Compared to the previous quarter, GDP’s GDP shrank by 0.1 percent. The Ministry of Commerce attributed the development to significantly increased imports before Trump’s expected customs announcements in early April.
Trump wrote in the online service Truth Social that the decline “has nothing to do with the tariffs”. The US citizens should be patient. The country will soon be “booming, but we have to get rid of the bidea ‘overhang,” emphasized the Republican.
The US economy had recently increased significantly under Biden. In the last quarter of 2024, growth was 2.4 percent. Unlike in Germany, the United States counts on the year to the year, so the economic values can therefore only be compared to a limited extent.
The opposition Democrats accused Trump of driving the United States into a recession with its erratic customs policy, endangering jobs and destroying the retirement reserves of many citizens on the stock exchange. “The poorly thought -out and chaotic trade war of the president is nothing more than a tax for American families,” said the minority leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer.
The Institute for the World Economy (IFW) in Kiel sees “the first traces of brake by Trump’s economic policy in the US economy”. Not only did imports have risen drastically in the first quarter to avoid the feared customs premiums, the US citizens would also only have consumed behavior, IFW expert Klaus-Jürgen liked to explain.
The Trump-critical US economist and Nobel Prize for Economics Paul Krugman was cautious. A “Trumpzession” – a recession under Trump – is “quite possible”, but it is not yet reliable on the quarterly figures. The economy had also shrunk under bidges at the beginning of 2022, but a downturn failed.
Trump had celebrated the 100th day of his second term on Tuesday and promised the US citizens a flourishing economy and more jobs in the auto industry. However, many experts consider his customs policy to be harmful to growth and an inflation driver.
In contrast, there was initially good news from the USA for consumer prices: inflation in March slowed down to 2.3 percent in the year. The Ministry of Commerce attributes this primarily to sunken energy and fuel prices.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also expects negative effects of the Trump-Zölle: after the economic forecast published a week ago, the US economy should only grow by 1.8 percent in the current year. That is 0.9 percentage points less than expected from the IMF.
