March manufacturing production also shows evidence of tariff front-running

 

 - by New Deal democrat

The former King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, has faded ever since the “China shock” at the beginning of the Millennium. Downturns in production almost always coincided with the onset of recessions beforehand. Since then, there have been several big downturns, in 2015-16, 2019, and a smaller one in 2023-24, without recessions having occurred.

The headline number in this morning’s report for March, a decline of -0.3%, is somewhat misleading. That’s because it includes utilities, which had all time highs in January and February more than 5% higher than at any time before the pandemic, and over 3% higher than any prior post-pandemic measure (possibly a combination of an particularly cold winter and crypto mining), declined -5.8% in March. The below graph is normed to 100 as of the pre-pandemic record in April 2018:

When we strip out utilities and just look at manufacturing production (red in the graph below), March saw a 0.3% increase to a new post-pandemic record, in contrast to the headline decline (blue):

I suspect the big increases in February and March in manufacturing, like this morning’s retail sales numbers, were about front-running T—-p’s tariffs. Which means that like retail sales, production might have been pulled forward from the next few months, which may lead to whipsaw declines.

I think the best way to look at both pieces of data reported this morning is simply to note that expansion continued in March, and we’ll have to watch the incoming data especially carefully in the next few weeks and months.

In that regard, the New York Fed published its regional “Business Leaders Survey” for April this morning, headlining that:

“Business activity in the region’s service sector declined significantly for a second consecutive month, according to firms responding to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s April Business Leaders Survey. The survey’s headline business activity index came in at -19.8, its lowest level in more than a year. The business climate index dropped nine points to -60.7, its lowest level in more than four years, suggesting the business climate was considerably worse than normal.”

Here is the accompanying graph for the headline number:

Similar non-manufacturing surveys will be reported by the Philly, Richmond, Kansas City, and Dallas Feds over the next two weeks, and may give us our first hints of tariff-related declines in activity to the 70% of the economy that is services.

In the meantime, tomorrow we will get our first important look at the housing construction sector in March.

March retail sales were all about front-running T—-p’s tariffs

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Normally real retail sales is one of the indicators I treat as most important, because it tells us so much about consumer behavior, which is not only 70% of the economy, but also has a lengthy track record for leading both employment and the coincident indicators for recession.

Not this month. In March real retail sales told us that consumers were front-running tariffs, Bigly.

For the record, nominally retail sales increased 1.4% in March. Since consumer prices declined -0.1%, real retail sales increased 1.5%. Even more telling, ex-autos retail sales rose 0.5% nominally and 0.6% in real terms. This was the biggest increase in sales in 2 years (blue in the graph below). Because of shelter distortions in the CPI, recently I’ve also begun including real retail sales ex-shelter (gold), which also increased the most in two years. This also telegraphs that real consumer expenditures on goods, which won’t be reported until the end of the month, will also increase sharply (red):

In other words, there was a big rush to buy vehicles in March. Anecdotally, in my neck of the woods a major auto dealer’s advertising was all about hurrying up to beat the tariffs.

In absolute terms, real retail sales were also at their highest in two years, with the exception of last December:

Since when real retail sales are positive YoY, historically there is no recession on the immediate horizon, here is that measure:

Of course, this might well be another exception, since front-running in March pulled demand ahead from later this spring and summer. Sharp declines in the next several months are therefore quite possible, distorting the series to the negative.

The state of the short leading indicators: why there’s no “recession watch” - yet

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Over the weekend, in my high frequency “Weekly Indicators” post, I wrote that in the past month, the bulk of the short leading indicators had turned from being positive to negative. Which of course raises the question, should I go on recession watch?

To help resolve that, I took a look at the whole constellation of short leading indicators, including those that only come out once a month. To cut to the chase, the indicators that have reacted are the financial and interest rate sensitive ones. The “hard” indicators - and even a few of the “soft ones” - have not moved yet.

First, let me briefly update several of the high frequency indicators that have moved, starting with the “quick and dirty” forecast method including stock prices and jobless claims:

After turning negative YoY for several days last week, stocks have rebounded. Officially for my purposes they are a neutral indicator, because they made an all-time high as recently as late February. It will only be if they fail to surpass that high in the next month that they will turn negative.

