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The US economy grew at a solid 2.2 per cent pace from April through June as consumer spending and business investment came in strong. Growth in gross domestic product - the nation's output of goods and services - decelerated from a 2.5 per cent pace from January through March, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The second-quarter growth was an improvement on the department's previous estimate of 1.5 per cent - a surprise to economists who had expected little or no change in the GDP number. Consumer spending - which accounts for about 70 per cent of US economic activity - increased at a healthy 3.8 per cent annual pace, up from 0.7 per cent in the January-March period. Spending has been helped by a strong stock market, which reflects enthusiasm over the prospects for artificial intelligence, enriches wealthy investors and gives them more money to buy things with. The overall growth number was dragged down by imports. They are subtracted from growth because GDP is only suppos
The US economy shrank at a 0.5 per cent 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 US 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 per cent 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 per cent increase in the last three months of 2024 and marked the first time in three years that the economy contracted. Imports expanded 37.9 per cent, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points. Consumer spending also slowed sharply, expanding just 0.5 per cent, down from a robu