Trump owns the U.S. economy's performance now, Lutnick says

What they're saying: "GDP just surged to 3% and the Trump Economy has officially arrived," Lutnick posted on X.

• "Biden's first quarter is behind us, and growth is already accelerating. President Trump's tariff policies have drawn historic investments and opened up global markets for U.S. businesses," he added.
• Lutnick had previously said that the Trump economy would not kick in until the second half of 2025.

Reality check: While Trump was not in office for the entirety of the first quarter, the trade policies implemented under his watch explain the lackluster GDP reading for that period.

• Businesses rushed to stockpile goods from overseas in the January to March period to beat his threatened tariffs.
• Those historic imports weighed on GDP in the first quarter, which showed the economy shrank at a 0.5% annualized rate. Imports are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP.

The intrigue: In the second quarter, the opposite happened. The reversal of that import activity boosted headline GDP, but underlying growth measures looked weaker.

• The swing in imports contributed more than 5 percentage points to GDP, the Commerce Department said earlier on Wednesday.

What to watch: Economists often look to measures that strip out volatile categories like imports to gauge the economy's health.

• Real final sales to private domestic purchasers — the sum of consumer spending and business investment, adjusted for inflation — rose at a 1.2% annualized rate, slowing from the 1.9% pace in the first quarter.
• That is far from recessionary but is the slowest pace since the end of 2022 — and a sign that the trade war is weighing on the economy.

The bottom line: Lutnick says Trump owns this economy, leaving little room to blame other factors if the data turns south.