On MarketPlace: “Why this number might be more important than GDP”

Preliminary GDP rose 2% SAAR after 0.5% in Q4. Final sales to private domestic purchasers — aka “core GDP” — grew 2.5% vs. 1.8% previous. In general, since the pandemic, core GDP has been less volatile than GDP, which makes it a more useful metric than actual GDP these days. I discuss this issue on Marketplace today. [Updated version of post from Monday]

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Section 122 Tariffs Struck Down

From Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump’s 10% global tariffs were declared unlawful by a federal trade court in a fresh blow to the administration’s economic agenda, several months after the US Supreme Court vacated earlier levies he’d imposed.

A divided three-judge panel at the US Court of International Trade in Manhattan on Thursday granted a request by a group of small businesses and two dozen mostly Democrat-led states to vacate the tariffs. Trump imposed the 10% duties in February under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which had never previously been invoked.

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