{"id":632538,"date":"2026-09-30T22:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T22:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/632538\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T22:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T22:36:12","slug":"the-economy-is-increasingly-reliant-on-ai-gdp-grew-2-2-amid-sudden-reversal-of-optimism-on-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/632538\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The economy is increasingly reliant on AI’: GDP grew 2.2% amid ‘sudden reversal of optimism’ on AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.2% pace from April through June as consumer spending<\/a> and business investment came in strong.<\/p>\n

Growth in gross domestic product \u2014 the nation\u2019s output of a goods and services \u2014 decelerated from a 2.5% pace from January through March, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. The second-quarter growth was an improvement on the department\u2019s previous estimate of 1.5% \u2014 a surprise to economists who had expected little or no change in the GDP number.<\/p>\n

Consumer spending \u2014 which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity \u2014 increased at a healthy 3.8% annual pace, up from 0.7% in the January-March period. Spending has been helped by a strong stock market, which reflects enthusiasm over the prospects for artificial intelligence<\/a> and which enriches wealthy investors and gives them more money to buy things with.<\/p>\n

The overall growth number was dragged down by imports. They are subtracted from growth because GDP is only supposed to count domestic production. Imports rose at a 12.6% annual pace from April through June, partly due to a surge in shipments of computer chips and other products that support artificial intelligence investment, and slashed nearly 1.7 percentage points off second-quarter growth.<\/p>\n

The U.S. economy has proven surprisingly resilient in the face of fighting with Iran and the energy price spike it caused.<\/p>\n

Business investment, excluding housing, rose at a 9% clip in the second quarter, reflecting the AI investment boom. And a measure of the economy\u2019s underlying strength \u2014 which strips out volatile government spending and trade numbers \u2014 grew at a strong 4.6% rate, up from 1.8% in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economy is increasingly reliant on AI gains and the corresponding wealth effects boosting higher-income households\u2019 spending power to fuel recent growth,\u201d said Michael Pearce, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. \u201cThe economy remains sensitive to a sudden reversal of optimism on AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investment in housing rose 2.8% ticking up for the first time since the end of 2024. The housing market has been depressed by high mortgage rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s report was the last of three Commerce Department estimates of second-quarter GDP growth. The first look at third-quarter growth is due Oct. 29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. economy grew at a solid 2.2% pace from April through June as consumer spending and business…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,2096,52581,184,3153,85,46,920],"class_list":["post-632538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-consumer","tag-consumer-goods","tag-economy","tag-gdp","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}