You are excused if you are confused about the second quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures that were released August 28. (GDP is the value of everything produced in a country during a specific period.) An MSNBC headline on the report said that “Trump’s agenda is strangling growth, raising costs and killing jobs.”
That doesn’t sound so great.
But wait. A Fox Business headline claimed that “US economy grew at faster pace in Q2,” while a Fox News segment on the report was titled “Why the Trump White House is ‘taking a victory lap.’”
My guess is that it’s unlikely that conflicting headlines about the economy left you confused. While many people simply rely on headlines to shape their opinions, at least an equally large percentage intentionally choose news sources that are most likely to confirm their core biases.
Neither technique is likely to provide meaningful insight into data as complex as GDP.
There are between 500,000 and 700,000 individual data points needed to calculate GDP. While second quarter GDP increased at a 3.3% annual rate, a single figure is limited in what it reveals about the economy. Here are a few of my observations from the details of the report. I recommend you use the data to write your own headline.
While the economy grew at a 3.3% annual rate from the first quarter of 2025 to the second quarter, it is also instructional to look at the growth over 12 months. Compared to the second quarter of 2024, the US economy grew 2.1% in the second quarter of 2025. Any time you are calculating rates of change, your starting point matters. (Just ask the football coach who followed Nick Saban and the one who followed Jeremy Pruitt.)
If you only looked at the headline figure, you wouldn’t know that the Equipment segment of the economy grew 13.5% in the past 12 months. If that sounds good, does your opinion change when you discover that 85% of the new equipment purchases in the US over the past year were aircraft? Additionally, spending on domestic air fare increased 28% from a year ago.
Other segments that grew much faster than the overall economy in the past 12 months include Gambling (+13%), Financial Services (+20%), Health Care (+9%), and Home Improvements (+19%). Revenues of community food and emergency services organizations increased 14%.
US exports increased 4% in the past year, while imports increased 2.5%. The federal government grew 4%, which is the combination of a 7% increase in defense spending and a slight decline in all non-defense spending.
Large declines over the past year include Housing (completed stationary units, down 12%), Used Auto sales (-15%), and Multifamily Home construction (-13%).
David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.