At first glance, the latest snapshot of the American economy looked reassuring. Exports were climbing, powered in no small part by the voracious global appetite for artificial intelligence hardware, software licences, and the cloud services that run on top of them. For a moment, the headline growth number seemed to tell a story of momentum. Beneath that surface, however, the picture was considerably less comfortable.

Consumer spending — which typically accounts for roughly two-thirds of US economic output — grew at a pace that economists described as sluggish, reflecting the cumulative pressure of elevated interest rates and a job market that, while still resilient, is no longer generating the kind of wage gains that powered household budgets in 2022 and 2023. Business investment, meanwhile, posted a similarly underwhelming performance, with many corporate finance officers choosing to preserve cash rather than commit to new plant, equipment, or expansion. The divergence matters because export surges, however impressive, are inherently volatile. Demand from trading partners in Asia and Europe can shift quickly in response to currency movements, policy changes, or rival supply chains, whereas domestic consumption and fixed investment tend to provide more durable and self-reinforcing growth.

Several economists noted that when exports are doing the heavy lifting, an economy is effectively outsourcing its own momentum — a position that becomes precarious the moment global sentiment turns. What is unambiguous is that artificial intelligence has become a genuine force in US trade figures, channelling billions of dollars in cross-border revenue to a relatively small cluster of technology firms headquartered in California and Washington State.