美國經濟1月至3月萎縮0.5%，低於先前兩次預估

 Recently Yahoo News on-line picked up the following:

US economy shrank 0.5% between January and March, worse than 2 earlier estimates had revealed

The Associated Press - Paul Wiseman

Thu, June 26, 2025 at 8:02 a.m. PDT·3 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in an unexpected deterioration of earlier estimates.

First-quarter growth was weighed down by a surge of imports as U.S. companies, and households, rushed to buy foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter. Economists had forecast no change in the department's third and final estimate.

The January-March drop in gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — reversed a 2.4% increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points.

Consumer spending also slowed sharply, expanding just 0.5%, down from a robust 4% in the fourth-quarter of last year. It is a significant downgrade from the Commerce Department's previous estimate.

Consumers have turned jittery since Trump started plastering big taxes on imports, anticipating that the tariffs will impact their finances directly.

And the Conference Board reported this week that Americans’ view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence in April to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago.

The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index slid to 93 in June, down 5.4 points from 98.4 last month. A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market fell 4.6 points to 69. That’s well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead.

A category within the GDP data that measures the economy’s underlying strength rose at a 1.9% annual rate from January through March. It's a decent number, but down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and from the Commerce Department's previous estimate of 2.5% January-March growth.

This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending. Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics called the downgrade in that figure “troubling,″ though he doesn’t expect to make a significant change to his near-term economic forecast.

And federal government spending fell at a 4.6% annual pace, the biggest drop since 2022.

Trade deficits reduce GDP. But that’s just a matter of mathematics. GDP is supposed to count only what’s produced domestically, not stuff that comes in from abroad. So imports — which show up in the GDP report as consumer spending or business investment — have to be subtracted out to keep them from artificially inflating domestic production.

The first-quarter import influx likely won’t be repeated in the April-June quarter and therefore shouldn’t weigh on GDP. In fact, economists expect second-quarter growth to bounce back to 3% in the second quarter, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

The first look at April-June GDP growth is due July 30.

Translation

美國經濟1月至3月萎縮0.5%，低於先前兩次預估

華盛頓（美聯社）- 美國商務部周四報告稱，商業活動受特朗普總統貿易戰影響，美國經濟1月至3月以0.5%的年率萎縮，這比之前的預估意外地惡化。

由於美國企業和家庭在特朗普加徵關稅之前爭相購買外國商品，進口激增拖累了第一季的經濟成長。美國商務部先前估計，第一季經濟下滑0.2%。經濟學家預測商務部的第三次和最後一次預估將維持不變。

1-3月，美國國內生產毛額（GDP) ，即美國商品和服務產出出現下滑，扭轉了2024年第四季2.4%的增幅，並標誌著美國經濟三年來首次萎縮。進口成長37.9%，為2020年以來的最快成長速度，亦推底GDP近4.7個百分點。

消費者支出也大幅放緩，僅成長0.5%，低於去年第四季4%的強勁增幅。這與美國商務部先前的預期相比之下大幅下調。

自從特朗普開始對進口商品徵收高額關稅以來，消費者一直感到不安，預計關稅將直接影響他們的財務狀況。

世界大型企業聯合會 (Conference Board) 本週報告稱，美國人對美國經濟的看法在6月份惡化，重啟了此前導致消費者信心在4月跌至五年前新冠疫情爆發以來最低水平的下滑趨勢。

世界大型企業聯合會 週二公佈，6月消費者信心指數下滑至93，較上月的98.4下降5.4點。一個衡量美國人對收入、商業狀況和就業市場的短期預期指數下降4.6點至69，遠低於80的水平，而80可能預示著經濟衰退即將來臨。

有一項在GDP數據中衡量經濟基本實力的指標，從1月到3月，以1.9%的年率成長。這是一個不錯的數字，但低於2024年第四季的2.9%，也低於美國商務部先前估計的1月至3月2.5%的成長。

這指標包括消費者支出和私人投資，但不包括出口、庫存和政府支出等波動較大的項目。牛津經濟研究院的 Ryan Sweet 稱該數據的下調 “令人不安” ，但他預計這不會對他的近期經濟預測產生重大影響。

聯邦政府支出以年計下降幅度為 4.6%，為 2022 年以來的最大降幅。

貿易逆差降低 GDP。但這只是一個數學問題。 GDP 應該只計算國內生產的產品，而不計算國外進口的產品。因此，進口 - 即在 GDP 報告中顯示為消費者支出或商業投資 - 必須被扣除，以防止它們人為地抬高國內生產。

第一季的進口湧入可能不會在 4 月至 6 月季度重演，因此不會對 GDP 造成壓力。事實上，根據數據公司 FactSet 對預測人員的調查，經濟學家預計第二季的經濟成長將反彈至 3%。

4 月至 6 月 GDP 成長的首次檢視將於 7 月 30 日到期。

              So, the U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business. Meanwhile, the Conference Board reported this week that Americans’ view of the U.S. economy worsened in June, resuming a downward slide that had dragged consumer confidence in April to its lowest level since the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Apparently, something is happening in the US economy.

Note:

The Conference Board (世界大型企業聯合會) is a global, non-profit think tank and business membership organization. It provides trusted insights for businesses and has over 1,000 member corporations. The Conference Board's focus is delivering insights to help businesses navigate the economic landscape. (Wikipedia)