Marking the strongest quarterly growth since 2014, the United States gross domestic product rose at an annual rate of 4.1% in the second quarter, up from 2.2% in the first three months of the year.
Consumer spending rose 4%, but private investment fell slightly as the housing market cooled. Exports rose 9.3%, driven in part by a surge in soybean shipments tied to President Donald Trump’s trade policies and consumer prices rose at a 1.8% annual rate. Â
But in its analysis of the numbers, The New York Times reports that the boom may not last.
The second-quarter acceleration was widely anticipated by economists, a result of a confluence of events unlikely to recur. Most economists expect growth to slow in the second half of the year.
Still, recent data does suggest that the pace of growth has picked up this year. Some economists think full-year growth in gross domestic product could hit 3% in 2018 for the first time in the nearly decade-long recovery. The second quarter was the first time since 2014 that economic growth topped 4% in a quarter; the economy reached that level or higher just four times during the eight years of the Obama administration.
Today’s figures were pumped up by a surge in exports, which accounted for a quarter of the total growth for the quarter. Paradoxically, the export boom was driven in part by mounting trade tensions, which led foreign buyers to stock up on American products before their governments imposed tariffs.
The trend is particularly clear in exports of soybeans, which were up more than 50% in May from a year earlier. Those buyers presumably didn’t want more soybeans than usual—they just wanted them sooner. Exports will almost certainly slump in the third and fourth quarters, and will turn into a drag on overall GDP growth.
