The US economy rebounded this spring from a first-quarter downturn caused by fallout from President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
In an upgrade from its first estimate, the US Commerce Department said that US GDP—the nation’s output of goods and services—expanded at 3.3% in April-June after shrinking 0.5% in the first three months of 2025. The department had initially estimated second-quarter growth at 3%.
The first-quarter GDP drop, the first retreat of the US economy in three years, was mainly caused by a surge in imports—which are subtracted from GDP—as businesses scrambled to bring in foreign goods ahead of Trump’s tariffs. That trend reversed as expected in the second quarter: imports fell at a 29.8% pace, boosting April-June growth by more than 5 percentage points.
The US Commerce Department reported that consumer spending and private investment were a bit stronger in April-June than it had first estimated.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of GDP, grew at a 1.6% annual pace—lacklustre but better than 0.5% in the first quarter and the 1.4% the government initially estimated for the second.
Even with an upward revision, private investment dropped at a 13.8% annual pace from April through June. That would be biggest drop since the second quarter of 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. A reduction in private inventories cut almost 3.3 percentage points off Q2 GDP growth.
Spending and investment by the federal government fell at a 4.7% annual clip on top of a 4.6% drop in the first quarter.
A category within the GDP data that measures the economy’s underlying strength came in stronger than first reported, growing 1.9% from April-June, same as in the first quarter. This category includes consumer spending and private investment but excludes volatile items like exports, inventories and government spending.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has overturned decades of US policy that had favoured freer trade. He has slapped double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and targeted specific products, including steel, aluminum and autos, for tariffs.
Trump sees tariffs as a way to protect American industry, lure factories back to the US and help pay for the massive tax cuts he signed into law on 4 July.
But mainstream economists—viewed with disdain by Trump and his advisors—say that his tariffs will damage the economy, raising costs and making protected US companies less efficient. They note that tariffs are paid by importers in the US, who try to pass along the cost to their customers via higher prices. Tariffs, therefore, can be inflationary—though their impact so far has been modest.
The erratic way Trump has imposed the tariffs—announcing and suspending them, then coming up with new ones—has left businesses bewildered and uncertain about investments and hiring.
