Blog posts tagged by tag: USA

• Are Central Banks Nationalising the Economy?

  Daniel Lacalle, PhD, author of Escape from the Central Bank Trap, is back with a new guest post on the FocusEconomics Insights blog. In this post, Daniel tells us why he believes the skyhigh public debt currently owned by central banks across the world is so dangerous. 

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  Tags: USA

• What does Donald Trump mean for the U.S. economy?

  Donald Trump will take power in January and will govern a U.S. economy that is in its seventh year of growing tepidly at around 2%. Our Consensus Forecast for the U.S. economy this month sees GDP growing 2.1% in 2017, but this will be subject to revision in the coming weeks and months as the economic priorities of President-elect Trump become clearer. Here we analyze the immediate and possible future implications of Trump’s victory. During his campaign, Trump outlined an extremely controversial policy agenda, including—but not limited to—building a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico, renegotiating NAFTA, cancelling or reforming the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), imposing punitive trade tariffs on China and cutting taxes for the wealthy. The unexpected victory of Trump in November’s election and the resultant uncertainty over future U.S. policy will have serious ramifications for both the domestic and global economies.

  

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  Tags: Economic Growth (GDP), Infographic, USA

• Trump election: Base metals surge due to infrastructure plan

  On 4 July 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem Concord Hymn was read at the unveiling of the Concord Monument in Massachusetts to commemorate the Battle of Concord of the American Revolutionary War. The name of the poem may not ring any bells to you, but one phrase in particular from the poem probably will, the shot heard ‘round the world.

  The phrase has been used to describe many a historical event. It was famously used to describe the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which kicked off the First World War. For any baseball fans out there, Bobby Thomson’s walk-off home run to win the 1951 National League pennant tie-breaker was also famously referred to as the shot heard ‘round the world.

  The largely unexpected event that took place on 8 November in the United States of America is also probably worthy of the phrase.

  

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  Tags: Base Metals Commodities, Commodities, USA

• Canada: When your neighbor’s house is on fire…

  Morning sickness hit global markets this morning, as the world begins to digest the political earthquake that took place yesterday. Declines were recorded in major stock indices and currencies fluctuated as Republican candidate Donald Trump astounded pollsters and won the U.S. presidential election, after a divisive and controversial campaign. The result surprised the vast majority of our analysts, over 80% of whom had expected a victory for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and has heightened global uncertainty dramatically. Our analysts saw Clinton as having a better economic plan, a better grasp of economics and assembling a better economic team than Trump, which combined would help fuel faster growth in the U.S. As a result, the surprise election of Trump has cast a cloud over the outlook of the world’s largest economy.  While Trump’s inconsistent and impractical campaign pledges make it difficult to decipher the impact his Presidency will have, major policy changes in the U.S. could have spillover affects felt across the globe.

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  Tags: Canada, G7, Trade, USA

• The economic impact of a break in U.S.-Philippines ties

  In an unexpected yet not entirely surprising turn of events, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte continued his anti-U.S. rhetoric in late October by declaring that the island country would be “breaking up with America.”

  The U.S. and the Philippines have shared strong relations dating all the way back to the late 19^th Century when the U.S. occupied the Philippines as a colony. The relationship between the two nations has even been described as a “special relationship.”

  Announced on 17 November, the Philippine economy expanded 7.1% in the third quarter of 2016 despite Duterte's antics since taking over in June. The economy is going strong, for now. In this post we take a look at what is at stake for the Philippine economy if Duterte does indeed move to break off relations with their long-time ally and driver of economic growth, the U.S.

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  Tags: Asia, China, USA

• Survey of international economists shows uncertainty surrounding elections damaging U.S. growth prospects

  A new survey by FocusEconomics shows that the majority of the 72 international macroeconomic experts polled believe the U.S. economy is suffering due to political uncertainty. Looking forward, economists from leading institutions around the world think that the U.S. economy will grow faster under Hillary Clinton’s plan in both the short- and medium-term. Overall, the broad Consensus among economists is that Clinton would manage the economy much better than Donald Trump.

  

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  Tags: Economic Growth (GDP), Infographic, USA

• The U.S.' (Not So) Mysterious Case of the Missing Men

  It’s been some time since the United States was considered to be amid the Great Recession, a period of general economic decline that spanned from the late 2000s until, depending on who you talk to or what source you are using, sometime in 2015. One of the big effects of the Great Recession, was very high unemployment in the US. At the height of the Great Recession, in October of 2009, unemployment peaked at 10%. Way back in January of this year, Timothy Taylor, the Conversable Economist, wrote a post on the unemployment rate falling and falling fast on its way to pre-Great Recession levels, “the unemployment rate in the last three years has fallen by more than even the most optimistic member of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee believed was likely.”

  Fast forward to 2 September, the monthly jobs report was released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that found that unemployment was at 4.9% for the third month in a row. So, the number has halved since the Great Recession, which sounds like great news, right? Not so fast. There are concerns that the statistic is masking a greater problem: The mystery of disappearing men from the workforce.

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  Tags: Unemployment rate, USA

• What to expect from the G20 economies by 2020

  Over the last few days, the world’s most powerful leaders have met in Hangzhou, China for the G20 summit. Economics has been at the center of discussions as the world economy has looked rather shaky over the last year.

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  Tags: China, Economic Growth (GDP), G7, USA

• How do the freshly-released IMF GDP growth forecasts compare to the FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast

  The IMF has just released its biannual World Economic Outlook. Sharp downgrades were made to its growth forecasts for emerging economies, especially Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa and Russia. See how the IMF 2015 GDP growth forecasts compare to the latest consensus forecasts from the FocusEconomics’ network of the world’s leading economists.

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  Tags: Africa, Asia, Consensus Forecast, Economic Growth (GDP), Euro Area, IMF, USA

• How does the IMF’s latest quarterly global outlook compare to forecasts from over 30 of the world’s leading economists?

  The World Bank just released its updated World Economic Ooutlook. We compared the IMF forecasts for 10 countries including, the USA, Russia, Japan, India, China and Brazil, to our own Consensus Forecasts from our panels of 30+ economic institutions. See how the forecasts stack up in our interactive infographic: http://bit.ly/1wnASjo

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  Tags: Brazil, China, IMF, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, UK, USA