This is the US$, which I discussed yesterday, and  made a new 52 week low intraweek last week:

Next is industrial commodities (basically, commodities minus oil):

This as well has made new 52 week lows in the past several weeks. This occurs either when supply increases (as it did in 2023) or demand is expected to contract, which is the most likely explanation at present. 

As I wrote yesterday, the credit spread between Treasury’s and corporate bonds has also blown out:

Although I won’t bother with the graphs, several other short term leading indicators, including the average of the regional Fed manufacturing indexes and their new orders components, have been negative for awhile - which has also been the case for the ISM manufacturing index. And the aggregated St. Louis Financial Stress index sharply increased last week. But the similar Chicago Fed indexes show no sign of stress at all.

Where we haven’t seen a downturn is in manufacturers’ new orders for durable goods or for consumer goods (these are also “official” leading indicators in the index):

Note that these are only updated through February, and won’t be updated until later next week. 

And recall that several leading indicators contained in the employment report, in the form of construction and goods-producing jobs generally, just made new peaks in March:

Finally, one last historical “official” short leading indicator that is very hard to reproduce now is net business formations vs. terminations. The Census Bureau does update formations monthly, but they are not seasonally adjusted and must be viewed YoY (particularly because of huge seasonal shifts during the Holiday season). These were just updated for March last week:

There’s no sign of stress at all in high propensity formations.

On the flip side, bankruptcy statistics do get updated every week, and will probably be updated later today. These have regular variations, peaking at the end of each month, as well as tailing off during the Holiday season. There is also a variation YoY depending on what day of the week a month begins and ends, so they are best averaged monthly:

It is not unusual for bankruptcies to increase during the course of an expansion, as the total number of businesses in the US increases with population and growth. The issue becomes when there is a significant acceleration of that trend. Averaging the four weeks in March through the beginning of April, there has been no such acceleration.

The bottom line as of now is that I would want to see some spreading out of weakness from the financial and interest rate data into the “hard” economic data before a “recession watch” would be warranted.

The US bond market sends a warning; has the US crossed an economic Rubicon?

 

 -by New Deal democrat

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times has called T—-p’s tariffs “an act of warfare against the entire world.”

Perhaps it is not surprising that in the past week, the entire world has responded. Among other things, per Eric Michael Garcia, “China has suspended exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets, threatening to choke off supplies of components central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world.”

But most significantly, per Bloomberg yesterday, China has had every incentive to weaponize its $760 Billion (!) in US Treasury holdings.

And it may have done so.

Let me start with this graph, via Wolf Street, of the US Treasury yield curve:

This is almost the worst configuration you could imagine. Not only has the short end more deeply inverted (historically a leading sign of recession), but also the long end has risen in yield (also a leading sign of recession in other models). About the only worse configuration would be if the Fed had to raise interest rates further to combat inflation or to defend the US$.

We all know that last week US Treasury yields rose sharply - by 0.40% from 3.99% to 4.40%, rising as high as 4.60% intraday:

This has had some immediate economic impacts, most notably on mortgage rates, which on Friday rose back over 7%:

This is almost certainly going to impact mortgage applications and new housing sales and permits, hurting that important leading sector.

Additionally, spreads between US Treasury’s and investment grade corporate bonds have widened significantly (red), and the spreads of both compared with high yield speculative corporate bonds (gold) have widened as well:

This is typically a sign of financial stress and often (but not always!) a short leading indicator of impending recession as well:

But as has already been noted in other corners, the sell-off in the bond market could also impact the standing of the US$. Here is a graph of the US$ vs. the Euro (blue) and Chinese Renminbi (red) over the past 10 years:

Note that over that time the general trend was the strengthening of the US$ against both currencies.

But now let’s focus on the last year:

On T—-p’s inaururation day, the Euro was almost 1:1 parity with the US$. Since then the Euro has appreciated, and last week it gained another 0.25 from 1.08 to 1.105 against the dollar. Meanwhile the Renminbi in the last several weeks has decoupled, depreciating in value vs. the US$.

Why would the Renminbi lose value? Maybe because China was selling US Treasury’s and buying other currencies. 

