Fed says Trump's trade fight is cutting U.S. economic growth

President Trump's trade war is crimping economic growth to the 2 percent pace he assailed as unacceptable in the Obama years.

That's the implication of new research from a group of Federal Reserve economists. They just released a first-of-its-kind study by the central bank to attempt to quantify the impact of the trade fight on GDP.

The researchers examined hundreds of corporate earnings-call transcripts and news stories to assess rising uncertainty spawned by the trade war and arrived at an estimated tab for it. The trade war, they estimate, will shave 1 percent off of growth through the early part of 2020.

That may not seem huge, but it's the difference between where growth has been tracking lately — bumping along at the respectable but unimpressive 2 percent level Trump blasted under President Barack Obama — and the 3 percent clip that Trump promised to deliver at a minimum. New data show further economic weakening, with the Atlanta Fed trimming its third-quarter GDP forecast to an annualized rate of just 1.5 percent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-finance-202/2019/09/06/the-finance-202-fed-says-trump-s-trade-fight-is-cutting-u-s-economic-growth/5d718da988e0fa7bb93a89a6/