While the headlines were dominated by Brexit, China’s foreign ministry reiterated that Beijing will take countermeasures if the US imposes new tariffs. As it stands, both sides have imposed tariffs on $50 billion of each other’s goods, with Trump threatening tariffs on a further $200 billion. Last week, Trump went even further and suggested he might place tariffs on another $267 billion of goods – including mobile phones. That would significantly escalate the trade war.
Trump did Tweet that the US GDP rate is higher than the unemployment rate for the first time in 100 years. However, a cursory search reveals that it has actually happened 185 times since 1948. Still, why let the truth get in the way of a good boast?!
We saw consumer inflation expectations from the US yesterday, which increased to 3% in August from 2.98% in July. Today’s releases include the business optimism index for August, but it is otherwise quiet. However, on Thursday we will see the inflation rate for August and on Friday we will see retail sales and industrial production figures for August.
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