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355 points Aloisius | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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Aloisius ◴[] No.44390494[source]
I'm a bit confused about the bit about the "Imports expanded 37.9%, fastest since 2020, and pushed GDP down by nearly 4.7 percentage points" bit.

Presumably when they calculated GDP previously, they hadn't seen quite as much imports, but had seen higher spending, thus they misattributed some of it to domestic products rather than imports, though I'm a bit confused as to how they underestimated imports given everything is declared. Perhaps some changes in the price index?

Though other articles talk about the expected GDP next quarter being higher because they don't expect a surge of imports to continue, which makes no sense to me unless one assumes spending remains the same with or without imports.

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iamtheworstdev ◴[] No.44390776[source]
stolen from investopedia: The GDP formula is commonly expressed as GDP = C + I + G + (X - M), where C is consumer spending, I is business investment, G is government spending, and (X - M) represents net exports (exports minus imports). This formula helps measure the total economic output of a country during a specific period.

Our tariffs are tampering with the intelligent monitoring of GDP growth. When the USA expanded tariffs to 155% with China it was effectively an embargo, so imports went away (but exports didn't) and our GDP looked amazing. When the tariffs were brought back to previous rates of 55%, companies bought every import they could (or had them released from bonded warehouses) which has pumped the GDP in the other direction. And it'll likely be the same situation next month because Chinese ports are seeing record numbers as US companies try to buy every piece of inventory they can before these tariffs go back up.

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axus ◴[] No.44391013[source]
That seems very strange to me that GDP is the same, when import:export is 4:3 or 3:2, but explains why someone would care more about the difference than the absolute values.
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1. yread ◴[] No.44391290[source]
If you import something and immediately export it the ratio changes but the difference doesnt