The US federal deficit is projected to increase by $3.8 trillion through 2034, or 1.1% of GDP, based on the bill that passed on Wednesday in the House Ways and Means Committee. Meanwhile, the US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.54% on Wednesday, the highest close in three months.
China to US bookings for container transport surged almost 300% after the announcement of a pause in tariffs between the two countries. “We are definitely starting to see the bookings return now that this temporary pause is in effect,” said Ben Tracy, vice president of strategic business development at container-tracking software provider Vizion.
Divisions among Republicans persist in the House after the Ways and Means Committee passed a bill providing $5 trillion tax breaks and $1.5 trillion in reductions for Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs. “To say we have a gulf is an understatement,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a leader of the conservative wing. He noted that there is “a significant number of us who could not bless this product” in its current form.
Trump said he doesn’t want Apple building products in India. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.”
The US isn’t in recession, but uncertainty about the economic outlook has spiked as tariffs roil expectations. “It looked like the Federal Reserve was about to declare mission accomplished, and that they were going to successfully land the plane on inflation without any serious fallout in terms of unemployment and layoffs,” said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets. “That’s no longer the base case.” Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, recently said: “I’ve done a lot of work in my career as a professional economist looking at the economics of uncertainty, and it’s absolutely suffocating. Businesses don’t know … the rules of the road. Their knee-jerk reaction is just to sit on their hands, and that’s what they’re doing.”
