No sooner have Americans come to terms with their second-quarter economic slowdown than economists have started warning that the news is worse than they first let on. Output growth slowed to an annualised rate of 2.4%, according to the government's initial estimate, down from a 3.7% rate during the first quarter. Among the chief culprits was a widening trade gap. Imports grew nearly three times as fast as exports for the period, producing a bigger drag on output. As Christina Romer, the outgoing head of Ba-rack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, lamented, "A bit of you keeps saying that if only those were American products, think of how high gdp growth would have been."
展开▼
