IHS Markit July US Economic Forecast Flash (Annual Numbers)

IHS Markit Chief US Economist Joel Prakken and Executive Directors Patrick Newport and Ben Herzon recently provided some forecast data for key U.S. economic indicators. To view the data click on the green box below that says "View Full List." A related IHS press release said:

"First-quarter GDP growth was revised down by 0.2 percentage point to 2% in the Bureau of Economic Analysis' third estimate, but the near-term outlook has improved. Since completing our previous baseline about one month ago, we’ve added 0.7 percentage point to our forecast of second-quarter GDP growth, raising it to 4.8%. The largest contributor to the markup was a robust report on international trade in goods for May. Some of this strength was due to a surge in exports of soybeans, which we expect to be reversed over the second half of this year. But even outside of the soybean boost, the US economy was strong in the second quarter. For all of 2018, we forecast 3.1% GDP growth (measured fourth quarter to fourth quarter), followed by 2.2% growth in 2019 and 1.5% growth in 2020.

"Trade tensions have been ratcheting up. New in this forecast are soon-to-be implemented 25% tariffs on $36 billion of imports from China and tit-for-tat Chinese tariffs (25%) on US exports. These tariffs had little impact on projected GDP growth. The unemployment rate declines to a low of 3.4% next year, and core PCE inflation rises to 2.3% by 2020. In this forecast, the Federal Reserve continues to gradually raise the target range of the federal funds rate (same path as in last month’s forecast), long-term interest rates rise, and equity gains slow."