President Donald Trump sought in his first State of the Union address to sell Americans on the idea of a booming economy, falling prices, and soaring jobs, yet he faces a skeptical public with a much gloomier view. Barely 12 hours before his speech, in fact, The Conference Board, a business research group, released its latest consumer confidence report. It showed that overall confidence in the economy remains historically low, and is barely above the level it plunged to in the depths of the COVID recession. Other polling has yielded similar results: Only 39% of Americans approve of Trump's economic leadership, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey.

The U.S. economy economy expanded at a strong 4.3% annual rate from July through September as consumer spending, exports and government spending all grew. Tuesday's report from the Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product — the economy's total output of goods and services — up from its 3.8% growth rate in the April-June quarter. Analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet forecast growth of 3% in the period. However, inflation remains higher than the Federal Reserve would like. The Fed's favored inflation gauge — called the personal consumption expenditures index, or PCE — climbed to a 2.8% annual pace last quarter, up from 2.1% in the second quarter.