Although I won’t show the graphs, US Treasury’s haven’t been the only bonds that sold off last week. So did longer maturities in Canada, the UK, Japan, and Australia.

But two bonds conspicuously stood out, having sharp downtrends in yields.

One was all of the bonds in the Euro area. Below I show Germany, but there are similar charts for France and Italy (!):

So it looks like there was a move out of Treasury’s and into Euro area bonds.

But the other similar graph was yields on Chinese bonds, which typically can only be traded internally in China:

So on the global scale, US bonds as well of those of its closest trading partners sold off, while Euro area and Chinese bonds went entirely in the other direction.

As shown above, this caused the Euro to appreciate against the US$ - but not the Chinese renminbi.

If this were just China humiliating T—-p, it might be worth a good chuckle. But the entire US economy is likely to suffer because of this move. T—-p will probably surrender in this fight, but rationality is not his strong suit. And Xi may want the US as a whole humiliated as well. 

Weekly Indicators for April 7 - 11 at Seeking Alpha

 

 - by New Deal democrat

My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.

In this time of exogenous shock to the economy caused by the whims of one man, it is especially important to keep laser-focused on the hard data.

And the first hard data that will tell you what is happening is the high frequency data.

What I already wrote about this week is that the consumer spending data is holding up. So did jobless claims. But despite the big whipsaw in the stock and bond markets, there has been other short leading data that has suggested some deterioration has started.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the state of the economy, and reward me a little bit for collating and presenting it to you in an organized fashion.

Real hourly and aggregate pay for nonsupervisory workers increased in March

 - by New Deal democrat

 With yesterday’s CPI report, we can update two important measures of ordinary American workers’ well-being, that also serve as short leading indicators: real average hourly earnings and real aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls. 

There have been two months since the pandemic lockdowns five years ago, including last June, where there were very slight decreases, but these rounded to unchanged, but yesterday’s -0.06% decline which rounded to -0.1% was reported that consumer prices went down significantly since April 2020.

Reported average hourly earnings increased 0.2% nominally in last week’s jobs report, but that also reflected a rounding up from 0.16%. So real average hourly earnings increased 0.2% to the highest ever level except for April and May 2020 - and recall that those months were heavily distorted by the layoffs of millions of low-wage service workers:

With the exception of the pandemic itself, in all cases in the past 60 years, recessions have not occurred until real average hourly wages have either turned down or at least stalled (1970 and 2001):

An even better forecasting metric is real aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls. This tells us how much buying power ordinary American workers have in the aggregate. So long as this keeps increasing, the economy is powered by the added ability to spend. It is only when this stops that a downturn has begun.

In last week’s jobs report, nominally this increased 0.86%, rounded up to 0.9%. Again, due to rounding, the real figure is also 0.9%, which caused real aggregate payrolls to rise to another all-time high, 9.2% above their level just before the pandemic:

In all but one case in the past 60 years, real aggregate payrolls have turned down at least several months before the onset of a recession. In the case of 1970, it was only one month:

In all cases, the YoY% change in real aggregate nonsupervisory payrolls has deteriorated sharply before the onset of recessions, and turned negative within a month or two of the onset:

Currently these are higher by 2.7% YoY, and show no signs of deceleration - yet:

March is somewhat of the “Before Times,” since the Idiot King’s tariff madness is likely to upend everything, especially inflation. Speaking of which, this morning’s PPI, in which both commodities and final demand producer prices declined -0.4%, is probably about the last gasp of the Before Times as well:

FWIW, there has been no sign this week in any of the high frequency hard data of any sudden deterioration in consumer spending, or increase in layoffs. 

March CPI: this is the report we have been waiting for

 

 - by New Deal democrat

In March, with the exception of the usual problem child of shelter, almost every other component of consumer prices was tame - except for meat and eggs. And even shelter continued to decelerate. If Jerome Powell hadn’t tied his wagon to the core CPI number that includes shelter, he could simply declare victory over inflation.

Let’s get to the almost all good graphs.

First, here are the headline (blue), core (red), and ex-shelter (gold) m/m numbers m/m for the past two years:

Only last May and June were comparably low.

