Updated at 9:05 AM EDT
U.S. retail sales powered higher last month, data indicated Wednesday, as consumers rushed to buy big-ticket items ahead of the tariff hit expected from President Donald Trump’s trade policies.
Headline sales rose 1.4% last month to $734.9 billion, the Commerce Department , just ahead of Wall Street’s consensus forecast of a 1.3% gain and a solid rebound from the February reading of 0.2%.
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Autos and car-part sales were up 5.3%, the report noted, while sales excluding autos and parts ticked up only 0.5%. Sales that stripped out autos and gasoline receipts were up 0.8%.
The closely tracked control-group number, which excludes autos, building materials, office supplies, gas-station sales and tobacco, and which feeds into the government’s GDP calculations, rose 0.4% on the month, just inside the Wall Street consensus forecast of a 0.6% gain.
President Donald Trump’s tariff regime might have given March retail sales a lift as consumers looked to buy imported goods ahead of the sweeping levies unveiled in early April.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images
“Today’s retail sales report showed little sign of recession, despite Wall Street’s recent turmoil,” said David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation.
“However, there were signs of demand being pulled forward in anticipation of tariffs taking effect,” he added. “The report might be good news for the economy, but it might not be the best news for investors because it doesn’t support rate cuts. The upward pressure on yields may continue.”
Stocks extended their premarket declines in the wake of the data release, with futures contracts tied to the S&P 500 suggesting an opening-bell decline of around 50 points and those linked to the Dow Jones Industrial Average priced for a 122point decline
The tech-focused Nasdaq is called 330 points lower as a result of the new export restrictions on AI-chip makers Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) .
Benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields were steady at 4.393% while 2-year notes were pegged at 3.811%.
The end-of-quarter push to purchase goods that are likely to fall under President Trump’s tariff schedules is likely to reverse over the coming months. That’s as consumer confidence fades and the labor market begins to reflect the administration’s effort to slash the federal government workforce.
Related: CPI inflation report shows pre-tariff price pressures eased in March
Last week, the University of Michigan’s April reading of consumer sentiment, an investment benchmark, slumped to the lowest in nearly three years amid the broader tariff angst, while inflation expectations surged to the highest levels since the early 1980s.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracking tool, which will be updated later today, pegs the economy’s first-quarter contraction at around 2.4%, modestly improved from its 2.8% contraction estimate earlier in the month.
“Now that consumer sentiment has declined significantly, we need to watch the so-called ‘hard’ numbers that would be more directly tied to consumption,” said Mark Malek, chief investment officer at Sibert Financial, prior to today’s release.
“At the end of the month, we will get personal-spending data, which will give us another more direct-link indicator of GDP,” he added. “That number has already been displaying weakness, and we will have to see if that continues.”
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