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Good morning. Today we look at President Trump’s latest attack on the Fed, emerging risks for U.S. factories, international postal rates, Alaska’s long slog out of recession, a little competition among restaurants and retailers, the unprecedented rejection of Italy’s budget, and a White House history of socialism.
JAY WALKING
President Trump stepped up his attacks on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, calling the Fed the biggest risk to the economy. “Every time we do something great, he raises the interest rates,” the president said. Mr. Powell “almost looks like he’s happy raising interest rates.”
In an interview with the WSJ’s White House team, Mr Trump stopped short of saying he’d try to fire the Fed chief: “I’m just saying this: I’m very unhappy with the Fed because Obama had zero interest rates.” The law isn’t clear about whether Mr. Trump could dismiss Mr. Powell.
GUT CHECK FOR U.S. MANUFACTURERS
Caterpillar and 3M flagged rising challenges for the factory sector, including escalating costs, a stronger dollar and concerns over growth in China. It may be a sign fortunes are turning for manufacturers after a year of strong production and sales driven in part by tax cuts and high consumer confidence, Austen Hufford and Doug Cameron report.
One big problem: Rising costs, in part due to rising trade tensions and new tariffs. Caterpillar said tariff-related costs for this year would likely come in around $100 million. 3M expects the tariffs to push up costs by about $20 million this year and $100 million next year. Mr. Trump has dismissed tariff-related concerns: “You know what happens? A business that’s doing badly always likes to blame Trump and the tariffs, because it’s a good excuse for some incompetent guy that’s making $25 million a year.”
What’s the biggest threat to the U.S. economy? Write to Jeffrey Sparshott at realtimeeconomics@wsj.com, tweet to @WSJecon and visit wsj.com/economy for the latest news. (Responses may be quoted in this newsletter.)
WHAT TO WATCH TODAY
Markit’s flash manufacturing and services purchasing managers indexes for October are out at 9:45 a.m. ET.
U.S. new home sales for September, out at 10 a.m. ET, are expected to drop to an annual pace of 625,000 from 629,000 the prior month.
The Bank of Canada releases a policy statement at 10 a.m. ET.
We get an abundance of Fed chatter Wednesday: St. Louis’s James Bullard speaks in Edinburgh, Scotland, at 11:30 a.m. ET, Atlanta’s Raphael Bostic speaks at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, at 1 p.m. ET, Cleveland’s Loretta Mester speaks at the Cornell Club in New York City at 1:10 p.m. ET, governor Lael Brainard speaks at a Council for Economic Education event at 7 p.m. ET, and Kansas City’s Esther George speaks in Sydney, Australia, at 8 p.m. ET.
TOP STORIES
OVERNIGHT DELIVERY
The Trump administration threatened to pull out of a global mail system over its discounted shipping rates from China. That could spur a change in those rates as early as April. The U.S. last week started a process to withdraw from the 144-year-old Universal Postal Union because it had failed to eliminate international discounts. Those discounts, aimed at helping developing countries, have continued to apply to China even as it has grown to become the world’s second-largest economy.
The UPU commissioned a report Tuesday that is the first step toward fast-tracking new rates, Director General Bishar Hussein told the WSJ’s Heidi Vogt. “If we work fast enough, and the member countries are all in consensus on these issues and decisions are made, by April next year I think it is a possibility,” Mr. Hussein said.
TOUGH SLEDDING
Alaska has been stuck in a recession for the past three years while the rest of the U.S. has enjoyed the greatest economic boom in a generation. Battered by low oil prices and fiscal turmoil in state government, Alaska’s unemployment rate reached a high of 7.3% earlier this year. Now, the Last Frontier state is finally poised to join the rest of the U.S. economy, thanks to a recovery in oil prices and political compromises in the state capital, Jim Carlton reports.
Alaska wasn’t the only oil-dependent state hit hard by the fall in oil prices four years ago. North Dakota, Wyoming and Louisiana all have had slowdowns. But Alaska fell the hardest and has been the slowest to recover. Oil and gas represent about 27% of Alaska’s gross domestic product.
COMPETITION IS GOOD, PARTS I AND II
Competition to sell high-quality coffee is intensifying. Dunkin’ Brands Group is trying to undercut what rival Starbucks charges for a signature product: quality espresso. The Canton, Mass.-based chain is offering revamped lattes, cappuccinos and Americanos. The price of a 16-ounce hot latte at a Dunkin’ in Baltimore, where the chain has been testing the new drinks, is $3.59, with tax, compared with $4.19 for the same-sized drink at a nearby Starbucks, Julie Jargon reports.