And here they are YoY:

Headline prices *declined* -0.1% for the month, the lowest reading since the Covid lockdowns of 2020. Core inflation was 0.1%, the lowest since January 2021, and CPI less shelter also declined, by -0.2%, the lowest since March 2023. On a YoY basis, headline prices were up 2.4%, the lowest since February 2021. Core prices were up 2.8%, the lowest since November 2021, and CPI less shelter was up 1.5%, the lowest since last October.

Last month I noted that the February readings in shelter have typically been among the highest of the year, suggesting unresolved seasonality issues, and that certainly appeared to be the correct understanding, given this month’s retreat (m/m is light blue, right scale; YoY is dark blue):

On a monthly basis, shelter increased 0.3%, tied for the 2nd lowest monthly increase in the past 2.5 years. And on a YoY basis, at +4.2%, it was the lowest in over 3 years. 

Breaking shelter down further, rent increased 0.3% for the month, and owner’s equivalent rent increased 0.4%. Nevertheless rent was among the lowest monthly increases in the past 3.5 years, and although owners equivalent rent did jump, it was lower on a monthly basis than at any point between the beginning of 2022 and May of last year. When we look at the YoY % change, you can see that the downtrend is intact:

Both measures are at 3 year lows, at 4.4% and 4.0% respectively. Given the recent monthly readings for house prices, I continue to expect slow disinflation winding up somewhere around the 3.5% range within the next 12 months.

The big positive surprise was in even more lagging problem child, transportation services (mainly motor vehicle insurance and repairs), which declined -0.7% for the month! This is the lowest monthly reading since September 2021. On a YoY basis, it decelerated sharply to 3.1%, the best reading in 4 years:

This deceleration was driven by a decline in airfares (perhaps all those Canadians and other foreigners who no longer want to visit the US), and also a -0.8% decline in insurance, although that was still higher by 7.5% YoY. Maintenance and repair prices did continued to soar, up 0.8% for the month.

Further, the former problem children of both new and used vehicle prices appear to have nearly completed their normalization process. New car prices were up only 0.1% for the month and unchanged YoY, while used car prices reversed their February increase and declined -0.7% for the month, and are only up 0.6% YoY:

And the icing on the cake was that energy prices declined a sharp -2.4% for the month, and are down  -3.2% YoY:

In addition to vehicle insurance and repairs, the only other “problem children” were piped gas utilities, tobacco products — and meat and eggs (m/m light blue, right scale, vs. YoY dark blue):

In addition to egg prices, which are up 60%! YoY, beef and pork prices are also sharply higher.

 

Bottom line: with the continued exception of shelter, this is the consumer inflation report we have been waiting for, for about the past three years. With the exception of motor vehicle repairs, meat — and eggs — everything broke lower this month. And shelter, as expected, has continued its slow deceleration. This is an economy which *ought to* enjoy smooth sailing in the months ahead on the inflation front — so long as no Idiot King comes along to mess it all up.

Jobless claims continue to reflect slowly expanding economy

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Before I deal with this morning’s March CPI report, let’s first update jobless claims.

On a weekly basis, initial claims rose 4,000 to 223,000. The four week moving average also was at 223,000, unchanged from last week. And with the typical one week delay, continuing claims declined -43,000 to 1.850 million:

As per usual, the YoY% changes are more important for forecasting purposes. On that basis, initial claims were up 5.2%, the four week average up 3.5%, and continuing claims up 2.5%:

I’ll dispense with the usual graph comparing with the unemployment rate since we are so early in the month.

The bottom line for claims remains generally neutral, representing a slowly expanding economy in the immediate future (everything subject to what the Idiot King does in the meantime of course).

Finally, as a postscript let me just note on the daily data for purposes for tracking any tariff impact, restaurant reservations through April 6 were up 3% on a 7 day moving average basis.

The “Major Questions Doctrine” and the T—-p tariffs

 

 -by New Deal democrat

The financial market thrill ride continues on. I considered writing up a post on bond yields this morning, but who knows where they will be at the close of markets this afternoon?!?

So let me point out that the Roberts Supreme Court has created a legal doctrine under which the T—-p tariffs are almost certainly void as an invalid excercise of Executive power: to wit, the “Major Questions Doctrine.”

The very simple gist of the doctrine is that the Executive may not undertake any major changes without an explicit delegation of that specific type of major change. An implicit delegation, even one in the text of legislation, is not enough. The Executive must go back to Congress to see if they *really* meant what they apparently said. Thus for example Joe Biden’s cancellation of student loan debt was invalid, even though the Congressional enabling statute said that the President could “waive or modify” the terms of that debt. “No, not that much!” the Supreme Court said. If Congress wanted to cede that sweeping a power, Biden had to go back to Congress and get Congress to explicitly say so. 

More charitably it can be said to restrain federal agencies from asserting highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted. And more broadly that statutes must not be interpreted as delegating power to decide major questions unless the text clearly grants such power.

By way of a iittle more background, here is a basic primer on the history of the “Major Questions Doctrine.” [Note: much of the following is a summarization or cribbing from the “Constitution Annotated” website].

Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution says, “All legislative powers shall be vested in a Congress of the United States ….” Section 8 further provides that Congress has the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers,” one of which, explicitly in Section 8 is, “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

The Supreme Court has observed that this “Necessary and Proper Clause” authorizes Congress to establish federal offices.4 Congress accordingly enjoys broad authority to create government offices to carry out various statutory functions and directives. The legislature may establish government offices not expressly mentioned in the Constitution in order to carry out its enumerated powers.

But the power is not unlimited. In 1935, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, on behalf of the Court, declared that Congress is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to others the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested. This principle is the basis of the nondelegation doctrine that serves as an important, though seldom used, limit on who may exercise legislative power and the extent to which legislative power may be delegated. 

The “Major Questions Doctrine” was first formulated by the Supreme Court in the 2002 case of FDA v. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp., in which they said: "[W]e must be guided to a degree by common sense as to the manner in which Congress is likely to delegate a policy decision of such economic and political magnitude to an administrative agency."

The doctrine was first made explicit by Chief Justice Roberts in West Virginia v. EPA in 2022, where he wrote: “[I]n certain extraordinary cases, both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent make us "reluctant to read into ambiguous statutory text" the delegation claimed to be lurking there…. To convince us otherwise, something more than a merely plausible textual basis for the agency action is necessary. The agency instead must point to "clear congressional authorization" for the power it claims; an further that “a decision of magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body

And as pointed out above, in Biden v. Nebraska, in 2023, the Court held that Congress did not authorize the Department of Education to institute a sweeping student loan forgiveness program under the HEROES Act of 2003, despite the explicit language in the statute allowing the Deparment to “waive or modify” the terms of the loans. Which looks pretty darn explicit.

So let’s turn to the issue of tariffs. Traditionally courts have shown great deference to Presidents using delegated authority to regulate specific tariffs, and also where there are national security implications. But T—-p’s actions last week arose under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gave the President authority "to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.

It’s pretty clear that the main driver of the tariff announcements last week were to deal with the decades’-long and chronic issue of the US’s trade deficits. There is absolutely nothing that has happened in the past year that would transform this chronic issue - that Congress has never significantly legislated about - into an “emergency.”

Further, the tariff pronouncements are such that they have almost instantaneously upended the decades’ long integration of global markets.

Was there ever a “clear congressional authorization" for the President to completely reorder the global trade relationships of the United States? Does it sound like “a decision of a magnitude and consequence [that] rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body?

Let me put it this way: is there the slightest doubt that if President Obama or Biden had done this that the Roberts Court would not cite the Major Questions Doctrine to stop it?

The bottom line is that it is not just Democrats in opposition who are horrified by T—-p’s tariffs. It is the core GOP constituencies of Wall Stree and corporate America who are screaming the loudest.

The Roberts Court has made a thoroughgoing record of being partisan. But in this case the disagreement is not between the Left and Right, but between two core constituencies of the Roberts Court itself. And the economic damage to the United States might prove catastrophic, and quite quickly too.

Under those circumstances the Roberts Court might well be receptive to enjoining the T—-p tariffs under the “Major Questions Doctrine.”

