NEC Chair Kudlow in response to the Chinese threat to impose tariffs on an additional $60 billion worth of goods (from Bloomberg).
“Their economy’s weak, their currency is weak, people are leaving the country. Don’t underestimate President Trump’s determination to follow through.”
Just in case you were still wondering.
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Ever since the Walker Administration ended the issuance of the Wisconsin Economic Outlook (last issue May 2015), those of us outside of the government have been a little in the dark when trying to assess state level economic conditions in a systematic manner. In a recent paper (updated version 8/1), Ryan LeCloux and I assess how various macroeconomic aggregates track the Wisconsin economy at higher-than-annual frequency. Investigating the behavior of these series yields the following graph.
Following up on Jim’s post on the GDP release, here are four observations.
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The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 4.1% annual rate in the second quarter. That’s significantly better than the 2.2% average growth we’ve seen since the Great Recession ended in 2009, and is also a little above the 3.1% average for the U.S. economy over the last 70 years.
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Nearly a year ago, I asked Are Global Imbalances a Source of Concern?. At a minimum, we know they’re back. And the IMF certainly thinks so.
Unlike soybeans, I’ve seen no rebound in hog prices (front month futures) with the announcement of the $12 billion farm bailout:
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Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate.
The losses incurred by the ag sector might already exceed the size of the ag sector bailout proposed by Trump. One constraint is the WTO.
Credit: Russell Hodin, via Ian Bremmer. [added 7/26, 1:34PM Pacific]
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Just a reminder, the Chinese have an instrument we do not; the question is whether they dare use it:
