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The economy picked up sharply in the second quarter as a rise in consumer and business spending offset a drop in housing construction and a widening trade gap. The nation’s gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., expanded at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.8% in the April-to-June period, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That’s up from a tepid gain of 1.4% early this year and 2.5% increase for all of 2023. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg had projected a 1.9% increase. Is the economy doing well right now? The economy has been surprisingly resilient despite high interest rates and inflation the past two years as a result of strong job and wage gains that have provided consumers the wherewithal to keep spending.

Economic activity in the U.S. was considerably stronger than expected during the second quarter, boosted by a strong consumer, government spending and a sizeable inventory build, according to an initial estimate Thursday from the Commerce Department.

Real gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced during the April-through-June period, increased at a 2.8% annualized pace adjusted for seasonality and inflation. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for growth of 2.1% following a 1.4% rise in the first quarter. Consumer spending helped propel the growth number higher, as did contributions from private inventory investment and nonresidential fixed investment, according to the first of three estimates the department will provide. Personal consumption expenditures, the main proxy in the Bureau of Economic Analysis report for consumer activity, increased 2.3% for the quarter, up from the 1.5% acceleration in Q1. Both services and goods spending saw solid increases for the quarter. Inventories also were a significant contributor, adding 0.82 percentage point to the total gain. Government spending added a tailwind as well, rising 3.9% at the federal level, including a 5.2% surge in defense outlays. On the downside, imports, which subtract from GDP, jumped 6.9%, the biggest quarterly rise since Q1 of 2022. Exports were up just 2%. Stock market futures drifted higher following the report while Treasury yields moved lower. “The composition of growth was one of the better mixes that we have observed in some time,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. The report “tends to support the idea that the American economy is in the midst of a productivity boom which over the medium term will lift living standards across the country via lower inflation, low employment and rising real wages.” There was some good news on the inflation front: the personal consumption expenditures price index, a key measure for the Federal Reserve, increased 2.6% for the quarter, down from the 3.4% move in Q1. Excluding food and energy, core PCE prices, which the Fed focuses on even more as a longer-term inflation indicator, were up 2.9%, compared to a 3.7% increase in the prior period. The so-called chain-weighted price index, which takes into account changes in consumer behavior, increased 2.3% for the quarter, below the 2.6% estimate. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saw the GDP report as “affirming the path we’re on to steady growth and declining inflation,” in remarks she delivered Thursday morning in Rio de Janeiro.

The U.S. economy grew at a surprisingly robust 2.8 percent annualized rate in the second quarter, capping two years of solid expansion, despite some signs of softening. Growth in the gross domestic product for the quarter ending in June was double the 1.4 percent reading in the previous quarter, but it reflects a general cool-down from last year’s brisk pace, according to Commerce Department data released Thursday morning. Get a curated selection of 10 of our best stories in your inbox every weekend. “Economic growth is solid, not too hot and not too cold,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, a financial research firm. “The soft patch we had at the beginning of the year has gone away, and with it, the risks of a recession are dying on the vine.” Consumer spending, business investments and new inventory drove almost all of the second quarter’s growth. Continued government spending at the federal, state and local levels also helped prop up the GDP reading, which sums up goods and services produced in the United States.

Naturally, the chattering class’s first step in figuring out what’s at the root of Americans’ pessimistic attitudes about the economy is to discount them. Economic commentators like Kyla Scanlon have coined terms like the “vibecession” as a way of explaining how, when the economy is good, people still just feel bad about it. And although Krugman and others claim to be adopting more sophisticated analyses, their conclusions really come back to some version of the idea that the economy is actually good and the “bad vibes” are in our head.

Krugman’s most recent articulation of the paradox focuses on the idea that Americans are evaluating the national economy very differently than their personal financial situations. People feel good about their personal situation but bad about the nation as a whole. To draw this conclusion, he points to the Federal Reserve’s October 2023 report, where 72% of survey respondents reported that they were “doing okay” (39%) or “living comfortably” (33%). Conclusion: people feel good about their individual financial situations.

Despite the solid economic growth pace, the outlook for the second half of the year is hazy. The labor market is slowing, which will impact wage gains. Though wages rose, income at the disposal of households after adjusting for inflation and taxes increased more slowly last quarter, rising at a 1.0% rate after climbing at a 1.3% pace in the first quarter. That meant consumers turned to savings and also saved less to fund their spending last quarter. The saving rate fell to 3.5% from 3.8% in the January-March period and is now well below its pre-pandemic average. Economists also estimate that much of the Fed's rate hikes is still to be felt. State and local government revenues are also slowing, which could erode spending. There are also worries about new tariffs, which could see businesses front-loading imports if former President Donald Trump is returned to the White House in November's presidential election. Nonetheless, a recession is not expected, with monetary policy easing anticipated this year. "Economic activity is indeed about to downshift into a below potential path in the second half of the year," said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets.

