President Joe Biden acknowledged Tuesday that there may be a “slight recession” looming, saying the U.S. economy may “move down slightly.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Biden in an interview if “the American people should prepare for a recession,” given the rising gas prices and predictions from JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who said in August there are economic “storm clouds” on the horizon.
“I don’t think there will be a recession, and if there is, it’ll be a slight recession, that is, we’ll move down slightly,” Biden told Tapper.
The president has repeatedly said he doesn’t think there will be a recession, despite there being two consecutive months of negative GDP growth over the summer, which meets the colloquial definition of a “recession.”
The White House has argued that the months of negative growth did not meet the “technical definition” of a recession, which, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, is a “significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”
“The employment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history. It’s in the 3.6 [percent] area. We still find ourselves, the people, investing,” Biden said in July.
“My hope is we go from this rapid growth to a steady growth. And so, we’ll see some coming down. But I don’t think we’re going to – God willing – I don’t think we’re going to see a recession,” he added.
Biden spoke at length about foreign policy, specifically the Russian war on Ukraine. He also answered a question on running for a second term, saying he believes he “can beat Donald Trump again” and will go into the process of making his official 2024 campaign announcement after the midterms.
Biden said he has “no intention of meeting” Vladimir Putin at the upcoming G20 meeting and that the Russian president has committed “war crimes.” Biden would be willing to meet Putin, however, if he initiates the conversation and wants to speak about U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner, who has been detained by Russia for months. (RELATED: ‘Armageddon’: Biden Compares Nuclear Tensions With Putin To Cuban Missile Crisis)
He also appeared to backtrack on a comment he made comparing the current Russia-U.S. tensions to the Cuban Missile Crisis, saying that he doesn’t “think” Putin “will use a nuclear weapon,” but that it’s “very irresponsible” for him to talk about it.
Biden said Thursday that he thinks Putin is “not joking” about deploying nuclear weapons amid the war on Ukraine and that doing so would result in “armageddon.”