On the bright side — there’s something you don’t hear too often these days — the March personal income and spending release from the BEA on Wednesday was decent, with an important caveat.

These figures were incorporated in the GDP tally, so they were already in the market. For an hour and a half. Nevertheless, the data’s worth a mention, particularly given that the unrounded MoM core PCE print, at just 0.028%, was the coolest since April of 2020, when prices fell amid the global economic shutdown at the onset of the pandemic.

Consensus expected a 0.1% monthly advance, so the unchanged (rounded) print was a welcome downside surprise. On a YoY basis, core price growth on the Fed’s preferred inflation metric was 2.6%, in line with estimates.

Note: January and February’s monthly prints were revised higher, from 0.29844% and 0.3651%, respectively, to 0.337% and 0.498%. Recall that the quarterly core PCE readout from the GDP release was 3.5% (SAAR), meaningfully warmer than the 3.1% expected.

Headline PCE price growth was likewise unchanged from February to March on a rounded basis. Unrounded, prices actually actually fell 0.045%. YoY, the headline PCE gauge rose 2.3% last month. That’s basically on target if you’re the Fed. The “supercore” metric — i.e., core services excluding housing — was also flat from the prior month, and rose 3.3% versus last March.

The same release showed real personal spending was quite robust last month, rising 0.7%. As the figure below shows, that was the briskest monthly advance for inflation-adjusted outlays since January 2023’s anomalous jump, and before that, the Biden “stimmy” bonanza in March of 2021.

The chart header and deck tell the story: Americans were trying to get out ahead of expected price increases associated with a 10-fold increase in the average US tariff rate.

Real disposable income posted a very healthy 0.5% advance in March. The saving rate was 3.9%.

Coming quickly full circle, this was a good release, but — and here’s the promised caveat — it reflects the state of the economy before Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” unveil which, depending on how bilateral trade negotiations pan out in the days and weeks ahead, has the potential to go down as one of the worst policy boondoggles in modern macro history.