U.S. Economy Contracts at 0.3% Rate in First Quarter
wsj.com
wsj.com
Assuming independent, the Fed responsibility of lower inflation is higher than employment. They might tolerate some inflation for employment but we can only tell after the effects of tariffs kick in and we see the new inflation numbers.
One would have to be a moron or literally mentally ill to "believe in these policies,"
either having no understanding, or, having invested in some delusional confabulated make believe universe where the fundamental order of our civilization is collectively reworked (including by enemies and competitors at every scale) in a context of rapidly degrading climate, to suit your ideology.
From Wikipedia: “He was hired by Soros Fund Management, eventually becoming the head of its London office. In this role, in September 1992, he was a leading member of the group that profited by $1 billion on Black Wednesday, the British Pound sterling crisis.”
When you're part of a circus, sometimes the least-bad option is a relative win.
Trump says anything he can think of and then whatever people respond to he goes with.
That + the last person to discuss something with him are his two leading decision making policies.
Playing devils advocate, I think most people thought the incoming tariffs were going to be a lot smaller, also maybe assumed there would be an industrial policy.
Followed by 2021-2024, where all the adults in the room were talking to the press, explaining how hard they had to work to convince Trump why he shouldn't carry out his worst ideas.
Followed by all of those people getting fired in January of 2025, and replaced by lickspittles, sycophants, and other flavors of yes-men.
There's no way that someone who surrounds himself with the kind of cabinet that he does, or reacts to criticism and feedback the way he does is going to be making good decisions.
For what it's worth, the economy grew under Trump 1.0. This second one is just not making decisions himself, with policy noticeably varying based on who is physically around him [1].
I won't be surprised to learn in a few years that he's being stage managed as tightly as Biden was in his final months in office.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navar...
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/trump-trade-navarro-us-gdp-d...
Realistically we'll see a few giants pivot to less quality materials, many large and medium size businesses reduce their offerings, and a large amount of small businesses dissolving or filling for bankruptcy after not being able to weather the abrupt, completely voluntary supply chain disruptions across various industries.
What dropped like a rock was consumer spending growth.
Unfortunately we got lucky, the big players in REO weren't ready to 'close' that many packages last time. My first devops role was at a company that was working with big players to make sure next time this exact scenario presented itself the big guys will be able to deploy their cash to gobble these things up.
That's what they told me when I bought my $250K condo in the early 2000's. Then in 2008 it was magically worth only $125K after being appraised a year earlier for 350K.
Never forget: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
It is right that it is not likely a credit crisis that will be the trigger next time.
But it could be hyperinflation - which would de-facto crash the housing market.
Right now the PE value for the housing market is really high, and it is not likely to continue up forever.
But it's very regional. Some areas will continue to see rising or stable prices.
Trump's second term has given the world a wake-up call. Although Trump will likely be gone in four years, the MAGA movement could be long-lived and always four years or less away from taking over again. Even if Trump backs down on tariff's and expansionism during his own term, trust in the U.S. as a military ally and economic partner won't be restored quickly or easily.
What we're now seeing is world military alliances and the economy rewiring themselves, not to be subservient vassals of a hostile U.S., as Trump hopes, but to bypass the U.S.. If trade barriers around the U.S. are going to come and go in an unpredictable manner, then business will respond by building outside of that uncertainty. Manufacture of some low-end products may be onshored to the U.S., but only to meet domestic U.S. demand if and where that is high enough. It doesn't make sense to move manufacturing inside a region with unpredictable trade barriers if it's going to serve a global market.
Take a look at the election results in Canada. What was expected to be an easy majority win for the Conservatives just a few months ago came out as near-majority for the Liberals. Both parties campaigned on anti-Trump measures that include increasing East-West trade/infrastructure within Canada, diversification of the economy to rely more on Asian and European markets, and reduced spending on defence products from the U.S.. This is long-term policy that will make Canada less vulnerable to future MAGA'ruptions, even long after Trump is gone. Trump could do a 180 tomorrow, but the impact of what he's already done will last for decades at the very least.
If you’re not an American, you don’t get to use bad American logic. ;)
Not voting was a vote for trump. Low turnout benefits trump. Americans had the choice between trump and a black woman, Americans chose trump.
Americans are so stupid and refuse to look at ourselves in a fair light. It's so dumb and the rest of the world is laughing at us.
