Q4 GDP 1st Estimate: 2.6% for Q4; 2.3% for 2017

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muh business sentiment polls and one-time bonuses

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Funny thing is 2.3% is a pretty solid (but not great) year of growth. Don't know what all the Trumpkin handwringing is about.

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90proofprofessional

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Your schtick is getting old, dude. 2017 GDP growth was significantly higher than 2016.

Honesty, what is your deal? Why are you so committed to pushing the idea that the economy is bad under trump? You are a neoclassical libertarian.....trump has overalll be your guy so far. He has cut regulations at a pace not seen basically in forever, he signed the most neoclassical-minded tax reform since 1980s, and he has at least spoken about welfare reform.

YOu have been kind of a baby the past year, dude. Your pet issue, trade with other nations, seems to take precedence over everything else.

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Yes, fourth-quarter GDP lagged Wall Street estimates.

But if you’re going to miss forecasts, this report was the way to do it.

First, the level of growth, at 2.6%, was actually pretty good. It was below the level of the prior two quarters and missed the 3% mark. But, overall, it’s on the high side of what the U.S. has been experiencing after the Great Recession.

Second, the reason U.S. growth lagged estimates was because of inventories and trade.

Inventories can be a tricky number to interpret. That inventories fell could mean businesses growing more pessimistic about the future and cutting back stockpiles. But current conditions give a more plausible explanation, that they sold goods and services so quickly in the fourth quarter that they didn’t adequately forecast demand ahead of time and had to sell out of their stockpiles.

Other economic indicators — from high levels of consumer and business confidence, to low levels of unemployment — point to this interpretation. The GDP report, with personal consumption of 3.8%, itself also lends credence to that theory.

The other element which dragged on GDP was trade. But in the fourth quarter, exports were strong, growing 6.9%. It’s just that imports were even stronger, surging 13.9%.

Donald Trump may well have run on a campaign that a widening trade deficit was bad for America. He still says that. But he also doesn’t seem to mind triumphantly pointing out U.S. economic conditions, as he did in Davos on Friday.

If you’re going to have a deteriorating trade balance, this is the sort of deterioration you’d like to see.

And this is the sort of GDP miss you’d like to experience.

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LINK

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Your schtick is getting old, dude. 2017 GDP growth was significantly higher than 2016.

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Yes. And it’s actually lower and at 2.25% it's actually slightly lower than the preceding three years (2.30%) and just a bit higher than the 7 years (2.14%) following the 2009 recession.

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Why are you so committed to pushing the idea that the economy is bad under trump?

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And GDP grew 2.86% in 2015 following 2.57% growth in 2014, both were significantly higher than 2017 to estimate.

So I bet you were fighting against any negative narrative then too, right?

Q2 2015
Q3 2015

BEA no good.

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BEA no goid p

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what do you have against Trump's BEA?

I thought this was interesting. From the 2011 to 2015, GDP grew by about 2.2% annually; however, federal government consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased by about 2.1% annually. So excluding the federal government, GDP grew by about 2.5%.

This year, the federal government grew by 0.2%, so the federal government, GDP grew by 2.4%.

Who would have thought the difference between GDP growth over Obama's last 5 years and Trump's first year could be the federal government's growth under Trump.

Annual GDP