Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Germany Organizing Anti-Trump Coalition Mark Thoma th other day links to a story in Der Spiegel about a visit to Japan by new German Foreign Minister, Heike Maas.  He met with PM Shinzo Abe, and apparently the two of them agreed on the need for creating a network of like-minded nations that wish to maintain portions of the “post-war order,” especially in the areas of trade policy rules and climate change agreements.  All of this is in reaction to...

The Soybean Boom Via TalkingPointsMemo AP notes: Private forecasters cautioned that the April-June pace is unsustainable because, they say, it stems from temporary factors, including a rush by exporters of soybeans and other products to get their shipments out before retaliatory tariffs took effect. They predicted the rest of the year is likely to see solid, but slower growth of around 3 percent. The transformation is also not as dramatic as Trump...

Along with the second quarter GDP report the BEA also published the results of its regular revision of the last five years of data.  The most significant revision was to the measure of price changes in the high tech arena. This showed that business investment had been somewhat stronger than previously reported, but it only had a very minor impact on real GDP growth. The chart shows the year-over-year growth in real GDP over the 2012 to 2017 period with...

(Dan here….Lifted from comments here) Spencer says: You can download the most recent GDP in excell form directly from the BEA. In the 2nd quarter exports accounted for 1.12 percentage points of the 4.1% surge in real GDP. That is almost 30% of growth. Apparently the big jump in exports was due to large purchases of soy beans in May, before new tariffs were imposed. This was obviously a one time unusual event that will quickly reverse and dampen real GDP...

Q2 GDP: likely as good as it is going to get this year [Note: FRED hasn’t gotten around to updating the GDP data. I’ll update this post once the graphs are available. UPDATE: Posted now.] This morning’s preliminary reading of Q2 2018 GDP at +4.1% was generally in line with forecasts.  The coincident data, as I’ve reported in my “Weekly Indicators” column, as well as things like industrial production, the regional Fed reports, and real retail sales,...

Has Trump Won This Easy Trade War With Our Greatest Foe, The European Union? So Sean Hannity would have us believe this evening after the press conference earlier today by Trump and EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker.  According to Hannity they have signed a “deal” that will help US businesses, workers, and farmers. Yowzah! As it is, what appears to have been agreed to (no signed deal) is that the US will not impose tariffs on autos imported from the...

Meanwhile, Saudis Stuck On Oil Thanks To MbS Crackdown Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has a plan to get Saudi Arabia off oil, with an immediate push to create 1.2 million private sector jobs by 2020.  However, as Juan Cole reports, his political crackdown last year in which over 300 people were tossed in jail  for various supposed crimes, with many of them now having frozen bank accounts and other restrictions placed on them, has somewhat...

Economic Policy Institute answers two laymen questions on wage stagnation: Why is wage growth so slow? It’s not because low-wage jobs are being added disproportionately: One explanation worth looking into is whether today’s low wage growth is due to a composition effect—i.e. low-wage jobs being added faster than middle- and/or high-wage jobs and, as a result, pulling down wage growth…But since 2013, as the recovery has strengthened, the opposite has been...

The US is not in an economic Boom: midyear udpate At the beginning of this year I asked: Is the US economy going to enter a Boom in 2018? To recap, there is no standard definition of a Boom. But in my lifetime there have been two occasions when the “good times” feeling was palpable, and the economy was working extremely well on a very broad basis: the 1960s and the late 1990s tech era. During both times,  employment was rampant and average people...

US layoff rate at all time lows I don’t write about new jobless claims much anymore, mainly because it has been boringly good for a few years (outside of hurricane disruptions!).  But there are times like this week when I am particularly thankful that I am concentrating on the one thing – the economy – that is doing unequivocally well. Back in 2009 and 2010 when I was arguing with the Doomer dead-end recession double-dippers, I used to hear from people...