I have a close friend who works in investments and we were talking about real GDP growth. The conversation centered around short term bumps vs long term real growth (i.e. successive quarters). At this point they dropped this on me:
If you look closer, our soybean exports skyrocketed
I don't track these things so I couldn't validate it, but when I asked them to explain further, they pointed out that looking at soy beans as a single example, prior to the tariffs going into effect, there was a large surge of purchasing done to slip under the door. They believe that this is the real cause of GDP spike to 4.1%.
Can an economist or someone with more experience in this area weigh in? I know GDP measures production, but I don't understand the details behind this.
Edit: /u/Midlakewinter provided this useful post that talks about it further. I'm hoping more news sources pick this up.
Submitted July 27, 2018 at 02:45PM by AKA_Wildcard https://ift.tt/2AfsuRF