"You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else." What this quote means is that Americans falsely believe we're exceptional and different when in reality we aren't, but we'll waste a ton of time/resources before we admit it.
77M people voted for him and 81M otherwise eligible voters, by not being registered to vote or by not voting, indicated they were at least OK with him winning. That's about 63% of the voting public.
Ah the favorite pastime of the Left - blaming the people. In fact not voting indicates only one thing - NOT being OK with any of them winning, it's a legitimate and very important choice to have, too bad neither of the losers is willing to draw any conclusions.
To clarify, I said half of voters this election turned out against Trump.
- Sir Michael, Tenet
But sure, if the US goes through a decade of purges and de-MAGAfication, it may rebuild its image.
Respectfully my friend, here's "a logic", or perhaps here's "my logic", but willing it to be "the logic" simply because you feel so is actually (ironically) incredibly American in tone, as it dismisses rational discourse.
The majority of Americans who did actually vote for Trump are responsible for him. The ossified, corrupted justice system that failed to prosecute him in a timely manner is responsible for him. The dark money that breathes momentum behind both the Democrat and Republican parties is responsible. To insinuate that the average individual American--the one who is tired of MAGA antics but has minimal individual agency in the situation, red or blue--is responsible? Well that's like you yelling at customer service agent for the policy decisions made at the executive suite. You're not just preaching to the choir, you're persecuting it.
Here's what we all can do: frustrated tired Americans can keep trying to push the eject button at home, with elections and purchasing power. Foreigners can quit buying American and lure their intellectual talent back home.
If you dislike how the world works so fundamentally, you can either find the agency to control it, or you can stop being a bitch and recognize that it's outside your sphere of influence and focus on building a life that you can control.
We see you.
I am posting an article that states there was disenfranchisement on a scale large enough to tip the election. You can find other sources than just this article.
Bond market says what now?
China has spent every day since 2016 preparing for this war. We, who launched it, didn't even bother to stockpile. While it's true the Chinese economy will likely suffer more short-term pain, Xi doesn't have midterms. Beyond his tools as a dictator, he has narrative on his side: we started the trade war. People are generally willing to take a lot of pain when they feel they're being fucked with. (Exhibit A: Trump.)
So yes, China's economy will probably contract more than America's. But there is a reason Trump is already blinking.
After the Trump tariffs in the first term, US sales of Soy Beans to China never recovered. They switched to Brazil. What if the rest of the world just start buying fewer treasury bills (or paying less for the return) from now on? It is possible this could be worse for the USA than other developed countries.
Trump is screwing you over and he's doing it publicly. He's selling meme coins and selling your government. He dismantling the US for his personal profit and you are cheering.
This is just us pulling an initial vacuum, drawing the real contraction in.
This is actually buoyed by buying ahead of the tariffs, and the tariffs themselves haven't had a chance to take effect yet.
The economic nosedive is just beginning.
(And in general, the market sentiment seems to be "There's a decent chance this all just blows over", so shorting is likely as ill-advised as plowing in long, unless you happen to have better insight into the decision-making in the white house than the average participant)
Just because it's someone's profession doesn't mean is is or should be everyone's profession.
Actually, the way the report works is the opposite. The increase in purchasing ahead of the tariffs counted against GDP growth, in terms of how the numbers were calculated in this report.
To be clear: Trump is a disaster, and I disagree with his approach.
GDP is only calculated that way because the numbers for consumer, investment and government spending includes spending on imports, so it has to be subtracted out in order to get only domestic spending.
I was jumping ahead too quickly to overall economic activity (which is going to drop).
Most of the value of an iPhone is recorded as American GDP because American IP and software went into it, Apple is keeping a lot of the price for the phone, and only sending a bit off to China for assembly (and a larger bit off to South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan for components that China is assembling). What remains is still a lot of American GDP.
A small business who is contracting China to make the thing that they then sell is also generating a lot of GDP. Yes, they send some percent off to China to make the thing, but a majority is GDP generated here in the USA (the small business does the design, marketing, sales, etc...). If they go belly up because of the trade war (very likely, since no one else can make their thing, and before China developed this capability, making the thing wasn't even possible!), that GDP is gone, the people that small business was employing are unemployed.
The increased purchases should not decrease American GDP, unless consumers are buying directly from China using Temu and are not buying at Walmart.
