Bloomberg is covering this BEA revision in an unusual manner,
(treating it much like it normally treats only first releases, etc.)
giving rise to the possbility that the (obvious) anti-trump anti-tariff bias so many of its TV hosts hold is (perhaps) now leaking into its written news.
That aside, it brings up a topicIenjoy discussing.
The US economy shrank at the start of the year, restrained by weaker consumer spending and an even bigger impact from trade than initially reported.
Gross domestic product decreased at a 0.2% annualized pace in the first quarter, the second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Thursday. That compared with an initially reported 0.3% decline. . . .
The basic story here is that GDP measures “production that is domestic.” Imports are not “production that is domestic” so in the most common way of calculating GDP, imports are subracted from the common starting point.
It occurs to me that since the surge in imports is temporary
and
the surge in business investment will probably have long term impacts,
both are important parts of the story.
