Chapman U forecast: slow but better growth in ‘26
Despite President Donald Trump’s zigzags on tariffs, taxes and regulations, the U.S. economy still should hit 2% growth in 2026, up from an estimated 1.8% this year.
That’s according to the forecast given Thursday by Chapman University President Emeritus Jim Doti before 300 local community and business leaders at the school’s Musco Center for the Arts, plus 1,500 live online. It’s worth taking their forecasts seriously. Of 48 real GDP forecasts issued for 2025 by researchers last year, Chapman’s 1.8% forecast was one of only two spot-on predictions.
The same day as Chapman’s forecast this year, Trump asked on Truth Social, “When will I get credit for having created, with No Inflation, perhaps the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country?”
One plausible answer: When the results actually match his inflated rhetoric.
His growth numbers are not as high as the 2.9% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024, President Biden’s last two years. On affordability — inflation — the Consumer Price Index has risen under Trump in 2025 from a 2.7% annual rate in Q1 to an estimated 3.1% in Q4, with a 3.2% average forecast for 2026. That’s what people are feeling and it’s ultimately a tax on all Americans, felt most profoundly by the poor and the middle class.
Yes, Trump has cut taxes and regulations. But Doti brought up a key concern of ours that is weighing on the economy: the cost of the tariffs. Doti points out tariffs really are taxes and have “other effects on the economy” because they “keep changing. We’re being whipsawed on this.”
The Chapman Forecast used estimates from Yale University, revised every two weeks to reflect Trump’s latest gyrations. The Nov. 17 estimate pegged the tariff hit to the economy in 2025 at 0.4%. Put another way, without the tariffs, the 1.8% growth rate might have been 2.2%.
Trump’s jobs record also is not the “greatest,” with the unemployment rate rising from 4.1% in Q1 in 2025 to an estimated 4.5% in Q4, and forecast to rise further to 4.8% in Q3 of 2026. That bodes ill for Republican fortunes in the November 2026 election.
Turning to California, Doti painted a dismal picture of a state plagued by high taxes and weighed down by government regulations.
From 2022-25, jobs growth was just 2%, less than half the national 4.4% rate. It was 1.6% in Orange County, 1.8% in Los Angeles County and a more robust 3.3% in the Inland Empire. On home affordability, California housing prices were 68% higher than the national average in 2012, but have soared to a forecast 105% higher in 2026.
Doti displayed a branching chart of the net population outflow of 1 million Californians from 2021-23, half to five states with no or low state income taxes: Texas, Florida, Idaho, Nevada and Arizona. Can anyone blame Californians for seeking relief elsewhere?
At least America isn’t in a recession. But the past year has shown high taxes, including tariff-taxes, slam the economy at all levels.
If Trump wants to be credited for the economy he thinks he has, he should ditch his tax hikes, slash government spending and prioritize deregulation above all else. He cannot achieve affordability by raising taxes on imports (which hurts businesses and consumers alike) and at the same time going on wild spending sprees (with $1 trillion deficits now the norm).
Until then, Americans will continue to pay more than they should while the president pretends rising prices are a “Democrat hoax.”