Archive

Dual Mandate, Divided Fed: 2026 Crossroads

• The Fed cuts by 25bp for the third time, but hawkish dissent is deeper than voting suggests. Six members judged rates should still be 3.875%, and three members are pencilling in rate hikes next year.
• Despite revising 2026 PCE inflation forecasts down to 2.4% (from 2.6%), the Committee still projects only one 2026 cut, making a hawkish shift in the reaction function.
• 2026 rate projections split, with seven dots above the 3.375% forward median, four at the median, and eight below. Policy will depend on labour market and inflation data.

China Re-rooting Rather Than Dumping

• China’s rising export growth to Europe in November demonstrates base effects around a steady trend that predates US tariff increases. It isn’t about dumping.
• Avoidance measures remain rife, with transhipping through Vietnam not dented by the provisions in their US trade deal. Effective tariff rates aren’t rising belatedly.
• Profit-maximising companies still seem to be working around US measures, keeping the impact on inflation and growth smaller than many other economists feared.

By Philip Rush

2026 Politics: Nine Guesses & A Certainty

• In what promises to be another year fraught with uncertainty, politics and markets will again be dominated by the United States in general and Donald Trump in particular.
• Widely differing views of equity market prospects demonstrate this, i.e. the ‘bubble is about to burst’ doomsayers versus the bullish seeming consensus on Wall Street.
• However, the biggest challenge facing investors is focusing on what really matters amid the continuing ‘noise’ emanating from the Trump Administration in particular.

By Alastair Newton

Activity Thaws Into Winter

• The worst services PMIs thawed in November, broadening growth even as averages held steady. Activity in the US services ISM has trended up to exceed the PMI data now.
• A slight fading of stagflationary pressures in the latest US surveys probably balances out in the Fed’s policy trade-off. We still fear that it is easing excessively.
• Rising unemployment rates in the US and UK are concerns not experienced in most of the world. This theme feeds their recent divergence from the global surprise tendency.

By Philip Rush