It’s not exactly a game of Clue to figure out Friday’s weakish report on second-quarter economic growth: Mr. President did it, in the factory, with a tariff.

Like the once-popular board game in which my five-year-old self solved murders, this one is pretty easy. The economy slowed down notably, if not fatally, because while consumers happily kept on spending, people who sell things to customers around the world spent much less building buildings (like factories) and exported far less stuff.

And that would be about President Donald Trump and his confrontational trade policies, in a world where he’s convinced the U.S. has always been played for suckers. But the joke, as it often is, is on him.

As the headlines say, the economy grew at an annual rate of 2.1% between April and June. Consumer spending rose at a 4.3% clip and investment, which was supposed to be juiced by Trump’s late-2017 tax cut, fell by a 5.5% rate, highlighted by a 10.6% drop in spending on commercial structures, the third drop in the last four quarters. Exports declined 5.2%.

That means consumer spending accounted for more than all of the economy’s overall growth, the Commerce Department said. Weak investment cut 1 full percentage point from the rate the economy would have otherwise achieved, most of it from declining inventories (reversing some anomalous inventory buildups in previous quarters). Net exports shaved off another three-quarters of a point, offset by higher government spending, mostly at the federal level.

Two conclusions jump out. First, things aren’t that bad; as I’ve said before, the slowdown is likelier a reversion to the 2% to 2.5% mean that U.S. growth has shown since the 2008 financial crisis than it is the opening act of a recession. Second, to the extent things are weaker, it’s because of softness in China’s economy, which has a number of causes — and the one the U.S. can do the most to make better, or worse, is trade policy.

Read:Caterpillar posts weak profits and revenue as sales in Asia drop 8%

So, yes, it’s Trump’s fault. But nobody died. It’s not as if he built a big, negligently run camp and stuffed the economy into it like it was made of Guatemalan and Honduran refugees.

When the Federal Reserve declined to cut interest rates in June, despite the president’s loud pleadings, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell cited a number of reasons for the economy’s softness. The one I flagged then, still the most on-point now, is that business appears to be reacting to threats to global supply chains (which means Trump threatening 25% taxes on imported goods) by holding off on investing where they can.

A cut in growth to 2.1%, from the 3.1% rate in the first quarter, is what that looks like in action. Together, they produce 2.6% growth for the first half, down from 2.9% for all of last year (but with better consumer spending) and about the same as 2017’s 2.4%.

This isn’t disastrous, and private economists’ tracking estimates project a slight pickup in growth in the third quarter. While it’s very early to make specific claims about the second half of the year, it’s likely to stay in the recent range.

The evidence is also clear enough now to bury the president’s tax cut, after barely pausing to praise it last year. The bill, which directed most largesse to business owners and corporations, was supposed to accelerate the economy by accelerating investment. But aside from a huge jump in inventories in the third quarter of 2018, it never happened.

Basically, the tax cut’s “best” quarter (the third quarter of 2018) got two-thirds of reported growth from companies building inventories in anticipation of a surge in demand that never happened. One reason it never happened is Trump’s trade policies, as he stepped up his demands on China, in particular, in late 2018 (prompting a selloff in the S&P 500 index SPX, +1.59% and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.33% ).

The next step is the Fed’s meeting next week, where the consensus in the markets is that the central bank will cut interest rates, either by a quarter of a point or even half a point.

A half-point cut feels alarmist: The Fed would be sending out a signal that the economy needs to be rescued, when the numbers today (and throughout the last couple of months) point to something less dire, especially given the strong consumer spending.

This is a decent, trend-growth economy with a notable soft spot in manufacturing, a truth brought home earlier in the week by a report from consulting group IHS Markit showing manufacturing is at the brink of a recession, if not in one. Meanwhile, the much-larger service section of the economy is fine.

Manufacturing weakness has two clear, related causes. One is that China, a major customer, is having shaky growth itself. The other is that U.S. policy is actively trying to weaken that customer, and others, trying to spark a domestic investment boom. But the better way to do that is to have more stable trade policy that lets business get on with business, while letting free markets and free people sort out what tasks are best done in the U.S. and which are best done abroad.

Read:Germany and the U.S. need to compromise — but both are too stubborn

Watching Trump try to make the domestic investment boom happen is like watching the outcast kid in the film Mean Girls say “Fetch,” over and over, trying to convince others to use it as a synonym for “cool.’’ Like “Fetch,’ it’s just not happening. Like the nation as a whole, what the economy needs is for the president to shut up.

Now read Rex Nutting: Here’s why the GDP report is wrong and the economy actually had its best growth in a year