The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5% annual pace from January through March as President Donald Trump’s trade wars disrupted business, the Commerce Department reported Thursday in a downgrade from its previous estimate.
First-quarter growth sank under a surge of imports as companies in the United States rushed to bring in foreign goods before Trump could impose tariffs on them. The Commerce Department previously estimated that the economy fell 0.2% in the first quarter.
