Wanting to measure the economy in real time has its dangers. That they tell the US investors when a few days ago, suddenly, they found that the GDPnow indicator prepared by the Atlanta Fed reserve, a kind of ‘Live GDP’, recorded an unexpected gap in its forecast for the first quarter of this year. If Donald Trump’s aggressive policies are already undermining confidence and have returned a possible scenario of recession to debate, the batacazo of this indicator further struck fear. All fears perched on the pillar of the US economy, a private consumption (70% of it) that has started the year as cold as the climate. However, he soon saw that there was a certain ‘mirage’ in the data and that The culprit of this almost perfect ‘crime’ was none other than gold.
Explained in the most summary way possible. He GDPnow indicator It grants an important weight to imports, which logically ballast to GDP as opposed to exports (which is bought from outside in the face of what is produced in the country and sells outside). Although it was initially thought that import growth was due to the fact that importers were buying massively before Trump’s commercial tariffs entered into play, the reality is that this was not at all at all. The engine was partly the fear of tariffs, but the imports that the staff left the staff were gold, so to speak, ‘speculative’.
Let’s put ourselves in a situation. Gold has been rising through global uncertainty, growing geopolitical tensions and the massive purchases of central banks in the middle of attempts by countries not aligned with the US to undermine the power of the dollar. To this has been added in this quarter the Threat of tariffs by Trumpwhich has ended up promoting gold purchases from the US through two quite interconnected roads. On the one hand, they create uncertainty, and in the face of uncertainty, gold remains a highly appreciated shelter. On the other, some panic has been extended to the fact that these tariffs of the President are ‘general’ and therefore affect the imports of physical gold that are made from the US. In fact, Canada and Mexico, main victims to date of the Republican’s commercial wrath, are outstanding exporters of the golden metal to the US.
This dynamic has created a succulent arbitration opportunity lucrative for operators who have signed contracts to sell futures of the raw material stock New York (Comex) with the promise of delivering physical bullion. The high premium of the futures on cash prices, which at one point has exceeded 50 dollars, has resulted in a fever of transatlantic gold, since operators have rushed to transfer the metal of the vaults of London to New York, leaving holders of problems of problems of Stock In the prestigious London Metal Bag (LME), the largest shopping center of physical bullion in the world, and tails to collect gold in the Bank of England. As a sample of this frantic impulse, Comex deposits have increased by 121% since the end of November and are currently in almost 40 million ouncesthe highest level recorded since 1992.
In Swissthe largest traffic and refining center of billets in the world, together precisely to the United Kingdom, gold exports reached in January its highest level in at least 13 years thanks precisely to the US, compensating for lower purchases by China and India. The Helvetic case is quite particular to the extent that it has acted from ‘bridge’ with gold sent from London. Since in the British capital the standard weight is the 400 -ounces bars, the merchants who have to deliver physical ingots to Comex in New York must first send gold to Switzerland. There, the refineries merge and transform it into the 100 -ounce bars required by the US raw materials.
Returning to the ‘hole’ in GDP forecast, the sequence of the events takes us to last Friday February 28When the aforementioned GDPnow indicator, which is updated every few days ‘entering’ incoming macroeconomic data, up to four points collapsed, going from projecting a GDP growth of 2.3% annualized in the first quarter to be reflected A dramatic -1.5%. In subsequent updates the following days, the fall of the GDPNow was going to -2.8% annualized. A tastzo without contemplation.
Then the role of imports in this collapse was seen and the rest of the known clues have subsequently pointed to gold. The US widened its commercial deficit up to 6% of GDP When importing a record of 329.5 billion dollars in goods of all kinds, 36,000 million dollars more than the previous month, according to the data of the Department of Commerce published last Thursday. Entering shipments of finished metal shapes, a category that includes precious metal bars, represented almost 60% of the monthly increase in goods imports.
A more detailed analysis shows that the customs value of the Golden beating imports and other precious metals ascended to the whopping 30.8 billion dollars in Januaryafter 10.7 billion dollars were sent to the US at the end of 2024. To get an idea, the average monthly value in 2022 and 2023 was 1.7 billion dollars.
The tranquility, at least on this front, was imposed when several analysts said that these golden imports They will not affect the official GDP calculation that does the Office of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Department of Commerce. This is because the increase in imports mainly reflects the impact of arbitration on the gold market and most of the incoming metal will not be used in production.
“Most of the extension of the commercial deficit since November reflects greater imports of gold, which are excluded from official GDP because generally They are not consumed or used in production“, Manuel Abecasis was rushed to clarify, Goldman Sachs economist, in a client note. Due to the distortion of commercial figures derived from gold imports,” we believe that too many conclusions have been extracted from the latest data, “he followed.
In a LinkedIn post, Patrick HigginsThe economist behind the GDPnow, has realized what happened: “The unusual expansion of the January commercial deficit that led to much of the strong fall of the GDPnow on February 28 and the circumstances that surrounded that fall were something unprecedented. It is something that we now know by the full international trade report of March 6, but that until then we could only suspect based on annecdotal data and not United States”.
Seeking to clarify more the panorama, Higgins has somewhat broken the rules and has ‘put hand’ to the indicator publishing an estimate of the GDPnow ‘adjusted to gold‘. By eliminating gold from imports and exports, the growth forecasts of the metric and the contribution of net exports to said forecasts in approximately two percentage points increase. Thus, the last data available, instead of -2.4% would be 0.4% annualized. A fairly flat growth, compatible with stagnation, but not that ‘hole’ of the original figure. However, the ‘corrected’ figure remains below the forecasts of analysts such as Goldman, which contemplate a growth of 1.3% annualized after 2.3% of the fourth quarter, in which personal consumption continued to endure hard.
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