The New York Stock Exchange on 30 April. The stock market edged lower on Wednesday with the slowing of the US economy. Photograph: AP  America's eclipse by China will come all the sooner if the performance of the US economy in the first three months of 2014 is a sign of things to come. But it isn't. News that growth ground to a virtual standstill has come as a surprise and led to a knee-jerk fall in the value of the dollar.  Yet this was a weather-related one-off rather than the start of a slide into recession. And it will have no bearing on the Federal Reserve's steady reduction in the amount of stimulus provided to the economy.  The Fed will take comfort from the details of the GDP report, which indicates that the US economy is in more robust shape than the 0.1% annualised growth would suggest.  Household consumption rose at an annual rate of 3% in the first quarter, while the big downward surprise – the 6% drop in private investment – was largely due to a decline in spending on residential housing, a sector particularly hard hit by the arctic weather that paralysed a hefty chunk of the US in February.  Trade was also a drag on growth, but this too may have had something to do with American firms having trouble getting their products to ports for export.  The weak start to 2014 will mean that US growth forecasts for this year are going to be revised down. But the latest figures for private-sector job growth – which rose by 220,000 in April – show that activity picked up as the snow melted and temperatures rose.
Weak start to 2014 meant revising down forecasts for year but jobs market is picking up with the spring