Economic News

Energy advisory body expects global consumption to increase by 700,000 barrels a day this year

The country has staged a powerful recovery in the 10 years since it faced near economic collapse

While the behaviour of bonds suggests a downturn, American stocks are at record highs

After a three-month pause, US president threatens punitive levies on governments and commodities

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?