US economy contracts at 0.3% rate as Trump tariffs prompt import surge
Open the Editor’s Marking Free
Rulla Khalaf, the FT editor, chooses its preferred stories in this week’s news.
During the first quarter, the US economy, as the largest economy in the world, responded to Donald Trump’s commercial war in the first quarter.
The decline in GDP for the period was worse than the most recent forecasts of economists and compared to the size of 2.4% for the fourth quarter.
The chart has first mentioned since 2022 that the world’s largest economy’s GDP has decreased.
In the fall, the result of the urgency of US companies was mainly before buying goods from abroad Trump cleaning tariffsAccording to the US Census Bureau on Tuesday, which shows the deficit of trading products with a record high in March.
According to a post on his social network, Trump suggested that the numbers “have nothing to do with tariffs.”
He accused former President Jek Biden, he added:
The difference between import and export is an important factor in calculating GDP, which also measures internal consumption, investment and government costs.
Grigor Dakon, the chief economist, Ey-Parthenon, say that the “Resistance of the Order” of “GDP” companies “had GDP”.
But DACO touched upon the GDP figure of Wednesday as “unprecedented distortions”, which are unlikely to change the calculations of the Federal Reserve on the basis of the US economy.
Although the trade deficit dragged the total GDP index for the quarter, this was partially compensated by the shares spent on shares.
Stock futures went down and bond yields slightly increased to the data. The treasury yield of two years, which is moving on interest rates, has increased by 0.01 percentage points, reaching 3.66 percent.
There has been no significant change in data reduction, and traders still prices in the future market for about four cuts this year.
The first quarterly growth of the first quarterly growth on Tuesday has revised their assessments for three-quarters of quarterly growth, trade indicators have been published.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which produced the GDP figures on Wednesday, added that the decline in the first quarter also reflected the decline in government expenses.
With the approval of the reserves before the Tariffs of Trump tariffs, the Bureau highlighted the growth of “private inventory investments”.
It added that consumer expenses were also partly among the factors, but not completely, compensate for imports and the fall of state expenditures.
“The strong numbers of domestic demand are a shocking reminder of what a gray landing could be before cleaning tariffs,” said Esvar Prasad, Professor of Cornell University.
Trump’s trading war is expected to grow more slowly in the second half of this year, higher prices weigh on consumption.
Last week, the IMF said that US GDP will expand 1.8 percent this year, 2.7 percent from its January assessment. Many private sector predictors generally predict growth.