Odaily Planet Daily News: The US GDP unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter, and the risk of a US recession has surged. Kalshi, a US financial trading and prediction market platform, currently expects the probability of a US recession this year to be 74%.
Analysts believe that the US economy contracted for the first time since 2022 in the first quarter due to a sharp surge in imports and weak consumer spending before the imposition of tariffs, which is the first microcosm of the chain reaction brought about by Trump's trade policy. According to preliminary data released by the US government on Wednesday, the initial value of the annualized quarterly rate of real GDP in the first quarter of the United States contracted by 0.3%, far lower than the average growth rate of about 3% in the previous two years. The report from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the contribution of net exports to GDP decreased by nearly 5 percentage points. Consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of the total economy, grew by 1.8%, the weakest performance since mid-2023. Business equipment spending became the highlight of the report, growing by 22.5% on an annualized basis. (Jinshi)