The same guy who got re-elected? Early term approval ratings mean less than nothing.
Now I hear the GDP contacted? So many mixed signals.
It's very rare that prices going down is good. It usually results in a spiral that is negatively self reinforcing. Price stability is what you generally want.
> It usually results in a spiral that is negatively self reinforcing
The price signal cannot function if it can only move in one direction.
Leading indicators, like housing and manufacturing, are not looking promising.
For example at least 4 times the President said a couple weeks ago that gas in 3 states hit $1.98/gal, and he also said a couple weeks ago that egg prices are down 93% since he took office.
No one has been able to find out where that cheap gas and those cheap eggs are, and so some people are beginning to suspect that the President may have been mistaken.
Gas, on the other hand, is a bit cheaper, but maybe only by about 10% at most.
> This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden “Overhang.” This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!
I'm curious how long he will get away with denying reality like this. The economical situation is likely to have much more immediate effects on people that almost every other topic. It should be much harder for him to do his usual thing once the economy really crashes, but who knows how his supporters will actually react.
It's all about the framing. Prices up, wages down during Biden? Armageddon and only Trump can save us.
Prices up, wages down during Trump? It's okay, we're making an investment--we tolerate being worse off today to be better off tomorrow. Look at all the trash Trump's taking out! It's only going to get cleaner!
One test will be how much pain we've endured by the time midterms roll around, and how many people sour on the current admin and elected reps.
Another will be in 3.5 years, where we will find out if the joists and beams raised by our democracy's framers were solid enough to last 250+ years.
- A growing trade deficit can reflect a robust economy. As U.S. consumers and businesses increase spending, imports rise, leading to a higher trade deficit. Simultaneously, higher U.S. interest rates attract foreign investment, strengthening the dollar and making imports more affordable.
- The U.S. trade deficit is counterbalanced by a capital account surplus, meaning foreign entities invest heavily in U.S. assets. This influx of capital supports economic growth, funds government debt, and contributes to job creation, particularly in sectors like manufacturing.
- Trade deficits allow U.S. consumers access to a wide array of affordable foreign goods. This access enhances purchasing power and living standards. Moreover, U.S. firms benefit from importing competitively priced intermediate goods, boosting productivity and innovation.
- While the U.S. often has a goods trade deficit, it maintains a surplus in services, including finance, education, and technology. This surplus offsets the goods deficit and underscores the U.S.'s competitive advantage in high-value service sectors. Wikipedia
- The U.S. dollar's status as the world's primary reserve currency enables the country to run trade deficits without immediate financial repercussions. Foreign nations hold dollars to facilitate international trade, which supports U.S. borrowing and spending capabilities.
- Concerns that trade deficits lead to job losses, especially in manufacturing, are often overstated. Research indicates that factors like automation and technological advancements have a more significant impact on employment trends than trade deficits.
- Trade deficits foster global economic interdependence, which can enhance diplomatic relations and geopolitical stability. By being a major importer, the U.S. strengthens its ties with exporting countries, promoting mutual economic interests.
While trade deficits can present challenges, they also offer benefits that contribute to the U.S. economy's dynamism and resilience. It's essential to consider the broader economic context rather than viewing trade deficits in isolation.
But even if it were bad to run a trade deficit and you wanted to fix that, it would be trade as a whole that you would need to balance. In your trade with individual countries it would be OK to have deficits with some as long as you had surpluses with others as long as it was balanced as a whole.
Different countries have different goods to offer and different goods they need. It is not just realistic to expect that for every country what we have to sell that they want to buy and what they have to sell that we want to buy will end up being the same value.
There will be a lot of circular trade situations. Country A wants to sell good 1 and buy good 2. Country B wants to sell good 2 and buy good 3. Country C wants to sell good 3 and buy good 1.
If these countries all want trade to be balanced with each of their partners none can trade. But if they just all just want to balance their total trade then A can run a trade surplus with C and a trade deficit with B. Similar for B and C.
As an example Tesla the company didn't exist 30 years ago. Say you got some shares early you can sell those to the Chinese in return for their widgets. That kind of thing can go on and on.
Conservatives rightly used to be concerned about budget deficits -- but trade deficits are entirely different. Just because they share the same word does not necessarily mean they are the same indicator.
I would be happy to see America as a net exporter, but I genuinely have to ask ... what is it that America - the richest country in the world - is going to make that other people want regularly aside from mass agriculture, specialized services, and advanced manufacturing??
