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To investors,

Anthony Pompliano

Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management

Financial markets have learned to listen when the President of the United States talks about asset prices or the economy. When he said to buy stocks earlier this year, it was a great time to buy stocks. When he said tariffs wouldn’t lead to empty shelves or the Great Depression, you should have gone long stocks immediately.

This makes sense because the leader of the free world, regardless of his political party, has immense power and influence over financial markets. Simply, he can make things happen.

But every once in awhile Trump says something about the economy that sounds downright outrageous. The latest example was a few days ago when he said GDP growth should be 20‑25% year‑over‑year. The exact quote was: “instead of a 4% GDP or 3% GDP, it should be able to be 20 or 25%. I don’t know why it can’t be.”

At first, this comment sounds ridiculous because the US has averaged 3.2% annual GDP growth since 1947. So the President is telling us he thinks that his economic policies can get us to a growth number that is 700% higher. Again, sounds ridiculous, right?

Maybe not. There is a possible path to significant GDP growth. It may be unlikely, but it is possible.

First, Michael Arouet highlights the real driver on how we could get to 20‑25% GDP numbers. Michael writes: “Hear me out, was the entire period since the Great Financial Crisis just an unsustainable artificial debt binge?”

Image: US Debt and US GDP between 1992 and 2024. US Debt in red and US GDP in green.

If that is true, the US economy could easily grow faster if we were willing to take on substantially more debt. That may sound like a crazy idea, but that is exactly what we have been doing for the last 25 years.

Image: Table representing countries' growth/shrinkage percentages for 2000, 2007, and 2024.

The United States’ debt‑to‑GDP has exploded from about 55% in the year 2000 to nearly 125% in 2024. We are addicted to debt. There is no other way to describe the situation.

But the Trump administration has somehow figured out a way to stimulate GDP growth upwards of 3.5%, while reducing the federal budget deficit by around $600 billion.

Kevin Hassett went on television last week and said:

“It’s looking like the deficit for this year will be $600 billion lower than it was last year. That really helps lower inflation. We’ve got the trade deficit cut in half from last year. All of these things are things that should continue to move us towards the Fed target of 2%.”

Now this doesn’t mean they are going to balance the budget. In fact, I went from being excited about a balanced budget earlier this year to very cynical about any President in our lifetime being able to balance a budget in light of the structural challenges. But reducing the deficit by $600 billion is still a great development.

So this brings us back to growing GDP at a substantially higher rate. The way you do this is ease monetary policy, encourage technology innovation like AI, and deregulate as much as possible. There will be trade‑offs to these decisions, but this is the blueprint for growing GDP much faster.

Take AI as one example. The explosion of innovation and investment from Silicon Valley has essentially saved the US economy. More than 60% of GDP growth is estimated to be from AI‑related investments. Couple that with the interest‑rate cuts, the return of QE, and a Trump‑friendly Fed Chairman for 2026…that should spell faster growth across the US economy.

We were promised an economic boom. It looks like we are going to get exactly that. Will it be 20‑25% annual GDP growth? Doubtful. But I’ll take 5‑7% growth any day of the week.

Hope everyone has a great start to their Monday. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

— Anthony Pompliano

Founder & CEO, Professional Capital Management