Wall Street banks warn that President-elect Donald Trump might not turn the U.S. economy into the robust and thriving American powerhouse that has been promised – at least not right away.

While Trump is promising to increase U.S. gross domestic profit to 5 percent to 6 percent from its current 2 percent level, Wall Street banks are forecasting that, at least in its first year, a Trump White House will fall short of its goal, the New York Post reported.

“JPMorgan Chase is predicting a 1.9 percent growth rate next year. Others are a bit more bullish: Wells Fargo predicts 2.1 percent growth and Goldman Sachs says it will grow at about 2.25 percent,” the Post reported.

Goldman, Bank of America, UBS and Credit Suisse all predict the S&P 500 will end the year at about 2,300 — only 2.4 percent higher than its 2016 close and well below the 9.5 percent gain in 2016 and the 7 percent average gain.

“This American economic expansion has been like a healthy tortoise, ambling slowly but steadily down the road,” wrote David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management. “There are signs the tortoise may pick up the pace in 2017.”

Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland, tells Newsmax TV that although Trump is much smarter than Barack Obama, it will take some time to undo all of the regulatory damage the outgoing command-in-chief has imposed on America during the last eight years.

"I have no doubt that Mr. Trump's a heck of a lot smarter than Barack Obama but Barack Obama had eight years to do this damage so it's going to take a lot of time to undo it," Morici told Bill Tucker on "The Steve Malzberg Show." "Executive orders can generally be reversed but not all,"  said Morici, who is also a Newsmax Finance Insider. 

As for the U.S. economy itself, Morici predicts a slow grind. “This is not Ronald Reagan's economy. Cutting taxes is going to be difficult because we are much more constrained thanks to the recent years of slow growth," Morici told Miranda Khan on "Newsmax Prime."

“2017 is going to be much like 2016. We're going to have slow economic growth because it's going to take time for the Republicans to put their program in place and it's going to take time to do things like unwind Obamacare. My feeling is the year where it hits the road where we find that if Donald Trump is successful is 2018. It's going to take most of next year to get us programmed in place. I'm optimistic that he can."
 

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