Slow growth won’t derail US Fed from further rate rises

US GDP growth slowed to just 0.2% in the first quarter of the year from 0.5% in the final three months of 2016, its weakest performance since the opening quarter of 2014.

These data are adjusted to take account of seasonal factors such as holidays.

However, there appears to be an issue with the seasonal adjustment of the figures, which has given an overly negative view of growth in the first quarter for the last number of years.