WEI continues to decline.
Weekly Indicators using Data Releases thru 5/31
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GDPNow Bounceback (Kind of)
Atlanta Fed nowcast shows 4.6% q/q AR growth in GDP. Interestingly, this does not take GDP back to pre-“Liberation Day” trend.
“Heritage Foundation Names EJ Antoni as Chief Economist”
Announcement on May 28 from Heritage:
The Roller Coaster Ride Continues … EPU through 6/1
And it doesn’t seem like it will end soon, unless …
“Trump may actually want a recession…”
That would explain a lot. He’s not very effective at much, but he is effective at setting the preconditions for a recession. From Yahoo!Finance quoting the Kobeissi Letter:
Global Imbalances as Global Recession EWS?
EWS = “Early Warning System”. Jamel Saadaoui has an interesting blogpost, investigating whether the median current account to GDP balance — namely when it becomes very negative, -2% to -4% — presages a global recession as defined by Kose et al. (2020).
Policy Uncertainty Watch
Data through yesterday, from Baker, Bloom and Davis:
Taking Economic Policy Uncertainty Seriously
EPU has risen from a 2016-2024 level of 136 to a 2025 level of 430. Ferrara and Geurin (2018) find that a 90 pt increase results in a bit less than 2% decline in employment at the one year horizon.
Nowcasted Equipment Investment Decelerates
Why? Q2 equipment investment as implied by GDPNow of 5/30.
Measured Trade Policy Uncertainty Spikes
Graph for data through 5/30 for Baker, Bloom and Davis index.