Daily T—-p tariff recession watch: no evidence of hard data deterioration to start

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Are the T—-p tariffs quickly putting the US into a recession? 

As I wrote yesterday, there are two daily and two weekly indicators, as well as five regional Fed broad economic reports released during the month, that should give us a quick heads-up.

Today’s editions is something of a baseline, since even the daily reports ended no later than April 6. Let’s take a look.

First, Redbook retail sales last week jumped to a high of 7.2% YoY, the 2nd highest comparison in the entire past year. The four week average was 5.7%, about average for the past 10 months:

Next, restaurant reservations also continue to be healthy, up 2% YoY during the past week, within the average range of YoY comparisons this year.

Next, if there are layoffs, tax withholding begins to suffer. It also suffers when stock prices decline such that supervisors and executives are unable to cash in stock options. Matt Trivisonno of the Daily Jobs Update has a graph (delayed by 3 months for non-subscribers) comparing the entire past 365 days of payments vs. the 365 previous days. As you can see, by early this year it was up about 6% YoY:

I have crunched the numbers through last Friday’s report, the latest date available, and currently the 365 day YoY comparison is up 7.1%.

I also looked at the 13 week and 4 week averages YoY. As of last Friday’s report, they were higher by 7.4% and 8.3%, respectively.

So again, no sign of a consumer pullback at this point.

Finally, even though initial jobless claims won’t be reported until Thursday, economist Aaron Sojourner pioneered a study looking at google searches for “file for unemployment”. He found no spike through the end of last week:

On the other hand, Guy Berger found a substantial YoY% increase:

I am a little leery of this, because it should correspond to the YoY% change in initial claims. The search history shows a bottom in August of last year, and a sharp acceleration in the YoY comparison starting in February, but initial claims do not show any YoY deterioration since last autumn:

The only explanation that may fit is if Federal employees who either had been, or were in fear of, being DOGE’d, searched on google, even though they have received severance benefits.

So the conclusion as I begin this watch is that there is no evidence of a significant downshift in any of the high frequency hard data at this point.

Is a T—-p Tariff recession starting? My plan for real-time daily, weekly, and intramonth updates

 

 - by New Deal democrat

Normally on the Monday after the employment report, I do a deeper dig into its details. But today that seems a little quaint, sort of like rhapsodizing about the Roaring 20’s the week after the great Crash of 1929.

Lots of other people, e.g., Bill McBride, have looked into their crystal balls and seen a recession coming, or at least heightened risk. No doubt that is true. But I am a data nerd, and my mission is to pay attention to what the actual hard data says.

Over the weekend on Seeking Alpha I was asked if I could “reassure” people that the economic indicators - even high frequency ones - would telegraph a recession before it began. My response was that with exogenous events, in particular an event caused by a single human actor, nothing could be “assured.” For example, I wrote that “Given [T—-p‘s] mercurial record, I would give not more than 50% odds that these tariffs will remain substantially in place for more than a month or two;” but that the weekly data like new jobless claims and retail spending, and even daily updated “hard” data such as withholding tax payments and restaurant reservations would give almost instantaneous warnings that producers and consumers had started to pull back.

So, in view of the fast moving events, my plan is to add a focus on two general sources of information.

First, I plan to include daily updates on tax payments and restaurant reservations, as well as updates on Tuesday as to weekly retail spending, in addition to the Thursday updates on jobless claims that I already do.

Secondly, the five regional Feds that issue monthly manufacturing reports before the month is over - New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Kansas City, and Dallas - also issue similar updates about the services economy. I have not written about these before because they appear to be coincident indicators, and you know I focus on what is ahead, not what has just happened. But at least for this month, I plan on highlighting these as well, because they will be among the very first “hard” indications that consumption of services is taking a hit. The NY Fed will be the first report, on the 16th, followed by Philly and Richmond on the 22nd, Kansas City on the 25th, and Dallas on the 29th.

Between the above daily, weekly, and intramonth reports, we should have as close to a real-time report of the tariffs’ effects on the economy as possible.

——-

Edited to Add: I happen to think the Roberts Court has handed potential plaintiffs challenging the legality of these tariffs a theory that is a very potent weapon. I hope to explain that tomorrow.