From the May Survey of Professional Forecasters:
Figure 1: GDP (bold black), May SPF median (light blue), February SPF median (red), GDPNow, 5/16 (blue square), all b.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA 2025Q1 advance, Philadelphia Fed, Atlanta Fed, and author’s calculations.
Compare to the WSJ downshift:
Figure 2: GDP (black), IMF April WEO (dark blue square), January WEO (teal square), April WSJ (bold dark red), January (red), GDPNow of 4/17 adjusted for gold imports (green inverted triangle), all bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, IMF, WSJ surveys, Atlanta Fed, and author’s calculations.
Both WSj and SPF suggest a downward revision of GDP of about 1.2% by year’s end.
Figure 3: Revision in forecasted level from SPF median Feb-may (blue), from WSJ mean Jan-Apr (red), both as a log share of GDP. Source: WSJ, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.
Note that the IMF WEO showed a revision of 0.9% for 2025 q4/q4 growth, going from January to April.
Trump today: “Walmart should EAT THE TARIFFS and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I will be watching.”
Wait, Trump spent the last year promising that China will pay the tariffs and now he is saying that Walmart should “EAT THE TARIFFS.”
Last time around Trump spent years promising that Mexico would pay for his wall. Instead he diverted billions from US military funds to build his wall in defiance of Congress (after getting approval from a feckless Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision).
I’m beginning to think that Trump doesn’t always tell the truth.