outperformance has accelerated recently. Since the start of 2020, just before the covid-19 pandemic, America’s real growth has been 10%, three times the average for the rest of the g7 countries. Among the g20 group, which includes large emerging markets, America is the only one whose output and employment are above pre-pandemic expectations, according to the International Monetary Fund...

In the history of modern economics America’s three-decade outperformance is remarkable. Can it continue? Throughout this report we will consider reasons for pessimism, from poisonous politics to fiscal frailties. Set against these is a relentless dynamism, the essential characteristic of the American economy and the ultimate force propelling it forward.