My trusty spreadsheet<\/a> looked at the Bureau of Economic Analysis\u2019 tally of business output growth for the states and found that California\u2019s GDP was up 2.4% for 2025.<\/p>\nThat was the 11th-best performance among the states and topped the 2% expansion of the national economy.<\/p>\n
California\u2019s outperformance seems odd when the White House\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d business thinking collides with California\u2019s global focus. California consumer confidence, for example, hit a five-year low last year.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump\u2019s second administration has featured some unorthodox economic tactics. Trade wars, fueled by steep tariffs and an immigration crackdown, have jolted businesses.<\/p>\n
The top state economies for GDP growth in 2025 were Massachusetts (3.3%), Kansas (2.9%) and South Dakota (2.9%).<\/p>\n
There were two decliners: the District of Columbia (off 2.4%) and Maryland (off 0.1%), both suffering from Trump\u2019s steep cuts to federal government staffing.<\/p>\n
As for California\u2019s key rivals, the Texas economy grew 2.4% last year, ranking 13th among the states. Florida was up 2.7%, ranking 8th.<\/p>\n
Contemplate that 2025\u2019s economy was significantly slower than the overall business pace of Trump\u2019s first presidency, which saw a major business upswing that was dulled by the pandemic\u2019s outbreak in 2020.<\/p>\n
Consider the swift GDP pace between 2017 and 2020, California\u2019s economy averaged 3.9% annual growth \u2013 No. 5 among the states vs. 2.5% nationally.<\/p>\n
Top performers were Idaho, averaging 5.8% GDP growth per year; Utah, at 5.4%; and Washington state, at 4.8%. There were three decliners: Hawaii (down 1%), Alaska (down 0.3%) and Louisiana (down 0.04%).<\/p>\n
The Texas economy grew at a 3.4% pace in Trump\u2019s first presidency, not the best, while Florida was up 3.3%, No. 11.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s economy, as measured by gross domestic product, did surprisingly well in the first year of the second…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[387,109770,7,9,8,383,100,13],"class_list":{"0":"post-276881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-business-columnists","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-california-headlines","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-economy","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}