AI Added 'Basically Zero' to US Economic Growth Last Year, Goldman Sachs Says

Source: Hacker News

Background

Meta, Amazon, Google, OpenAI, and other tech companies spent billions last year investing in AI. They’re expected to spend roughly $700 billion this year on dozens of new data centers to train and run advanced models. This spending frenzy has kept Wall Street buzzing and fueled a narrative that the investment is helping prop up and even grow the U.S. economy.

President Donald Trump cited that argument as a reason the industry should not face state‑level regulations.

“Investment in AI is helping to make the U.S. Economy the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World — But overregulation by the States is threatening to undermine this Growth Engine,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in November. “We MUST have one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes.”

Economists’ Views

Some prominent economists have given credibility to this story.

• Jason Furman, Harvard economics professor, said in a post on X that investments in information‑processing equipment and software accounted for 92 % of GDP growth in the first half of the year.
• Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated that AI‑related investments made up 39 % of GDP growth in the third quarter of 2025 (source).

Wall Street Reassessment

Intuitive Narrative Questioned

“It was a very intuitive story,” Joseph Briggs, a Goldman Sachs analyst, told the Washington Post (article) on Monday. “That maybe prevented or limited the need to actually dig deeper into what was happening.”

Goldman Sachs Perspective

Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius said in an interview with the Atlantic Council that AI investment spending has had “basically zero” contribution to U.S. GDP growth in 2025.

“We don’t actually view AI investment as strongly growth positive,” Hatzius said. “I think there’s a lot of misreporting, actually, of the impact AI investment had on U.S. GDP growth in 2025, and it’s much smaller than is often perceived.”

Key Reasons

• Imported Equipment: Much of the hardware powering AI is imported. While U.S. companies spend billions, importing chips and hardware offsets those investments in GDP calculations.
• Foreign GDP Impact: “A lot of the AI investment that we’re seeing in the U.S. adds to Taiwanese GDP, and it adds to Korean GDP but not really that much to U.S. GDP,” Hatzius explained.
• Measurement Challenges: There is currently no reliable way to accurately measure how AI use among businesses and consumers contributes to economic growth.

Business Leaders’ Experience

So far, many business leaders say AI hasn’t significantly improved productivity.

A recent survey of nearly 6,000 executives in the U.S., Europe, and Australia found that despite 70 % of firms actively using AI, about 80 % reported no impact on employment or productivity.