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UK economic growth, February 2024

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Plane contrails streak across the sky over Regent Street on February 15, 2024 in London, England. 

Dan Kitwood | Getty Images

LONDON — U.K. gross domestic product rose 0.1% in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday, providing another sign of a return to sluggish economic growth this year.

The month-on-month figure was in line with a projection in a Reuters poll. On an annual basis, GDP was 0.2% lower.

The economy contracted in the third and fourth corners of 2023, putting the U.K. in a technical recession.

January recorded light growth, which was revised upward to 0.3% on Friday.

Construction output, which boosted growth at the start of the year, fell 1.9% in February. Instead, production output was the biggest contributor to the GDP, rising by 1.1% in February, while growth in the U.K.’s dominant services sector slowed to 0.1% from 0.3%.

The reading “all-but confirms the recession ended” last year, Paul Dales, chief U.K. economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.

“But while we expect a better economic recovery than most, we doubt it will be strong enough to prevent inflation (and interest rates) from falling much further as appears to be happening in the U.S.,” Dales added.

British inflation fell more than expected in March, to a nearly two-and-a-half year low of 3.4%.

In the U.S., however, price rises came in higher than forecast at 3.5% this week, pushing back market bets for the start of interest rate cuts from the summer to September.

This has raised questions about whether central banks elsewhere will be influenced by a later start from the Federal Reserve than previously expected, particularly if the U.S. dollar strengthens.

Goldman Sachs on Friday revised its forecast for Bank of England rate cuts this year from five to four, projecting the trims will start in June, before slowing to a quarterly pace.

Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Gordon, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that while the BOE is independent, policymakers will nevertheless be conscious of an upcoming U.K. national election, which politicians have suggested will be held in the second half of the year.

“Do you get [cuts] out of the way ahead of that general election? There is quite a lot of pressure from the governing party, not necessarily the prime minister but the chancellor has talked about expecting rate cuts.”

Overall, French said the figures strongly indicated the end of the recession but were “not a reason to hang out the bunting.”

Growth is below its pre-pandemic trend and lagging the U.S., but is on a par with much of Europe and showed signs of a pick-up in areas such as manufacturing and car production, French added.

— CNBC’s Ganesh Rao contributed to this story

Economics

Why stricter voting laws no longer help Republicans

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“The Republicans should pray for rain”—the title of a paper published by a trio of political scientists in 2007—has been an axiom of American elections for years. The logic was straightforward: each inch of election-day showers, the study found, dampened turnout by 1%. Lower turnout gave Republicans an edge because the party’s affluent electorate had the resources to vote even when it was inconvenient. Their opponents, less so.

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Why the president must not be lexicographer-in-chief

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Who decides what legal terms mean? If it is Donald Trump, God help America

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Economics

Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

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Inflation rate slipped to 2.1% in April, lower than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

Inflation barely budged in April as tariffs President Donald Trump implemented in the early part of the month had yet to show up in consumer prices, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s key inflation measure, increased just 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.1%. The monthly reading was in line with the Dow Jones consensus forecast while the annual level was 0.1 percentage point lower.

Excluding food and energy, the core reading that tends to get even greater focus from Fed policymakers showed readings of 0.1% and 2.5%, against respective estimates of 0.1% and 2.6%.

Consumer spending, though, slowed sharply for the month, posting just a 0.2% increase, in line with the consensus but slower than the 0.7% rate in March. A more cautious consumer mood also was reflected in the personal savings rate, which jumped to 4.9%, up from 0.6 percentage point in March to the highest level in nearly a year.

Personal income surged 0.8%, a slight increase from the prior month but well ahead of the forecast for 0.3%.

Markets showed little reaction to the news, with stock futures continuing to point lower and Treasury yields mixed.

People shop at a grocery store in Brooklyn on May 13, 2025 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Trump has been pushing the Fed to lower its key interest rate as inflation has continued to gravitate back to the central bank’s 2% target. However, policymakers have been hesitant to move as they await the longer-term impacts of the president’s trade policy.

On Thursday, Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell held their first face-to-face meeting since the president started his second term. However, a Fed statement indicated the future path of monetary policy was not discussed and stressed that decisions would be made free of political considerations.

Trump slapped across-the-board 10% duties on all U.S. imports, part of an effort to even out a trading landscape in which the U.S. ran a record $140.5 billion deficit in March. In addition to the general tariffs, Trump launched selective reciprocal tariffs much higher than the 10% general charge.

Since then, though, Trump has backed off the more severe tariffs in favor of a 90-day negotiating period with the affected countries. Earlier this week, an international court struck down the tariffs, saying Trump exceeded his authority and didn’t prove that national security was threatened by the trade issues.

Then in the latest installment of the drama, an appeals court allowed a White House effort for a temporary stay of the order from the U.S. Court of International Trade.

Economists worry that tariffs could spark another round of inflation, though the historical record shows that their impact is often minimal.

At their policy meeting earlier this month, Fed officials also expressed worry about potential tariff inflation, particularly at a time when concerns are rising about the labor market. Higher prices and slower economic growth can yield stagflation, a phenomenon the U.S. hasn’t seen since the early 1980s.

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