Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
We're coming to you live from London.
I'm James Menendez.
Leading up to November's presidential election in the United States,
the number one issue for most voters was the economy and in particular rising prices.
Donald Trump campaigned and won on a promise to bring down inflation and give a sharp boost to growth.
It would be the golden age of America, he said shortly after taking office.
Well, today saw the release of the latest figures on America's economic output, or GDP,
and they showed that instead of growing,
the economy actually shrank by an annualised 0.3% during the first three months of the year.
In the final three months of last year, it grew by 2.4%.
But at the White House earlier,
President Trump said today's contraction was his predecessor, Joe Biden's fault.
Core GDP, and this is, you know, you probably saw some numbers today,
and I have to start off by saying that's Biden,
that's not Trump, because we came in on January,
this is quarterly numbers, but we took over his mess in so many different ways.
Core GDP, removing distortions from imports, inventories,
and government spending, was up plus 3% when you add it.
We had numbers that despite what we were handed,