May 2: Halfway to recession in the US economy?

In which, we assess those first quarter econ numbers and the… uneven… reporting on those numbers.

Halfway to recession in the US economy?

One of the general markers of a recession is considered to be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Well, the first quarter numbers for 2025 came in negative by a hair (-0.3%). So that technically means we’re halfway to a recession, right?

Well, as with most things that depends on who you ask. If you asked most news outlets in 2022 (the last time we had two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth), there was every reason to be bullish about the economy, and, in fact, we didn’t really have a recession at all.

Now, in 2025, with just one quarter of negative GDP growth, we are apparently headed right into a recession. What changed, I wonder? Who the President was. Yes, I’m alleging media bias when it comes to the economic analysis surrounding the economy.

As you’ll find in my own writing on the subject in 2022, and again in May and August of last year, the markers of recession were everywhere. We had negative to sluggish GDP growth, market volatility, sticky (but manageable) inflation, and a decent unemployment rate. In fact, the main economic markers that we have right now are very similar to what we saw in the back half of the Biden administration. But the media coverage of the economic situation is vastly different.

To be fair, though the topline numbers are similar, the reasons they are the way they are are very different. Negative GDP growth in 2022 came as a result of Bidenomics massive spending rather than a surge in imports in 2025.

Two major takeaways from this brief comparison of the Biden and Trump economies:

1. Economically, the mixed signals are mixed, meaning that there is a degree of uncertainty, but the data is not definitely pointing to a recession. Could still happen, but we need to wait at least until July/August to figure that out.

2. Politically, economic uncertainty is almost as bad as a bad economy in that it does have real political and electoral consequences. So, the Trump administration has a heavy lift in front of it as they attempt to implement a multipronged-interlocking economic agenda that has never been attempted before (hence the market uncertainty), get some positive feedback on that agenda, and all before the midterms in 2026.

In other words, it’s too soon to tell where this all lands.