The nation’s economy accelerated last quarter at a strong 2.8% annual pace, with consumers and businesses helping drive growth despite the pressure of continually high interest rates.

Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — picked up in the April-June quarter after growing at a 1.4% pace in the January-March period. Economists had expected a weaker 1.9% annual pace of growth.

The GDP report also showed that inflation continues to ease, while still remaining above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. The central bank’s favored inflation gauge rose at a 2.6% annual rate last quarter, down from 3.4% in the first quarter of the year.

“The Fed will be reassured” by Thursday’s GDP report, said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. “With inflation trending lower … the Fed thinks that it’s getting close to the time to cut interest rates.”

Massive run of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ reprints planned

Former President Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate has led to a surge in sales for “Hillbilly Elegy,” his best-selling memoir that came out in 2016.

A spokesperson for HarperCollins said that more than 650,000 copies have been sold since Trump’s announcement on July 15. The total includes physical books, audio books and e-books.

“We are printing hundreds of thousands of copies to fill the demand at our retail partners,” the publisher announced Thursday.

Vance’s book already had sold more than 3 million copies before Trump chose him for the Republican ticket. “Hillbilly Elegy,” which Ron Howard adapted into a feature film released in 2020, tells of Vance’s childhood in Ohio and his family’s roots in rural Kentucky.