U.S. Q2 GDP Growth Unrevised at 1.5% in Second Estimate as AI-Hardware Import Surge Offsets Strong Consumer Spending

Real U.S. GDP grew at a 1.5% annualized rate in the second quarter of 2026, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said in its second estimate released August 26, unrevised from the 1.5% advance estimate published roughly four weeks earlier, on July 30. The headline pace marks a deceleration from 2.1% growth in the first quarter, but it masks a notably stronger picture underneath: consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, grew at a 3.4% annual clip, up sharply from just 0.5% in the January-March period, and business investment excluding housing rose at an 8.5% pace, which AP reporting tied to the ongoing AI investment boom.

The gap between that underlying strength and the tepid 1.5% headline traces to a specific mechanism: imports, which subtract from GDP under national accounting conventions, rose at a 12.5% annualized pace in the quarter, a surge AP attributed to AI-hardware buying that alone sliced 1.64 percentage points off second-quarter growth. In other words, businesses and consumers spent and invested more, but a large share of that spending went toward imported goods, which shows up as a drag on the domestic growth figure rather than a contribution to it.

The second estimate did not move the headline number, but it did shift what sits beneath it: BEA revised consumer spending up while also revising imports up, an offsetting pair that left the rounded 1.5% figure unchanged even though, at finer precision, the estimate ticked down by less than a tenth of a percentage point from the advance reading. A broader gauge of domestic demand, real final sales to private domestic purchasers (consumer spending plus fixed investment), was revised up to a 4.2% annual rate, 0.3 percentage point above the prior estimate, suggesting underlying momentum may be running ahead of the headline GDP print.

Whether that resilience holds could depend on how long the AI-driven import surge persists. If hardware buying moderates in coming quarters, the drag on GDP from imports could ease and let the strength in consumer spending and business investment show through more directly in the headline number. Investors and policymakers are likely to watch the third-quarter data for signs of whether consumer demand and AI-related capital spending can keep offsetting a still-sluggish top-line growth rate.