U.S. retails sales drop by 0.9 pct in January after strong holiday spending

Olympia [Washington] (US), February 15: U.S. retail sales fell by 0.9 percent in January after a strong holiday spending, the U.S. Commerce Department reported on Friday.
Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for January 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were 723.9 billion dollars, down 0.9 percent from the previous month, and up 4.2 percent from January 2024.
The November 2024 to December 2024 percent change was revised from up 0.4 percent to up 0.7 percent.
"Front-running tariffs likely contributed to some amount of retail spending pull forward from early 2025," said Lauren Saidel-Baker, economist at ITR Economics, an economic research and consulting firm.
"Other one-off factors, such as severe winter weather and California wildfires, may have suppressed January's result," she said.
Tim Quinlan and Shannon Grein, economists at Wells Fargo, wrote in an analysis that the drop in sales came with upward revisions to December and was after solid gains across retailers at year-end.
"The January data position for weak sales growth in Q1, but consumer fundamentals are still solid," the economists said.
Source: Xinhua News Agency