MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

U.S. economy in the second quarter expanded at an annualized 4.2%

Stronger software investment and a smaller import bill offset a downward revision to consumer spending

The United States economic growth was stronger than initially thought in the second quarter, notching its best performance in nearly four years and putting the economy on track to hit the Trump administration’s goal of 3% annual growth.

GDP increased at a 4.2% annualized rate, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday in its second estimate of GDP growth for the April-June quarter. That was slightly up from the 4.1% pace of expansion reported in July and was the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2014.

The US economy grew at a 2.2% pace in the January-March period. The upward revision to growth last quarter reflected more business spending on software than previously estimated and less imported petroleum.

Stronger software investment and a smaller import bill offset a downward revision to consumer spending. President Donald Trump, whose administration has vowed to boost annual economic growth to 3% on a sustainable basis, cheered the revised second-quarter data. “Our country is doing great!” Trump tweeted.

The US economy expanded 3.2% in the first half of 2018, up from the 3.1% estimated last month. Compared to the second quarter of 2017, output increased 2.9% instead of the previously reported 2.8%. Economists, however, cautioned that the second-quarter growth pace was unsustainable as it was largely driven by one-off factors.
However the economy faces constraints such as low productivity and slow population growth.

The Trump administration’s US$ 1.5 trillion tax cut package provided a jolt to consumer spending after it almost stalled in the first quarter and soybean exports to China were front-loaded to beat retaliatory trade tariffs.

There are signs some of the momentum was lost early in the third quarter. The government reported on Tuesday that the goods trade deficit jumped 6.3% to US$ 72.2 billion in July as a 6.7% plunge in food shipments weighed on exports.

While consumer spending has remained strong early in the third quarter, the housing market has weakened further with homebuilding rising less than expected in July and sales of new and previously owned homes falling amid a dearth of properties.

The Trump administration’s “America First” policies, which have led to an escalation of a trade war between the United States and China as well as tit-for-tat tariffs with the European Union, Canada and Mexico, pose a risk to the economy.

“We expect the pace of the expansion will cool in the second half of 2018, as the boost from fiscal stimulus starts to fade ... and trade protectionism weighs on activity,” said Oren Klachkin, lead economist at Oxford Economics in New York.

Economists had expected second-quarter GDP growth would be revised down to a 4% pace. The robust growth pace likely keeps the Federal Reserve on course to raise interest rates in September for the third time this year.