The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, fueling recession fears at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in office as he wages a potentially costly trade war.

Gross domestic product, a sum of all the goods and services produced from January through March, fell at a 0.3% annualized pace, according to a Commerce Department report Wednesday adjusted for seasonal factors and inflation.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 0.4% after GDP rose by 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024. However, over the past day or so some Wall Street economists changed their outlook to negative growth, largely due to an unexpected rise in imports as companies and consumers sought to get ahead of the Trump tariffs implemented in early April.

Indeed, imports soared 41.3% for the quarter, driven by a 50.9% increase in goods. Imports subtract from GDP, so the contraction in growth may not be viewed as negatively given the potential for the trend to reverse in subsequent quarters. Imports took more than 5 percentage points off the headline reading.

Consumer spending slowed during the period but was still positive. Personal consumption expenditures increased 1.8% for the period, the slowest quarterly gain since Q2 of 2023 and down from a 4% gain in the prior quarter.

Moreover, private domestic investment soared during the period, rising 21.9%.

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The euro zone economy grew by a stronger-than-expected 0.4% in the first quarter, flash data from statistics agency Eurostat showed Wednesday, as global tariff tensions cast uncertainty upon the bloc’s trajectory.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.2% expansion in the first three months of the year, following a revised 0.2% growth print in the last quarter of 2024.

Figures published earlier Wednesday showed the gross domestic product (GDP) of Germany, Europe’s largest economy, rose 0.2% over the same period. The French GDP added 0.1% across the three-month stretch.

Continuing a recent trend, southern European and smaller economies outperformed, with the Spanish and Lithuanian GDPs adding 0.6% each, while Italy’s economic output grew by 0.3%. The economy of Ireland, which tends to have volatile readings due to its high proportion of multinational companies, expanded by 3.2% in the first quarter.

Euro zone economic growth has been lackluster for much of 2023 and 2024, even as the European Central Bank has been cutting interest rates in an effort to stimulate growth and boost economic activity. The ECB’s deposit facility rate, its key rate, was taken down to 2.25% earlier this month — down from highs of 4% in mid-2023.

The ECB in March said it was expecting the euro zone economy to grow by 0.9% in 2025, slightly below its January forecast. Fresh projections are due out in June, with central bank policymakers last week suggesting to CNBC that the forecasts would prove crucial in the rate decision-making process.

On the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund World Bank Spring meetings, the policymakers and other economists and officials widely noted the U.S.’ tariff policy as a key concern when it comes to growth.

ECB President Christine Lagarde noted that, while the “disinflationary process is so much on track that we are nearing completion,” there were shocks that would “dampen” the gross domestic product.

The European Union, which includes the euro zone countries, is facing 20% blanket trade tariffs from the U.S., which has briefly reduced these measures alongside levies on other counterparties until July for negotiations. The EU has also put its own retaliatory measures on hold for now. The bloc is also subject to additional tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos.

Data released on Tuesday nevertheless showed that economic sentiment in the euro area fell in April, hitting its lowest level since December 2024.

While growth has been subdued, euro zone inflation has been nearing the ECB’s 2% target, coming in at 2.2% in March. The latest inflation data release is expected later this week.

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Consumer attitude about both the present and near future dimmed again in April, as tariffs dented sentiment and confidence in employment hit levels last seen around the global financial crisis.

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 86 on the month, down 7.9 points from its prior reading and below the Dow Jones estimate for 87.7.

However, the view of conditions further out deteriorated even more.

The board’s expectations index, which measures how respondents look at the next six months, tumbled to 54.4, a decline of 12.5 points and the lowest reading since October 2011. Board officials said the reading is consistent with a recession.

“The three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” said Stephanie Guichard, the board’s senior economist for global indicator.

Guichard added that the confidence surveys overall were at “levels not seen since the onset of the Covid pandemic.”

Indeed, the level of respondents expecting employment to fall over the next six months hit 32.1%, “nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession,” Guichard added. That contraction lasted from December 2007 until June 2009. The level of respondents seeing jobs as “hard to get” rose to 16.6%, up half a percentage point from March, while those seeing jobs as “plentiful” fell to 31.7%, down from 33.6%.

Future income prospects also turned negative for the first time in five years.

The downbeat views extended to the stock market, with 48.5% expecting lower prices in the next 12 months, the worst reading since October 2011. Inflation expectations also surged, at 7% for the next year, the highest since November 2022.

Driving the pessimism was fear over tariffs, which reached an all-time high for the survey. Recession expectations hit a two-year high as well.

In related data Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment postings in March fell to their lowest level since September 2024. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed 7.19 million positions, down from 7.48 million in February and below the Wall Street expectation of 7.5 million.

Government postings fell by 59,000 amid President Donald Trump’s efforts to pare down the federal workforce. Transportation, warehousing and utilities also saw a drop of 59,000.

The JOLTS survey showed hiring was little changed while layoffs fell by 222,000.