This week brought fresh evidence to support the notion that the U.S. economy continues to fire on all cylinders, as gauges of manufacturing and services sector activity came in ahead of expectations.
The data continues to support the Fed’s upbeat take on the U.S. economy, although business leaders this week attempted to convince the Trump administration that the next round of proposed tariffs on China could be the tipping point.
Tech companies including Cisco and HP sent letters to the USTR on Thursday as the comment period expired on the next round of 301 investigation-related duties. Other correspondence sent to Robert Lighthizer stressed that small and medium-sized enterprises as well as manufacturers are struggling to adapt to the new trade regime and won’t be nimble enough the deftly navigate the increasingly choppy waters in which global supply chains are being disrupted.
In any event, right now this isn’t showing up in the macro data and Friday brings August payrolls.
As ever, the data and the messaging will be parsed for anything that reinforces the crowded long USD trade. The greenback’s relentless ascent since April has weighed heavily on EM and ex-U.S. risk sentiment more generally as chatter about a dollar liquidity crunch continues to permeate the narrative.
Just when it looked like something was on the verge of snapping in mid-August, Trump renewed his criticism of the Fed. His comments, along with the perception that Powell was dovish at Jackson Hole and, importantly, the PBoC’s move to reinstate the counter-cyclical adjustment factor in the yuan fix, together conspired to slam the brakes on the greenback rally. That, in turn, gave emerging markets a fleeting bit of respite which helped green light U.S. stocks to summit new peaks.
Since then, the situation in EM has deteriorated further, raising fresh concerns about the relative wisdom of the Fed’s approach to international developments which, so far, seems to be to ignore them until there are convincing signs of spillover.
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