Archive

July 14, 2025
2025-07-15 trade_head.png

Tuning Tariff Impact Estimates

  • President Trump’s tariff policy seemingly follows a random walk with a drift towards deals. Path dependency raises risks and uncertainty around his volatile whims.
  • Corporate avoidance measures have spared their customers from most of the pain, but Vietnam’s deal as a template could belatedly bring more of the pain to bear.
  • We assume most countries stay at 10%. The impact of others rising to 20% may be smaller than the anti-avoidance hit, with the total now worth less than 0.4% to UK GDP.

By Philip Rush

July 10, 2025
2025-07-10 US_head.png

US Claims Continue To Cruise Calmly

  • Rising continuing claims in recent months have been heralded as a canary warning of belated suffering in the labour market. But the problem is ending before it ever began.
  • US employment growth is still aligned with its long-run average, and the unemployment rate is unchanged on the year. Openings and quits are also steady with averages.
  • The Fed needs excess disinflation to cut, and we believe this won’t materialise. That also avoids demand and policy pressure on the BoE and ECB, helping them hold rates.

By Philip Rush

July 08, 2025
2025-07-08 markets_head.png

Inconsistently Dovish Pricing

  • Dovish market fears from April have unwound for the Fed, yet deepened for the BoE, despite broadly resilient data and cautious guidance from policymakers reluctant to cut.
  • Equity prices have relied on this resilience to recover, yet expectations for extended rate-cutting cycles imply it breaks. Payrolls only forced half of the gap to close.
  • We expect ongoing resilience to keep rolling market pricing for rate cuts later, with the unnecessary easing ultimately never being delivered by the BoE, Fed, or ECB.

By Philip Rush

July 02, 2025
2025-07-02 EA_head.png

ECB Still Squeezed By Unemployment

  • EA unemployment’s rise to 6.3% matched the ECB forecast underlying recent hawkish guidance and narrowly relied on Italy, which offset a broad tightening elsewhere.
  • Unemployment is still broadly lower than a year ago and pre-pandemic. That will not help a disinflationary move along the Phillips Curve, let alone shift it lower.
  • Without a disinflationary surprise, the ECB should not be shocked into a rate cut as it describes the prevailing setting as well-positioned. We still see no more ECB cuts.

By Philip Rush

By country