Target said it plans to offer free two-day shipping on online orders this holiday season, undercutting competitors like Amazon.com and Walmart. The Minneapolis-based retailer said starting Nov. 1 until Dec. 22, it will offer the service on hundreds of thousands of items without a minimum purchase or membership, Khadeeja Safdar reports. Walmart offers free two-day shipping on orders $35 and up, and Amazon offers the services to customers who pay $119 a year for a Prime membership.
AN OFFER THEY CAN REFUSE
The European Union took the unprecedented step of rejecting Italy’s draft budget as incompatible with the bloc’s rules on fiscal discipline. The battle is the new front line in disputes pitting the EU’s political mainstream against rebels across Europe that have gained voter support following the region’s economic and migration crises. Italy, a founding member of the EU and Europe’s fourth-biggest economy, is testing whether a rebel government can defy the bloc’s rules and skirt pressure from financial markets to back down, Laurence Norman, Giovanni Legorano and Christopher Whittall report.
Investors have dumped Italy’s government bonds and bank stocks repeatedly since the League and 5 Star Movement agreed to govern together in May. Italy’s combination of high government debt and chronically weak economic growth make it vulnerable to capital flight.
ANTISOCIALIST BEHAVIOR
The White House wasn’t just intent on knocking Jerome Powell this week. The Council of Economic Advisers also blasted Marx, Lenin, Mao and “current American socialists.” A 55-page report starts with a critique of forced collectivization of farming and ends with a warning against the kind of single-payer, “Medicare for All” program advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders and some Democrats. “The CEA does not expect that socialist policies would cause food shortages in the United States, because socialists are no longer proposing to nationalize food production. Rather, the historical experience with agriculture is relevant because it involved economic disincentives, central planning, and a state monopoly over a sector that was large when socialism was introduced—similar to healthcare today.”
Sen. Sanders in a tweet highlighted a section of the report showing seniors in the U.S. tend not to wait as long to see a specialist as seniors in countries with single-payer systems. Seniors in the U.S., of course, are already on Medicare. “Congratulations to Donald Trump for unintentionally making the case for Medicare for All,” the Vermont lawmaker said.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone. Even respect for the Federal Reserve. And it’s really bad. At least the military still has all the respect. But I don’t know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country? –Former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, speaking with the New York Times
TWEET OF THE DAY
[wsj-responsive-sandbox id = "0" ]WHAT ELSE WE’RE READING
President Trump’s buyer’s remorse with his Federal Reserve picks may affect two pending nominations. Nellie Liang and Marvin Goodfriend are already languishing in the Senate. Liang is a Democrat and supporter of bank regulation, Goodfriend a bit of a hawk. The president, of course, wants the Fed to keep rates low and lay off any regs to help the economy. “Trump could have remade the Fed; he might now be realizing the lost opportunity and not want to dig his hole any deeper. Ironically, he could probably reach across the aisle and call the Fed Up staff for recommendations,” the University of Oregon’s Tim Duy writes at his Fed Watch blog.
Listening to Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” or the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” today? “We apply acoustical analysis to the daily top ten of music downloads in iTunes for Germany to derive a novel and direct measure for mood. We match this novel mood index with trading data of German individual investors. We find that when mood is positive, investors purchase more, particularly trading into risky and out of less-risky securities,” Dimitrios Kostopoulos and Steffen Meyer write in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
UP NEXT: THURSDAY
The European Central Bank releases a policy decision at 7:45 a.m. ET, followed by a press conference at 8:30 a.m. ET.
U.S. durable goods orders for September, out at 8:30 a.m. ET, are expected to fall 1.7% from the prior month.
The advance U.S. trade report for September is out at 8:30 a.m. ET.
U.S. jobless claims, out at 8:30 a.m. ET, are expected to rise to 214,000.
U.S. pending home sales for September, out at 10 a.m. ET, are expected to hold steady.
The Kansas City Fed’s manufacturing survey for October is out at 11 a.m. ET.
The Federal Reserve’s beige book is out at 2 p.m. ET.
Fed governor Richard Clarida speaks on the outlook for the U.S. economy and monetary policy at 12:15 p.m. ET, and the Cleveland Fed’s Loretta Mester speaks at the NYU Money Marketeers forum at 7 p.m. ET.
from Real Time Economics https://ift.tt/2q8O0zD
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