<\/p>\n
Imports surge ahead of Trump tariffs, dragging GDP into first decline in three years.<\/p>\n
The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.2% annual pace from January through March, the first drop in three years, as President Donald Trump\u2019s trade wars disrupted business, the government said in a slight upgrade of its initial estimate.<\/p>\n
First-quarter growth was brought down by a surge in imports as companies in the United States hurried to bring in foreign goods before the president imposed massive import taxes.<\/p>\n
The January\u2013March drop in gross domestic product \u2014 the nation\u2019s output of goods and services \u2014 reversed a 2.4% gain in the fourth quarter of 2024. Imports grew at a 42.6% pace, the fastest since the third quarter of 2020, and shaved more than five percentage points off GDP growth. Consumer spending also slowed sharply.<\/p>\n
Federal government spending fell at a 4.6% annual pace, the biggest drop in three years.<\/p>\n
Trade deficits reduce GDP. But that\u2019s mainly a matter of mathematics. GDP is supposed to count only what\u2019s produced domestically. So imports \u2014 which the government counts as consumer spending in the GDP report when you buy, say, Costa Rican coffee \u2014 have to be subtracted out to keep them from artificially inflating domestic production.<\/p>\n
The first-quarter import surge likely won\u2019t be repeated in the April\u2013June quarter and therefore shouldn\u2019t weigh on GDP.<\/p>\n
From January through March, business investment surged 24.4%. An increase in inventories \u2014 as businesses stocked up ahead of the tariffs \u2014 added more than 2.6 percentage points to first-quarter GDP growth.<\/p>\n
A category within the GDP data that measures the economy\u2019s underlying strength rose at a 2.5% annual rate from January through March, down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 but still solid. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.<\/p>\n
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Imports surge ahead of Trump tariffs, dragging GDP into first decline in three years. The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.2% annual pace from January through March, the first drop in three years, as President Donald Trump\u2019s trade wars disrupted business, the government said in a slight upgrade of its initial estimate. First-quarter growth was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bez-rubriki"],"featured_image_src":{"landsacpe":["https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/US-Senate-4-1024x445.jpg",1024,445,true],"list":["https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/US-Senate-4-463x348.jpg",463,348,true],"medium":["https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/US-Senate-4-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"full":["https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/US-Senate-4.jpg",1024,683,false]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4173,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions\/4173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/relinvestmentsgroup.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}