A barrage of economic data released yesterday painted a picture that would stump even Jackson Pollock.

At first glance…the economy shrank last quarter for the first time since Q1 2022.

• US gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 0.3% in Q1, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, missing economists’ expectations of a 0.4% increase.
• That drop can likely be attributed to a massive spike in imports (roughly a 41% increase from the previous quarter) from companies stocking up on goods and materials before President Trump’s tariffs took effect. The Commerce Department counts imports as a negative in GDP calculations as they represent spending on foreign goods.

Every data point was touched by the tariffs

Consumer sentiment keeps dropping, but people are still spending money.

It’s complicated: First-quarter consumer spending squeaked up 1.8%, its smallest growth in the last two years. But a separate report from the Commerce Department released yesterday showed that consumer spending had its strongest pace of growth for the year in March, likely at least in part because people rushed to make big-ticket purchases like cars before the tariffs kicked in.

Inflation is down…kinda. The Fed’s favorite inflation tracker, the personal consumption expenditures price index, rose 3.6% last quarter compared to 2.4% the quarter before. But for March, it jumped only 2.3% compared to the same month last year, down from a 2.5% year over year rise in February.

One thing’s for sure: This data won’t make things easier for the Fed when central bankers meet next week to weigh inflation and the state of the labor market, especially as payroll provider ADP reported a shockingly low number of jobs added to private payrolls in April.

Trump’s response: In a Truth Social post, the president advised patience and blamed former President Biden for handing over a rough economy. In a Cabinet meeting yesterday, the president said people should “give us a pass on the first month, we were sort of getting a little bit used to things.”—MM

Ukraine and the US signed a minerals deal. After some contentious last-minute tweaking, the US and Ukraine yesterday signed an “economic partnership agreement” that grants the US access to Ukraine’s valuable rare earth minerals and establishes a joint investment fund for the two countries. President Trump had pushed for the deal, framing it as a way for Ukraine to pay the US back for its aid in repelling Russia’s invasion. It wasn’t clear if Trump would continue that aid—and the US has pushed for a peace deal that would cede some Ukrainian territory to Russia—but the agreement shows the administration is committed to “a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

Apple violated order to reform the App Store, judge rules. It’s time for another Fortnite victory dance: A federal judge ruled that Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with an antitrust ruling won by Epic Games that required changes to fees connected with the App Store, and said a company executive had lied under oath. The judge also referred the matter to prosecutors for a criminal contempt investigation. It wasn’t the day’s only Big Tech antitrust news: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai testified yesterday that the US’ proposal requiring data-sharing with competitors to punish Google for an illegal monopoly on online search would be “extraordinary” and would amount to a “de facto divestiture of search.”

SCOTUS seems poised to allow religious charter schools. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a case over whether Oklahoma’s charter school program, which provides public funds to privately run schools, can include a Catholic school. Most of the conservative justices appeared open to permitting the country’s first-ever religious charter school, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh saying religious people and institutions cannot be treated as “second class.” The three liberal justices, meanwhile, seemed more skeptical of redrawing the boundaries between church and state. Chief Justice Roberts, who seemed more on the fence, could be the deciding vote, or the case could end up at a 4–4 stalemate, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett opted to recuse herself from the case.—AR

Meta’s ad sales grew last quarter, reassuring Big Tech watchers anxious about industry’s sensitivity to the economic turmoil unleashed by tariffs.

The company’s Q1 revenue was $42.31 billion, exceeding analysts’ estimates thanks to its ads biz (responsible for 98% of revenue) persevering through the first three months of 2025:

• Meta posted $41.39 billion in ad revenue, a 16% jump from a year ago.
• Analysts credit the resilience to a ban of competitor TikTok, which was looming earlier in the year, and say ad revenues may grow further thanks to a push to infuse ad tech with AI.

The future might be tougher

Meta’s earnings report covers the period before President Trump effectively challenged China to a trade war, which puts Meta in a particularly vulnerable position, since it relied on Chinese businesses for 11% of its ad revenue last year.

The company said Asian businesses are already cutting back on ads as they prepare for the end of the de minimis exemption, a legal loophole that allowed companies like Temu to ship cheap packages stateside without tariffs.

But Meta still projects revenue will rise by as much as 8% next quarter.

In other Big Tech news: Microsoft’s earnings also surpassed expectations yesterday. And today, Apple and Amazon will post earnings, showing how the tariff storm might be affecting two physical goods behemoths reliant on imports from China.—SK

How the tables have turned. The infamous campaign against illegally downloading movies and music appears to have spelled out its warnings in an illegally cloned typeface, Sky News confirmed this week after an investigative reporter took notice on Bluesky.

The “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” PSA from the Motion Picture Association of America (now known as the Motion Picture Association) is getting mocked all over again, more than 20 years after it started popping up at movie theaters and on DVDs.

• The commercial was believed to feature a typeface called FF Confidential, which you may recognize from the end of the Scream movies. It was released in 1992 by Just van Rossum (whose brother created the coding language Python).
• But the font file used in the anti-piracy campaign’s website materials was actually a free copycat of FF Confidential made in 1996, so the organization could’ve also used the knockoff typeface in its video PSA.

“I find it hilarious,” van Rossum told the blog TorrentFreak, saying he always thought the anti-piracy campaign had licensed his font. It’s possible that the MPAA didn’t realize it was using a knockoff because of the phony font’s popularity at the time, per Sky News. The association declined the outlet’s request for comment.

What now? Likely not much. Typefaces fall into a messy area of intellectual property law and generally lack copyright protection. The creator of the font used by Shake Shack lost a legal battle over the burger chain’s logo last year.—ML

Here’s a sentence we never thought we’d write: The Chicken Jockey scene isn’t the only Chicken-centric moment from A Minecraft Movie causing a sensation. Jack Black’s musical ode to the impossible-to-prepare IRL dish “Lava Chicken” has made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart at No. 78.

The song, “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” has been featured in 280,000+ TikTok videos and streamed almost 22 million times on Spotify, per the New York Times, proving that the tune does not, in fact, “suck butt,” as Jason Momoa’s character suggests.

And at just 34 seconds, it’s the shortest song to ever make it onto Billboard’s 67-year-old hot list. But it’s not the first silly song from a video game movie to chart—it’s not even Black’s first silly song from a video game movie to make the Hot 100. His guaranteed to get stuck in your head ditty “Peaches,” sung by a lovesick Bowser in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, reached No. 58 in 2023.—AR