Economy

Last edited Fri Jun 20, 2025, 12:31 PM - Edit history (1)

The Conference Board isn't, they are predicting 1.6% economic growth overall in 2025. Given the Q1 estimate of minus 0.2% GDP (annualized), that means a 2.2% average growth rate in the remaining 3 quarters of the year to make up for that and get to 1.6% for the year. (By the way, there is one more estimate of Q1 GDP to go, coming out near the end of this month. So the -0.2% number for Q1 isn't final).

Neither is the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow model nor the Blue Chip consensus they follow for comparison..
https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

And just to head off a common myth -- that 2 negative quarters in a row equals a recession, no, recessions are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), not by popular Internet memes:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143450417#post20

Not that anyone credible is predicting Q2 GDP growth to be negative. Sadly, we won't know how Q2 turns out until the first estimate of that is released near the end of July. The second estimate comes out near the end of August and the third and final estimate near the end of September.

Edited to add: Myself, I think a recession will start sometime in 2025 as ultimately determined by the NBER. I don't know how the heck we can have all these tariff ups and downs and ups and downs, plus immigration enforcement U-turns and U-turns on U-turns without having one, but I'm not considered a credible source.

From Yahoo Finance June 18 (summary in my words):
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-stall-as-fed-holds-rates-steady-forecasts-2-cuts-in-2025-180946600.html
Effective tariff rate per JPMorgan estimates: 2.5% at the beginning of 2025., 10.3% before "Liberation Day" April 2, then since then it's been essentially 23.7% until May 12 when it dived to the current 14.4% on a reset of China's reciprocal tariff to 10%. Graph starts in late March 2025, the other numbers come from the narrative