Commerce ups U.S. Q4 2017 GDP growth estimate

United States gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the “third” estimate from the Department of Commerce, down from 2.5 percent from its previous projection.    United States gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of a nation’s overall economic health – grew at an annual rate of 2.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, according to the “third” estimate from the Department of Commerce.
   The fourth quarter growth rate was revised upward from the department’s “second” estimate, in which it projected a 2.5 percent growth rate. U.S. GDP grew at a 3.2 percent rate in the third quarter of 2017, 3.1 percent in the second quarter, and 1.2 percent rate in the first quarter.
   Should the estimate hold, real GDP will have increased 2.3 percent in 2017 compared with a 1.5 percent growth rate in 2016 and a 2.9 percent increase in 2015.
   GDP is a calculation of the value of the goods and services produced by a nation’s economy minus the value of the goods and services used up in production.
   The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said the deceleration in GDP growth in the fourth quarter reflected a decrease in private inventory investment, as well as an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP. Those factors were offset in part by increases in personal consumption expenditures, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, federal government spending, and residential fixed investment.
   Real exports of goods and services grew 7 percent in the fourth quarter, according to BEA, compared with a 2.1 percent increase in the third quarter. Imports, meanwhile, jumped 14.1 percent, compared with a 0.7 percent decline the previous quarter.
   In other encouraging news for the U.S. economy, the most recent data from Commerce indicates new orders for durable goods rebounded in February, rising 3.1 percent to $247.7 billion, following a revised 3.5 percent decrease in January. The January decline in durable goods orders was only the second in the last seven months.
   Commerce’s Census Bureau noted that transportation equipment, also up for the fifth time in seven months after slipping in January, drove the increase in durable goods orders, growing 7.1 percent to $83.5 billion for the month. Excluding orders for transportation equipment, total durable goods orders were up just 1.2 percent in February.
   Shipments of manufactured durable goods, now up in nine of the last 10 months, ticked up 0.9 percent to $249.7 billion in February, following revised increases of 0.5 percent each in January and December, and a 1.3 percent bump in November.