US fourth-quarter growth cut to 2.4 per cent

The US government slashed its estimate for fourth-quarter growth as consumer spending and exports were less robust than initially thought, leaving the economy on a more sustainable path of modest expansion.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.4 per cent annual rate, the Commerce Department said. That was down sharply from the 3.2 per cent pace reported last month and the 4.1 per cent logged in the third quarter.

It is not unusual for the government to make sharp revisions to GDP numbers, as it does not have complete data when it makes its initial estimates. In fact, the latest figures will be subject to revisions next month as more information is received.

The revision left GDP just above the economy’s potential growth trend, which analysts put somewhere between a 2 per cent and 2.3 per cent pace.

Consumer spending accounted for a large chunk of the revision after retail sales in November and December came in weaker than assumed.

Consumer spending was cut to a 2.6 per cent rate, still the fastest pace since the first quarter of 2012. It had previously been reported to have grown at a 3.3 per cent pace.

Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of US economic activity, contributed 1.73 percentage points to GDP growth, down from the previously reported 2.26 percentage points. As a result, final domestic demand was lowered two-tenths of a percentage point to a 1.2 per cent rate.

The loss of momentum appears to have spilled over into in the first quarter of 2014, with an unusually cold winter weighing on retail sales, home building and sales, hiring and industrial production.

Despite the first quarter’s weak start, economists remain optimistic that growth this year will be the strongest since the recession ended almost five years ago. For all of 2013, the economy grew 1.9 per cent.

Trade also weighed on fourth-quarter revisions, after a fall in exports in December resulted in a bigger trade deficit in the fourth quarter than the government had initially assumed.

Trade’s contribution to growth was lowered to 0.99 percentage point from 1.33 percentage points. It was still the largest contribution to GDP growth since late 2010.

Inventories, previously reported to have risen by $127.2 billion in the fourth quarter, were revised down to $117.4 billion. The rise in the stocks of unsold goods was still the largest since early 1998 and followed a gain of $115.7 billion in the third quarter of 2013.

The contribution to growth from inventories, which the government put at 0.42 percentage point a month ago, was revised down to only 0.14 percentage point. Excluding inventories, the economy grew at a 2.3 per cent rate, revised down from a 2.5 pe rcent pace.

Government spending was also revised down, but the impact was offset by upward revisions to investment in residential construction, nonresidential structures and business spending on equipment.

Reuters