Commerce Secretary Plans To Fake GDP Reporting

The New York Times reports:

In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, suggested that he planned to change the way the government reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending.

“You know that governments historically have messed with G.D.P.,” he said. “They count government spending as part of G.D.P. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what Mr. Lutnick meant. The basic definition of gross domestic product is widely accepted internationally and has been unchanged for decades. It tallies consumer spending, private-sector investment, net exports, and government investment and spending to arrive at a broad measure of all goods and services produced in a country.

Read the full article. The reason for the above is below.

On March 3, the #GDPNow model nowcast of real GDP growth in Q1 2025 is -2.8%: https://t.co/T7FoDdgYos. #ATLFedResearch

Download our EconomyNow app or go to our website for the latest GDPNow nowcast: https://t.co/NOSwMl7Jms. pic.twitter.com/FdSehrEcSg

— Atlanta Fed (@AtlantaFed) March 3, 2025