Who believes the numbers?

26 Mar 2025 2 min read

Daily update

  • UK February consumer price data was slightly below expectations—before the weirdness of the UK government’s capped energy pricing adds to inflation in April. Producer price data was not published, owing to quality issues. Labor market data is not being published, owing to quality issues. There will be revisions to wage data, owing to quality issues.
  • The UK Chancellor gives a fiscal statement. This reflects a government juggling fiscal constraints with the new geopolitical realities. Less reliable allies means more duplicate spending on things like defense. While debt-to-GDP ratios create noise, it is naïve to assume that there are no data quality issues. Recent research suggests official regional employment data significantly under-reports economic activity.
  • The US administration has continued to pursue an erratic tax policy—suggesting that there will be relative few exemptions for US consumers after 2 April, and that US buyers of copper will be hit with a tax soon. These may or may not become policy. However, more companies from China have been added to a list that restricts US companies from exporting to them.
  • Federal Reserve President Goolsbee offered some modestly hawkish comments about the risk to rate cuts if US bond market expectations of inflation were to increase.
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