US economic growth cooled much more than expected in the final months of 2025, government estimates showed today, capping the first year of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.<\/p>\n
The Republican leader was quick to blame a lengthy government shutdown last year for the deceleration in growth, pinning the responsibility on Democratic lawmakers in a social media post right before the latest data was released.<\/p>\n
The world’s biggest economy expanded at a 1.4% annual rate in the October to December period last year, the Department of Commerce said. This was significantly below the 2.5% pace that analysts had forecasted for the quarter.<\/p>\n
Full-year GDP growth, in turn, came in at 2.2% in 2025, lower than the 2.8% figure for the prior year.<\/p>\n
“The Democrat Shutdown cost the USA at least two points in GDP,” Trump wrote in an angry Truth Social post, about a half-hour before the official results were released.<\/p>\n
He also pointed the finger again at the Federal Reserve, bashing outgoing Chairman Jerome Powell and calling for “LOWER INTEREST RATES.”<\/p>\n
Analysts generally expect any hit to economic growth from the record-long shutdown, which lasted from October to mid-November, to be temporary.<\/p>\n
The Commerce Department said today that the slower fourth quarter growth “reflected downturns in government spending and exports and a deceleration in consumer spending.”<\/p>\n
This was partially offset by a pick-up in investments, the report added.<\/p>\n
The fourth quarter figure was a marked slowdown from the 4.4% growth seen in the July to September window.<\/p>\n
The report noted that the economy overall saw a boost from consumer spending and investment in the year.<\/p>\n
The US economy has grown at a solid pace in recent months, driven by consumption as households kept spending despite the squeeze from stubborn inflation and a weaker jobs market.<\/p>\n
But many Americans, particularly from middle and lower-income households, have become more conscious of prices, turning increasingly to warehouse stores as they tighten their budgets.<\/p>\n
While artificial intelligence investments and spending by well-off families have powered the robust economic growth, it remains unclear if most households will feel uplifted by this boom.<\/p>\n
A separate government report today showed that the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation picked up a touch more than analysts expected as well.<\/p>\n
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index was up 2.9% from a year ago in December, higher than the 2.8% that economists anticipated and also above November’s figure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US economic growth cooled much more than expected in the final months of 2025, government estimates showed today,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60],"class_list":["post-308516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}