The US “recovery” - How's it really going?

The US reported a -1% GDP figure for its first quarter but blamed it entirely on the ‘big freeze’ winter.  Without repeating the string of bad economic data in today’s Ainslie Radio, lets focus on the fact that they’ve just reported an “unexpected” plunge in trade deficit to $47b but also Q1 productivity was revised to a 3.2% decline and unit labour costs rose 5.7%.  

Whilst they have been blaming the ‘big freeze’ saying people couldn’t get to work, the data now debunks this as hours worked actually rose over that period.  Also there was no wage growth so that wasn’t the cause for the labour costs rising.  Throw in the struggling housing market and the Q2 GDP, save for some ‘supportive’ Government generated spending (ala last quarter’s defense spending) is looking weaker and weaker for the economy now hoped to pull the world out of this mess and who’s ‘recovery’ is driving gold down.