Japan’s economy likely shrank over the summer as the impact of trade weighed on the nation’s sputtering recovery, a result that would support continued caution at the central bank and the government’s case for its latest round of stimulus measures.
Economists estimate that real gross domestic product shrank at an annualized pace of 0.4% in the three months through September, compared with 4.8% growth in the previous quarter.
The expected contraction would be the sixth quarterly drop since spring 2020, a stop-start stretch of results that suggests the economy is yet to find a stable footing as consumers struggle with the strongest inflation in decades, fueled partly by weakness in the yen.