The GDP nowcast dipped on import/export prices but rose on retail sales.
Pat Higgins at GDPNow has made official adjustments to its model to account for gold imports.
The base model doesn’t adjust for gold imports/exports but the BEA does.
Gold bars and bullion are considered financial assets and gold imports have soared along with other imports, front-running tariffs.
For discussion, please see my March 27, 2025 GDPNow Discussion.
The gold-adjusted numbers are the ones to follow. Starting February 28, my chart only shows the adjusted numbers.
Latest Developments
The import-export price report on the 15th took 0.1 percentage points off the Nowcast and 0.2 percentage points off Real Final Sales (RFS).
Today’s strong retail sales forecast added 0.4 percentage points to the Nowcast and 0.5 percentage points to Real Final Sales (RFS).
Latest Forecast
- Nowcast: -0.1 Percent
- Real Final Sales: -0.4 Percent
Real Final Sales is the important number. The difference between the Nowcast and RFS is inventory adjustment that nets to zero over time.
However, I wonder about inventories looking ahead because of all the tariff front-running of parts and general merchandise from highly-tariffed nations.
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