Last week ended with a bit of a shock for economists: an estimate of a huge U.S. January trade imbalance, driven by a head-spinning surge in imports.
The data seemed to show a vast effort by U.S. businesses to ramp up foreign buying ahead of new tariffs. Economists worried that was a bad sign for U.S. economic growth in the first quarter of 2025, because imports are subtracted from GDP.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs offered a different explanation over the weekend: They think the big pickup in imports is mostly due to a flood of gold bars heading to the U.S., a hot trade that reflects the complex financial market for the precious metal and a split in the prices of gold in London versus New York.
