Trump: Handelskrig är bra - Strafftull på stål och aluminium

Eunice Yoon

Chatter in Beijing if Xi will take @realDonaldTrump deal. Reasons he would do it: 1) #China needs >food imports esp. before Lunar New Year 2) weaker yuan offsets lower tariffs for China firms 3) uncertainty eases for markets/econ 4) tariff cuts can be spun to public as China win

5) One big reminder I got today: Communist Party derives legitimacy from economic performance. Xi and other leaders in big meeting this week looking for ways to stabilize slowdown into 2020. One Chinese scholar told me better to take deal now, “push difficulties to the future.”

The U.S. expansion, now in its 11th year, will continue through the 2020 presidential election with a healthy labor market backing it up, economists say.

The panel of 57 economists who participated in The Wall Street Journal’s December economic survey offered a relatively optimistic outlook for 2020 growth, albeit at a slower pace than in 2019.

On average, they expect U.S. economic growth to slow slightly in 2020, to a year-over-year rate of 1.8% in the fourth quarter from an estimated 2.2% in 2019. They also see lower odds of a recession over the next year than they did in the prior two months.

Forecasters expect the labor market to remain strong with employers continuing to add jobs. They expect monthly job growth of around 157,000 in the first half of the year, and about 104,000 a month in the second half of 2020.

The survey found that economists expect the unemployment rate to rise slightly from 3.5% in December 2019 to 3.7% in December 2020.

They also see more Americans joining the workforce, with the labor-force participation rate rising slightly to 63.5% on average at the end of 2020 and 63.6% at the end of 2021. The rate, which accounts for workers who are employed or actively seeking employment, was 63.2% in November.