Greg Ip: Forget GDP; It's the Jobs Report That Matters
I have no idea whether this is at all right:
The first-quarter decline in economic output tells us almost nothing about the economy’s actual performance which, through March, was actually fine.
It tells us even less about the broader impact of President Trump’s tariffs, federal cutbacks and immigration crackdown. For that, we’ll have to await April data, starting with jobs and unemployment to be released Friday.
This will provide the first “hard” data since Trump’s April 2 tariff announcements. Federal cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency were also in full swing, as were deportations, while border crossings had plummeted. A weak jobs number could vindicate Trump’s critics, a strong number would shut them up, at least for now.
I suspect, though, that the April report—regardless of the number—won’t tell us much about Trump’s impact. Businesses are certainly talking a lot about tariffs, but aren’t doing much yet in terms of raising prices or altering production plans. Federal layoffs and deportations are also probably too small to have much macro impact.
But wait, wasn’t that 0.3% annualized drop in gross domestic product in the first quarter because of tariffs? No: it was affected by a couple of statistical quirks.
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