The Atlanta Federal Reserve keeps a running tally of how it expects gross domestic product to perform in the current quarter. It just swung from solid growth to contraction.
The reason could be down to some statistical noise, but it boils down to expectations that President Donald Trump's plans to introduce tariffs will push imports way down, and the difference between exports and imports is a key part of the GDP calculator.
The Atlanta Fed GDP now came in at -1.5% on Friday. At its previous update on Feb. 19, it showed expansion of 2.3%. The difference was that the contribution to growth from next exports plunged to -3.7 percentage points from -0.4 point.