U.S.

Labor Day: Hiring is strong enough to worry the Fed

The August employment report, landing just before Labor Day, showed an American jobs market in fine health.

What Americans now pay in tariffs

Under the new Section 301 regime, the average tariff paid on goods entering America has settled into two tiers, according to a detailed review of federal trade policy.

America's emergency oil is running out

The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has fallen to its lowest level since 1983, according to Department of Energy figures.

Independence Day: Energy independence, tested

American crude output is running close to record highs, and total US petroleum stocks, including the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, still fell by 79 million barrels over the spring.

Memorial Day: Summer driving at $100 oil

Brent crude sat between $105 and $108 over Memorial Day weekend, and the average price of petrol at American pumps topped $4.60 a gallon.

The refunds that will add to America's borrowing

The Treasury switched on the Customs Automated Protest Entity (CAPE) on 20 April.

Black Friday: Buy now, get a refund later?

Thanksgiving: Beef, tariffs and the holiday table

Thanksgiving tables offered a live test of how fast prices respond when a tariff is removed.

Labor Day: Hiring has stalled

The American labour market reached Labor Day in an uncomfortable state, with hiring largely frozen but few large layoffs.

Independence Day: The real cost of the "big beautiful bill"

While the country celebrated Independence Day, the non-partisan budget scorekeepers delivered a grim verdict on the new fiscal law.

Memorial Day: Downgraded, and still spending

America marked Memorial Day with a fresh downgrade to Aa1 from Moody's and with Congress pushing ahead on another fiscal package worth several trillion dollars that would widen federal deficits further.

America loses its last AAA rating

Moody's Investors Service cut the federal government's long-term issuer rating from Aaa to Aa1 on 16 May, taking away America's last top-grade sovereign credit rating.

America and China call a truce

Washington and Beijing surprised markets with a 90-day trade truce that rolls back their triple-digit tariffs to an interim level.

"Sell America": are foreign investors walking away?

The US Dollar Index has dropped to a three-year low near 98, and traders on currency and government bond desks around the world have started talking about a 'Sell America' trade.

Steel tariffs squeeze American manufacturers

The White House has put a 25 per cent tariff on imported steel and aluminium and scrapped the exemptions that long covered friendly suppliers.

Why America borrows like it's in a crisis

The United States ended fiscal year 2024 with a budget deficit of $1.83 trillion, or 6.4 per cent of GDP, at a time of peacetime full employment.

Biden blocks the US Steel deal

The White House has formally blocked Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9 billion takeover of United States Steel, putting domestic industrial politics ahead of cross-border capital.

US Steel's deal is in limbo

Black Friday: Shoppers race to beat the tariffs

Thanksgiving: Why eggs cost more this year

The average cost of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for ten fell five per cent to $58.08 this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual survey.

A 60% tariff is a tax on Americans

Donald Trump has formally restated his plan for a sixty per cent tariff on all imports from China, a shock without modern parallel for US trade.

Labor Day: Is the job market cracking?

The unemployment rate reached 4.3 per cent in July, nearly a full percentage point above its low for the cycle.

America had 818,000 fewer jobs than we thought

On 21 August the Bureau of Labor Statistics published preliminary benchmark revisions showing that US non-farm payrolls had been overstated by 818,000 jobs in the twelve months to March 2024.

Independence Day: Is the dollar losing its crown?

The dollar's share of allocated global foreign exchange reserves has slipped to roughly fifty-eight per cent, its lowest in nearly three decades, according to the International Monetary Fund's COFER data.

America's deficit won't shrink

The Congressional Budget Office's updated baseline puts the federal deficit above $1.5 trillion in 2024, rising toward $2.6 trillion over the coming decade, and that is before Congress passes anything new.

Memorial Day: Petrol prices and the summer inflation bump

American petrol prices averaged roughly $3.59 a gallon going into Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of the summer driving season, and motorists have no hedge.

Japan wants US Steel. Washington may say no

Nippon Steel has offered $14.9 billion for US Steel, or $55 a share, a forty per cent premium that the industrial logic can easily justify.

Black Friday: Retailers finally have the right amount of stock

Black Friday found American shops with tidy shelves, sensible stock levels and hardly any panic clearance sales.

Thanksgiving: Bond investors finally have something to be thankful for

The ten-year Treasury yield has fallen from its October peak of 5.02 per cent to about 4.40 per cent, handing bond funds large mark-to-market gains just in time for Thanksgiving.

Moody's warns on America's debt

Moody's Investors Service cut its outlook on America's Aaa credit rating from 'stable' to 'negative' on 10 November.

Washington's chaos now has a price

Congress passed a 45-day continuing resolution on 30 September and avoided a federal government shutdown with hours to spare.

Labor Day: The job market is cooling the right way

For eighteen months economic orthodoxy held that bringing inflation down would require a painful jump in unemployment.

America is borrowing like it's in a recession. It isn't

The federal deficit is approaching six per cent of GDP while unemployment sits near a historic low of 3.5 per cent.

America loses its AAA again. Does it matter?

Fitch Ratings cut the United States from AAA to AA+ on 1 August, an unwelcome reminder of the fiscal arithmetic.

Independence Day: Washington is paying factories to come home

Through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, Washington is handing out tens of billions of dollars in grants, loans and tax credits to bring factories home.

Memorial Day: The debt deal is done. Now comes the bill

Negotiators agreed on 27 May to suspend the debt ceiling, and Washington's political drama ended in its usual anticlimax.

Nobody can agree how much savings Americans have left

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco reckons that about $500 billion of the $2.1 trillion in excess pandemic savings is left, and that it will be spent by late summer.

When does America run out of money?

Janet Yellen told congressional leaders that the federal government could run out of cash "as early as 1 June", turning the debt-ceiling standoff into an immediate problem for the plumbing of the financial system.

Markets start pricing an American default

The spread on one-year US sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) rose past 100 basis points in late April.

America's banks are sitting on $620bn of hidden losses

America's commercial banks are sitting on roughly $620 billion of unrealised losses on their securities portfolios, according to recent figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

America hits its debt limit again. The countdown starts

The United States hit its $31.4 trillion statutory borrowing limit on 19 January, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen began the "extraordinary measures" that keep the government paying its bills.

Black Friday: Shop now, pay later, default sooner

US credit card balances reached $930 billion in the third quarter of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's latest household debt report, up fifteen per cent on a year earlier.

Thanksgiving: Why your turkey cost 20% more

A classic Thanksgiving dinner for ten now costs an average of $64.05, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation's annual survey, twenty per cent more than it did a year ago.