The United States GDP grew only 1.6% in the first quarter of the year

The president of the Federal Reserve (Fed), Jerome Powell, has acknowledged slower than expected progress and that the 1.6% GDP growth in the United States during the first quarter of the year is below analysts’ expectations. , who expected an increase of 2.2%.

However, despite the fact that the figure shows a decrease of 1.8 percentage points compared to the 3.4% GDP registered in the last quarter of 2023, the data published by the Department of Commerce show the US economy with a solid base. This is how consumer spending, the main driver of economic growth, had a positive performance, registering an increase of 2.5%.

In that sense, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected that the world’s largest economy will grow 2.7% this year; that is, six tenths more than what was expected in January and above the expected growth of other economies, such as Germany, France, Japan and the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, considering that in March year-on-year inflation rose three tenths to 3.5% – its second consecutive monthly increase – the director of the IMF, Kristalina Gueorguieva, warned that the counterpart of the solid economic growth of the United States is that it is delaying Inflation is more than projected to approach the 2% target set by the Fed, even though prices have fallen from the peak in mid-2022.

For its part, the Fed predicted that inflation would stabilize in the near future, suggesting that high interest rates would remain longer than expected. Furthermore, he states that Rate cuts are not considered until there is confidence that prices are sustainably approaching the 2% target because weaker than expected growth coupled with high inflation would complicate the progress of US monetary policy.

Interest rates, which set the price of borrowing money, have remained in a range of 5.25% to 5.5% since July 2023, their highest level since 2001.