Our domestic manufacturing base is thankfully not geared to produce a bunch of plastic crap to try to compete with China. And if you want to onshore critical supply chains -- great -- but again that has nothing to do with the idea of a trade deficit.
Genuinely looking for a thoughtful engagement here
The middle class and poor are focused on buying food and gas, not on their stock portfolio.
59% of Americans say Trump is making the economy worse [0]
[0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25920872-rel5b-econo...
It also leaves more with uncertainty so they get stuck at their current jobs for longer rather than leaving, giving more control back to employers.
Everything implemented seems to be intentionally pushing even more economic inequality and divide between the top and the bottom, and to push the diminishing middle class even lower down on the totem pole.
I expect a wave of bad economic news, followed by a wave of consolidation, all the while prices rising, and toward the end of all this, the tariffs will be fully removed, but the prices will not meaningfully (if at all) come down, and the consolidation will have only further entrenched power at the top
What bonds? There is an almost zero chance that the expenses of the US government decrease while there is a good chance that their revenue takes a hit. At some point you can't pay your dues (and no, printing currency is not paying your dues, you are getting hit on your basis).
It's possible everything is just going to be bad.
I'm leaving my diversified retirement mutual funds as they are, because that's why they are diversified; but otherwise yeah, I sold all my other holdings during the rebound earlier this month. Not interested in participating in this wild ride.
Also did you take a huge take hit to reallocate to bonds or was it all in tax advantage accounts? Seems more crazy to sell all equities when you have to pay tax on the gains.
What will happen in the market if Trump keeps blinking and folds further, congress takes back the tariff power, Trump loses big in the midterms, GOP loses big in 28, AI ends up being a big thing, etc?
You will eventually have to buy back in and you don't know where the bottom is.
In short, it must get worse before it can get better irrespective of what happens next or when.
So when the tariffs can change every day and you don't know if they'll be around in 5 years, do you commit millions to building something that doesn't pay off until 5 years from now?
Nobody's even building them right now. CAPEX and industrial investment have declined in recent months. (!!) They may even drop further. So it seems that if the aim is to revitalize America's industrial base, the present strategy isn't working, but is having an opposite effect.
The issue is that the aim clearly isn’t to revitalize the industrial base. If it were, then the tariffs wouldn’t be removed after negotiating with other countries. Since other countries can make deals to reduce the tariffs on their products, then it’s clear that the aim isn’t to get Americans to build things at home. The tariffs are clearly some kind of brinkmanship game to pressure other countries into making concessions.
So if CAPEX is declining, the downturn has already started. (I mean, I guess the article's headline already told us that...)
There is simply no way to speedrun that kind of development.
I am not against repatriating manufacturing, but it's something that needs to be done with thought and strategy. This trade war is worse than Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal.
Personally I'd want one hell of an insurance policy to cover the risk of all that money being wasted when I finally open my doors and have to compete with overseas manufacturing that may no longer be burdened by these tariffs.
This is exactly the kind of short-termism that got us to where we are now. Why is it so hard to think on a 5-10 year timeline? This is country-level ADHD. Anything worth building requires long term investments. People in the past used to spend their life building cathedrals that they knew would never be finished in their lifetime, and now you're questioning whether it's worth investing in something that has an expected ROI in 5 years!
Tourist travel to the US has contracted, for instance. US service exports are suddenly extremely suspect and a lot of countries are finding alternatives. US goods exports are facing massive headwinds, and counter-tariffs in some other countries (China, where imports from the US have basically stopped, and Canada where $400B+ of US goods were sold last year, many of which now see a counter-tariff and boycotts/replacement).
The situation is going to get much, much worse, and there is a serious sense of denial among both the market and many participants who seem to think Trump can retreat from his economic folly and everything will be good again. It won't. There is a massive structural shift that is going to linger for decades.
I think more likely problems are small electronic PCBs used for semi-bespoke controls in whatever manufacturing that actually {happens in/moves to} the us, hvac controls etc.
You will see panic in two weeks. I was talking to two truck drivers here in Lincoln, Nebraska I met at a Flying J. They are already talking about layoffs and job insecurity and they are wondering why no one cares. One of them asked where his bail out was.
