Industrial and manufacturing production down at consensus rate (-0.3% m/m for both). Core retail sales +0.1% vs. consensus +0.3% m/m. First up, series followed by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee (personal income and employment are key):
PPI and core PPI y/y slightly above consensus:
Core up, but supercore down:
Consistent with expansionary fiscal policy plus tariffs hitting a non-passive Fed reaction function.
What else would one expect from expectations of expanded budget deficits, higher incipient inflation in the context of a Taylor rule reaction function, when the currency is a safe haven asset?
Former Senator Toomey (Politico):
“We have a recession coming. That’s what the response would be from a full-blown trade war that [Trump] would precipitate,” Toomey said, referring to the president-elect’s trade proposals. Those include tariffs of up to 20 percent on all imports, tariffs of at least 60 percent on China and more radical positions such as swapping the income tax with tariffs.
Answers: No. No. No.
Given the results of the election, and Mr. Trump’s statement that deportations will start immediately, there will be a need for facts. I recommend EconoFact’s Immigration page as a start for your analysis.
There was a noisy minority of analysts thinking we were in, or imminently in, recession (see a list here). It’ll be interesting to see how those views are revised. However, as I noted, while the data was not supportive of being in a recession as of October, three possibilities could reconcile observations with such views: (1) the model is wrong, (2) the recession is here, but we don’t know it, or (3) the recession is still to come.