Economic News

Market Questions is the FT’s guide to the week ahead

Brazilian airline’s CEO says threat of 50% import duty could delay group’s purchases of up to $20bn in US-made products

WSJ mean survey forecast relative to 2023-2024 trend. Figure 1: GDP (bold black), 2023-2024 stochastic trend (blue), WSJ July mean (tan), WSJ 20% high/low band (gray lines), GDPNow of 7/17 (light blue square), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, WSJ, Atlanta Fed, and author’s calculations.

Codelco’s chair says he does not understand what the US wants to achieve with levies on the metal

Policy uncertainty has remains high; does it matter for economic uncertainty? 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.   Figure 2: EPU (blue, left scale), and centered 7 day moving average (red, right scale), SF Fed News Sentiment index (green). Source: policyuncertainty.com, SF Fed, and author’s calculations.   Figure 3: EPU (legacy) (blue, left scale), Jurado, Ludvigson, Ng (JLN) macro uncertainty index (tan, right scale). NBER defined peak to trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: policyuncertainty.com, Ludvigson, and NBER.    Figure 4: EPU (legacy) (blue, left scale), Jurado, Ludvigson, Ng (JLN) financial uncertainty index (tan, right scale). NBER defined peak to trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: policyuncertainty.com, Ludvigson, and NBER.  In a bivariate setting, one rejects the null hypothesis that JLN Granger causes EPU, but one can not reject the null hypothesis that EPU causes JLN, at conventional levels. As of April (the last available observation), the JLN-macro series was over one standard deviation above the mean. And JLN (AEJ-Macro, 2021) suggests that financial uncertainty is an exogenous determinant of the business cycle activity.  

Currency is on track for its first monthly gain in 2025 after worst start to the year in decades

A new play tells the story of RBS’s rapid expansion and dramatic collapse. Lionel Barber, who began his career as a reporter in Edinburgh, watched the saga from the start

From CPI, note the CPI furniture and appliances category: Figure 1: CPI all urban (blue), CPI commodities (green), and CPI – furniture and household appliances (tan), all in logs, 2025M01=0. Source: BLS, and author’s calculations. And, on a much more granular level, from Cavallo et al. (July 17, 2025): Source: Cavallo,  et al. (July 17, 2025). Not only have tariffed goods prices risen, domestic competitor prices have as well. Thanks, Drumpf!  

US president also rejects reducing 25% sectoral duties on cars from the bloc, say diplomats

Up for all three, although production essentially flat since February, and real retail sales down since March. Indicators followed by the NBER’s BCDC in Figure 1: Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll incl benchmark revision employment from CES (bold blue), civilian employment using smoothed population controls (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. 2025Q1 GDP is third release. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (7/2/2025 release), and author’s calculations.  Alternative business cycle indicators: Figure 2: Preliminary Nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (bold blue), civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept, with smoothed population controls (orange), manufacturing production (red), real retail sales (black), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2025Q1 third release, and author’s calculations.