The market, I think, is driven by AI and will be reactive, not predictive. All you need to do is be the quickest person out. All the under millionaire suckers will be wondering what happened to their 401k's.
Just curious why you would think this? Markets react fairly quickly to major events...
The GDP is the result of what markets (not the stock market, but actual markets for goods and services) do, if markets react quickly so does the GDP. And markets were reacting to tariff threats and other issues early in the term, Atlanta Fed GDPNow Q1 projection rapidly turned from strongly positive to negative in February, IIRC.
It feels like this was the natural progression of stuffing trillions of dollars into the economy, along with ZIRP, and the free ride has ended. Tariffs will magnify the problem.
The whole bullwhip effect never occurred, prices never returned to pre-covid levels, as everyone claimed they would. So now we have years of stacking inflation that happened because of bloating the money supply, then ZIRP goes away, throw the tariff fears/uncertainty on top, and here we are. I have very little to no faith this administration will help the situation. Playing a game of chicken with the other global superpower is a losing proposition.
This problem has been years in the making, big ships don't turn on a dime.
No one who knows anything about economics or inflation claimed that prices would return to their pre-covid levels. However, inflation has gone way down from its peak.
I don't care if we blame the current economic policy, I don't like the current economic policy at all. I think the problem is much bigger than that.
I still would like to know where all that money went. I can't figure that out.
Prices have basically only gone up on almost everything for the past 5 years. Going up slower does little good.
No, but Trump is trying to turn the US ship in a dime, and like this aircraft carrier, we are about to drop a ton of money into the ocean...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-navy-lost-67-million...
Trump’s been unusually active, so you’d expect to see direct impact in Q1 numbers.
The chorus was slower growth in Q1, boosted by frontloading of purchases, with the real consequences only emerging in Q2 or Q3.
You may have expected this (and if so, I hope you bought some good PUT options), but most economists certainly did not expect this already for the first quarter. On the contrary, there was more the expectation that because of the looming tariffs, people planning to buy larger goods this year would rather expedite the purchase and do it now to avoid rising prices later, leading to a boost in orders. It is quite probable that this has actually happened, and that makes this number even worse.
Yes, they did, and the Atlanta Fed GDPNow estimate for Q1 has been negative since, IIRC, mid-February. That in Q1 we were likely in the first quarter of a significant recession that would get worse if some way out of the planned tariff apocalypse wasn't found was a widespread perception.
For me personally, I've largely stopped buying non-required stuff. Not because of price increases, but because I'd rather have the cash on hand to help me & my friends to survive the next few years. Two of my friends lost their jobs in the Trump job cuts, and many of my friends are in less secure financial positions than I am. I'd rather be able to give them some cash than buy stuff I don't need, so I'm hanging on to my savings for now. Dark times ahead, and cash will be more useful than another guitar or whatever.
But long term degradation of economy absolutely.
I suppose one silver lining is people ordering less crap? Might be good for the environment, just like during COVID. But a lot of businesses and people are going to be hurting :( As usual, people with cash will end up buying properties, businesses and other assets for pennies on the dollar.
Even if the situation was reversed tomorrow, ships cannot arrive until weeks later. I've seen "60 to 90 days" given, but I think this is time for the whole supply chain, not just port-to-port ship time.
And the situation won't reverse tomorrow. It's now at a place where neither US or Chinese leadership can change tactic without "losing face" badly.
This bad 2nd quarter is locked in. Likely much longer than that.
By government decree. What other decisions should government make on our behalf?
Governments exist so that we can coordinate doing things that individually we couldn't do or wouldn't wish to do. It's us.
The problem with the tariffs is not that they're decreed by the government that your fellow citizens elected, it's that they're counterproductive to the extent that they're causing a recession.
Yes, there have been photos of empty ports. But there number of ships headed into the US hasn't fallen yet¹, and tax changes take a up to a few months to reflect on the arriving trans-continental traffic.
So, are those some ports specialized in short distance commerce? Maybe domestic commerce?
1 - They notoriously have recently started to leave half-full. What means they'll need less time at the ports by June. That shouldn't make a difference now.
Reddit is extremely biased toward being anti-Trump and anti-tariffs to a comical degree, so I would take anything written there with a grain of salt.
The economy would be doing better if the previous admin's relatively hands off policy was continued.
The mantra of some folks response to his more reckless statements has always been "it's just talk", but it seems to not be talk.
