Trump Presides Over First Quarterly Economic Contraction Since 2022, Locates Its Origin In Predecessor Who Left Office 100 Days Earlier

WASHINGTON. The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Wednesday that the U.S. economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025, the first such decline in three years, a result President Donald Trump promptly credited to a predecessor who had by then been out of office for roughly 100 days.

The figure landed in the same week the administration marked its own first 100 days, an interval the President had devoted largely to imposing, escalating, pausing, and reimposing tariffs on nearly every trading partner the United States maintains. Officials described the milestone as a period of decisive economic action, and the contraction as something that had happened next to it.

Economists noted that the decline was driven substantially by a record surge in imports, as American companies rushed to bring foreign goods into the country before the President's tariffs could take effect and raise their cost. Because imports are subtracted in the arithmetic of gross domestic product, the President's signature trade policy had, in functional terms, manufactured the negative number now being assigned to the man who preceded him.

"BE PATIENT," the President wrote on Truth Social, in a post attributing the quarter's performance to his predecessor and assuring the country that growth he did not yet have would eventually arrive and be his. A source within the administration cautioned against reading the contraction as a downturn, describing it instead as "the sound of a great economy clearing its throat" and noting that some future quarter would almost certainly be positive.

Administration officials further argued that the import surge was itself proof the tariffs were working, reasoning that businesses would not have spent billions of dollars racing to avoid the levies if they did not believe the levies were real. The officials declined to characterize the contraction that the racing had produced, observing only that it had taken place during a quarter, and that quarters come for every president.

At press time, the President had clarified that any future quarter showing growth would belong entirely to him, and any quarter showing contraction would belong, retroactively, to whichever name proved most convenient at the time.