EDITORIAL: Encouraging signs on growth

Critics snickered when President Donald Trump unveiled a spending blueprint earlier this year based on 4 percent growth. After years of feeble expansion under Barack Obama, the Keynesian consensus insisted that 2 percent was the “new normal.”

On Friday, however, the Commerce Department announced that the gross domestic product expanded at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter. That’s up from an anemic 1.2 percent pace in the first three months of 2017.

Healthy growth rates translate into increased prosperity, higher living standards and reduced government deficits.

“GDP is double from what it was in the first quarter,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re doing well. We’re doing really well.”

Mr. Trump in his first six months has had success slowing the advance of the regulatory state. His tax reform agenda — which congressional Republicans will likely address this fall — could also prove an economic stimulus.

Four percent growth remains an optimistic projection. But the president is at least making progress.