美国GDP真的很好吗？数据这么好，为什么市场依然预期今年美联储会降息呢？为什么美国国债大涨呢？而美元指数快速下跌呢？

U.S. REACT: GDP Great Again? Just Don’t Look Too Closely

By?Carl Riccadonna (Economist)?and?Yelena Shulyatyeva (Economist)

(Bloomberg Economics) –?

First-quarter GDP topped the most optimistic of forecasts submitted to Bloomberg. While this is encouraging news at face value, particularly given the growth concerns that rattled economic sentiment around the turn of the year, a closer inspection exposes a much more sluggish underlying profile.

Much of what made first-quarter GDP look great, will make second-quarter GDP look considerably weaker — namely an unaddressed inventory overhang.

Last year’s trade tensions were very much evident in the GDP results at the start of 2019. Anticipating an escalation in trade tensions toward the end of last year, producers padded their supply chains by rushing goods into the U.S. (widening the trade gap) and stockpiling supplies (building inventory stockpiles).

Now that trade talks appear to be moving in a more favorable direction, producers are reversing course and trying to normalize their operating conditions. This is resulting in depressed production (evident in weak manufacturing payrolls). Yet it also materializing in a collapse in imports in the first quarter, creating a temporary appearance of a narrowing trade gap.

The economic soft patch — spanning both households and businesses — resulting from the year-end market rout prevented suppliers from successfully reducing inventory levels, which actually continued to climb in the first quarter. Rising inventories technically count as investment, and hence boost GDP — so when the inventory normalization occurs, presumably in the current quarter, headline growth will be significantly reduced.

In order to get a clearer perspective of underlying economic momentum, analysts should focus on final sales, as opposed to headline GDP growth. Final sales of domestic product, which is GDP ex-inventories, rose more moderately (at 2.5%); and final sales of domestic purchases, which excluded both the inventory effect as well as the distortion from swings in the trade deficit, advanced an even more feeble 1.4%.

While the headline GDP result is good news at a time when there are elevated concerns about global growth prospects, underlying demand — as reflected in the final sales details –is less encouraging. Bloomberg Economics retains an expectation for the economy to grow near 2.4% this year, above the Fed’s forecast of 2.1%. However, the outperformance relative to trend may not be abundantly clear until the inventory correction runs its course.

Real GDP Growth Surprises

First-quarter real GDP growth topped the highest estimate in the consensus of the economists surveyed by Bloomberg, accelerating to 3.2% from 2.2% in the prior quarter. Consensus projected 2.3%. As a result, the year-on-year rate of change was 3.2%, stronger than 3.0% at the end of 2018 and the most robust print since the second quarter of 2015.

Bloomberg Economics estimated growth at 1.9%, based on expectations that some inventory correction would occur in the first quarter, a development which did not materialize.

Growth Composition

The results depicted an unusual composition of growth, including weak consumer spending and outsized contributions from net trade and inventories. These developments are unlikely to persist in the current quarter. As a re