Economic News

Trafigura, Mercuria, Glencore and IXM set for bumper profits from metal shipped into America ahead of new levies

Plus Treasury issuance gambits

Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept, manufacturing production, real retail sales, ADP’s private NFP, and BTS freight services index. The sole exception is the Philadelphia Fed coincident index, based on labor indicators. Figure 1: Implied Nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (bold blue), civilian employment adjusted smoothed population controls adjusted to NFP concept (orange), manufacturing production (red), private NFP (ADP) (light green), real retail sales (black), vehicle miles traveled (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (teal bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Census, ADP, Federal Reserve, BTS via FRED, BLS, BEA 2025Q1 third release, and author’s calculations. Note that every NBER BCDC indicator for May is down — including SPGMI’s monthly GDP, as shown in this post.

US president warns of imminent EU trade announcement and higher global rates for other nations

Mark Hertsgaard US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called on Democrats to stop enabling the fossil fuel industry’s “malevolent propaganda operation.” The post Has the Climate Movement Been Too Polite? This Senator Thinks So. appeared first on The Nation.

Here’s the data through 7/9: Figure 1: EPU-trade category (blue, left scale), and Trade Policy Uncertainty index (red, right scale). Source: Baker, Bloom & Davis policyuncertainty.com, and Caldara et al. TPUD. For 7/9, it’s 4110. Pre-Trump 1.0 average is 102. Copper prices?

From Yale Budget Lab: Source: Yale Budget Lab, accessed 10 July 2025.    

Sarah Breeden cites evidence that extreme weather events push up inflation in ways central banks find difficult to combat

JPMorgan Chase boss warns on EU competitiveness and market complacency over tariffs

‘Taco trade’ dominates as stocks, bonds and currencies remain calm