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The US economy hired by 0.3 percent annualized during the first quarter, since companies in the world’s largest economy responded to Donald Trump’s trade war has been hurrying to import goods.
The fall in GDP reading, the first since 2022, was worse than the forecasts of economists and compared with the 2.4 percent increase for the fourth quarter.
It was largely the result of the hurry of companies to buy goods abroad before the radical tariffs of the president of the United States, with imports that increased at an annualized rate or 41 percent.
Many analysts argued that the main GDP number was mainly reduced by an extraordinary increase in the United States trade deficit, instead of reflecting underlying trends.
The calculation used for Wednesday’s figure reaches GDP by subtracting imports of total expenditure, including domestic consumption, investment and exports.
Morgan Stanley economists said that the increase in imports, ultimately, contributes, consumption and investment, positive factors to calculate GDP that were not completely reflected in Wednesday’s data.
“Indeed, imports do not appear completely in the spending parts of GDP accounts and, therefore, exaggerate the weakness of GDP,” they said.
Some economists focus on other measures, such as investment and consumer spending.
Wednesday’s figures showed that the sum of consumer spending and gross private investment increased 3 percent in the first quarter, at the previous rate of 2.9 percent.
In a publication about his real social network, Trump suggested that the figures had “nothing to do with tariffs.”
Kaging former President Joe Biden, he added: “I made position until January 20.
Recognizing the storage that took place before the announcement of Trump’s rates this month, the Office of Economic Analysis, which produced the data on Wednesday, highlighted the increase in the “private inventory investment.”
Without this contribution, GDP figures would have contracted an annualized rate or 2.5 percent.
In an additional indication of the scale of business efforts to import before tariffs, the Commercial Deficit of US goods. It reached a record of $ 162 billion for March in figures published this week.
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Economists anticipate a bounce measure in the second quarter as US consumers buy.
Diane Swonk, chief economist of KPMG US, said that Wednesday’s GDP figure had been distorted by tariffs, adding that “extraordinary impact” would relax as imports fell.
But I also hoped that GDP would be reduced even more in the second quarter, due to the impact of tariffs on domestic demand, “and domestic demand is ultimately what worries him.”
The load volumes of the port of Los Angeles, the largest spring on the west coast of the USA., Drop 30 percent this week, while the volumes of next week are expected to be more than one third lower than the same time last year.
Actions futures decreased and bond yields increased slightly after data. Treasury performance to two years, which moves with the expectations of the interest rate, increased 0.01 percentage points to 3.66 percent.
There was no significant change in expectations of interest rate cuts after data, and merchants in the futures market still set pricing in approximately four cuts this year.
The BEA said that the fall in production for the first quarter also reflected a decrease in government spending.
He added that consumer spending was also one of the factors that in part, but not completely, compensated for imports and fall in government spending.
“The strong domestic demand figures are a moving reminder of what could have been a soft and elegant landing until the tariffs of suburgues the economy of the course,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor at the University of Cornell.
It is expected that Trump’s commercial war will lead to slower growth in the second half of this year, with high prices of its consumption.
The IMF said last week that the US GDP. It would expand by 1.8 percent this year, below its January or 2.7 percent estimate. Many pronosticators of the private sector do not predict any growth at all.
Additional Kate Duguid reports in New York
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