That would fit the "can't alter my business that much..." mindset you're referencing I think.
They just don't want to be left holding the bag.
Asset prices adjust immediately as soon as knowledge is available. There is no 'yet'.
Trump blames Biden ‘overhang’ after GDP shrinks in first quarter, says growth will ‘take a while’
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/30/trump-gdp-tariffs-biden-over...
Funny, I did not hear him talk about how the economy would tank and people would have to "sacrifice" or growth would "take a while" when he was running for president.
It's currently -2.7 percent.
1. Who pays for ads?
2. And if their business is being disrupted, what is the first budget that gets cut?
https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-us/insights/market-comm...
Edit: here's a breakdown. It looks like imports (gold and tariff front running) were big negatives.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-q1-gdp-contracts-reco...
This is the actual calculation.
The uncorrected gdpnow number was too pessimistic while the human consensus was too optimistic. The corrected gdpnow number was pretty close (though last week nosedived too much). The early April gdpnow corrected number was bang on.
Making a better product than last year is also a strange way to claim growth.
What would be a better measure?
To your measure of food and work hours, here's 70 years of progress in less work buying more food-- https://cepr.net/publications/in-the-good-old-days-one-fourt...
[1] https://flatworldknowledge.lardbucket.org/books/beginning-ec... (Note that "Food" is "food as a percentage of income", and "eating out" is "eating out as a percentage of food" which makes the chart look weird. This means that the 11% number below includes the cost of the private taxi for your burrito.)
[2] https://www.axios.com/2024/02/27/price-food-us-inflation-dat...
Can we please stop this insanity? We had a great economy before this guy messed with it.
This is why we keep economic policy in an independent agency instead of giving it to politicians.
That’s how the system works given that legislation is high-level, often vague and sometimes riddled with errors. Congress sets the goals and Executive i.e. public sector makes the decisions about how to implement it.
All the big corporations & big Money also have not challenged the president.
This is People’s & Money’s will.
Very true, however,
1) it does slow the process somewhat and therefore also reduces total throughput, this keeps government more stable and also gives more time to respond. Slow and stable may or may not be the best way to run a company, but the government is not a company.
2) It would put the individual congresspeople on record, and they are somewhat more dependent on/accountable to their local population. If for example all the farmers realized that the tariffs would destroy the farmer's livelihood, we could see Iowa withdrawing suport.
The US goverment was set up the way it is for reasons.
I thought the whole video is good watch too.
> I think about this line a lot when I read about what Trump and Musk are doing
It's not just them though, but also their predecessors who created the conditions that led to Trump (e.g. pushing free trade even after the initial fairy tale that it would increase US manufacturing proved to be untrue). They were willing to sacrifice others' blue collar employment.
It's would be kind interesting to see every politician's list of who should be prioritized and who they're willing to sacrifice, but they'll never be explicit about such things.
Any disagreement is a "hostile and political" act subjecting you to deportation without due process.
ps: article link https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-melts-down-at-bei...
direct youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am-Xs4Dug1o
What do you expect to happen when you have a compulsive liar say whatever is on his mind and then an entire ecosystem repeating what he said as if it were fact.
Now we know what circumstances led to his position and performance. Now we Americans are familiar with the new situation.
While it's true that both 10 != 0 and 100 != 0, you are certainly off track trying to equate 10 and 100.
No, you're not being fair.
You're being disingenuous trying to equate changing the CPI with a dictator firing people for presenting numbers not consistent with his lies.
Imports surged in q1 to front-run tariffs. Imports are subtracted from GDP. Therefore GDP shrank.
C + I + G + NX = GDP https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2020-04/GDP-Education-by-BE...
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2025-04/gdp1q25-adv....
A reasonable question here is "did companies spend down petty cash to import goods in Q1" (no change to GDP), or "did companies stop investing and producing domestically in order to afford to import more goods in Q1" (reduced GDP).
Whether or not that's true in reality, it is true in the report that caused the headline.
From the article:
> A logistical consideration makes Wednesday’s report difficult to interpret: Imports subtract from the Commerce Department’s calculation of GDP, since they represent spending on foreign-made goods and services.
Noah Smith is a galaxy-scale idiot, by the way.
So when imports are subtracted that doesn’t mean gdp is “short” imports. It means it isn’t affected either way by imports.
I've seen this in coffee - roasters buying a year's worth of packaging.