The US economy grew surprisingly weak in the second quarter

The US economy grew surprisingly weak in the second quarter after anemic growth at the beginning of the year. The cause were weak business investment, which largely offset fairly solid increase in consumer spending. This shows a preliminary assessment.
Gross Domestic Product of the US, which is the most common measure of the production of goods and services, increased in the second quarter by 1.2% with an average forecast of accelerating growth to 2.6 percent. Meanwhile, the final data for GDP growth in the first quarter fell to 0.8% from 1.1%.
Consumer spending, a key engine of the economy, rose in the second quarter by 4.2% following weak growth of 1.6% at the beginning of the year. It should be kept in mind, that the domestic consumption forms more than two-thirds of the growth of the world's leading economy. Although expectations were for an even better growth of 4.4%, the increase in consumer spending of 4.2% was the best since the end of 2014, the cost of purchases of goods increased by 6.8%, while those for services - by 3%.
On the other side are business investments, which shrank in the second quarter by 2.2% after falling by 3.4% at the beginning of the year.
Meanwhile, exports in the second quarter rose by 1.4% while imports fell by 0.4%, which means that international trade has added 0.23% to the growth of the US economy.