According to Prof. Mary Lovely, trade economist at Syracuse University:
“In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported zero weekly export sales of pork to China. … So our exports to the country have pretty much collapsed.”
Is California in Recession? (Part VIII)
Back in mid-December, Political Calculations asked if California was in recession.
Going by these [household survey based labor market] measures, it would appear that recession has arrived in California, which is partially borne out by state level GDP data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. [text as accessed on 12/27/2017]
The release of the 2018Q1 state GDP figures provides an opportunity to revisit this question — it’s likely no recession occurred.
Trump Provides Another Event Analysis: Pandering to the Farmers
USDA announced some $12 billion of suppport for agriculture today (partly via resurrecting the activities of the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). Besides it being potentially WTO-inconsistent (I think it fits into at least the amber box), one characterization of the measure is:
“It would be a band-aid – how do you decide who gets what?”
A Study in Contrasts: Four States Q1 GDP
According to data released today, Wisconsin ranks 40th in the first read on 2018Q1 state GDP growth. Washington state ranks first (even though it’s ranked 37th for economic outlook in the 2018 ALEC-Arthur Laffer-Steven Mooore-Jonathan Williams Rich States Poor States).
Not Quite Twin Peaks
Nominal asset prices, including S&P500 and home, continue to rise, but real prices have not regained prior levels (S&P500) or have plateaued (home prices).
PoMo Micro
A reader writes (in discussing the Taylor rule):
Like [the] price elasticity of demand, we have an analytical approach that is appealing in theory, but so ill defined as to be useless in practice.
Wow. I haven’t read anything like that since I read Anti-Samuelson. Believe it or not, this was written by a person who purports to do policy analysis.
Taylor Rule Implied Rate, Trump-Annotated
“I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up.”
and a tweet on Saturday:
Tightening now hurts all that we have done.
A Primer on Tracking the State Economies
In a new paper, Ryan LeCloux (Legislative Reference Bureau) and I discuss the challenges to assessing the economic outlook at the state level. We examine the various indicators available to track macroeconomic indicators at the higher than annual frequency. We find that quarterly GDP at the state level is correlated with different macroeconomic indicators for different states. Hence, tracking the economic activity of each state accurately might require focus on different variables.
US Trade Policy Uncertainty in These Times
Just in case you were wondering.
Continue reading
Stephen Moore Lies and Lies and Lies (and Hence Belongs in the Trump NEC)
On CNN today, as Stephen Moore was trying to spin the point that presidents have always tried to pressure the Fed, he made the assertion (maybe not verbatim):
Obama never got us close to 3% growth…