A black-swan investor, Mark Spitznagel, says the stock market is heading for a historic sell-off, reiterating an uberbearish warning for investors who are getting comfortable with steady stock gains amid the frenzy over artificial intelligence. In a , Spitznagel said the yearslong rally in the stock market amounted to the "greatest bubble in human history." He pointed to similarities with the dot-com bubble, when investors poured money into tech stocks before the frenzy fizzled and the Nasdaq crashed in 2000. "You don't feel like a fool for making a bearish argument," he told the Journal. But Spitznagel said the bubble — and the impact of its bursting — would be even more extreme this time around, as the government's would make it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to turn the economy around in time to avoid a recession. Spitznagel said the current rally would likely continue for months as inflation continues to fall and the Fed eases monetary policy, adding that stocks could soon lose over half their value in a subsequent sell-off. In short, Spitznagel said the situation in markets was a "." "I think we're on the way to something really, really bad — but of course I'd say that," Spitznagel said. Spitznagel's Universa Investments fund bets on "black swan" events moving markets. He made billions during the 2008 stock-market crash, the 2015 flash crash, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. He's been warning of a crash since January 2023, so while it's , he said the timeline of a coming crisis was clearer now and that a recession could be in sight before the end of the year.

But economists say the pickup in economic growth, and consumer spending in particular, isn’t expected to last long term. Many lower- and middle-income families are struggling to cover basics, and more people are falling behind on loan payments. The rapid recovery since the onset of the pandemic has recently lost steam, as high borrowing costs force households and businesses to rethink spending. Home sales have stalled, manufacturing is slowing, and factories are seeing a drop-off in demand for U.S.-made goods. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate — at 4.1 percent as of June — has edged up for three straight months. Still, economists say a gradual cool-down is a welcome reprieve from years of too-hot growth that stoked inflation. The labor market remains strong, and consumers are still spending, albeit with less gusto than they were a year ago. A recent boost in inventory has helped lower prices and drive sales at Mohawk Chevrolet, a car dealership in Ballston Spa, N.Y. After years of pandemic-related shortages and hiccups, president Andy Guelcher says he has finally been able to build up his stock of cars. “We’re rebalancing after what was very, very light inventory in 2023,” he said. “As a result of that, pricing has gotten more competitive, and we’re starting to see a lot more consumers pop up. They were waiting for a deal, and now they can get one.” The surprisingly upbeat GDP report adds new uncertainty to whether the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates in September, as previously expected. The central bank has kept borrowing costs at a two-decade high since last summer to temper inflation. In congressional testimony this month, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell said the United States is “no longer an overheated economy,” thanks in large part to a moderating labor market. “Conditions have returned to about where they stood on the eve of the pandemic: strong, but not overheated,” he added.

MANHATTAN (CN) — Wall Street looked ready to have a horrible week as Big Tech earnings disappointed, but by the closing bell Friday investors managed to rally on good inflation data. Corporate earnings from Tesla and Alphabet — with the former showing a 43% loss of earnings per share for the second quarter — sapped equities early in the week. However, a raft of good inflation and growth data came to the rescue. By the closing bell Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had gained 302 points for the week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq suffered massive losses Wednesday, dropping 2.3% and 36%, respectively. However, the Nasdaq dropped 369 points this week, while the S&P 500 lost just 46 points. “Investors are interested in taking more risk as the so-called soft landing looks more likely,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial. “We have an economy with low unemployment [and] rising wages, decelerating inflation, and a Fed on the cusp of cutting rates. What more could you ask for?” On Friday the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported its monthly inflation reading for June, which came in at expectations with a 0.1% month-over-month increase in the personal consumption expenditures price index. Prices for goods actually decreased, while prices for services increased by 0.2% in June. The best news from the report was that rent prices gained just 0.26%, which are at pre-pandemic averages, and overall it points to the Federal Reserve hinting at a rate cut in September when the central bank meets next week. “The Fed won’t see a glaring reason to immediately cut interest rates,” said Comerica chief economist Bill Adams. “The Fed might cut rates faster if the jobs market deteriorates sharply, but that seems unlikely.” The BEA earlier in the week gave its advance estimate on gross domestic product for the second quarter of the year, which the agency said rose by 2.8%. The main contributors were among the health care, housing, and motor vehicles sectors. The reading, which isn’t the agency’s final word on the second quarter, came in well above the consensus estimate of 2% growth. “The U.S. economy is much stronger than people realize, and to the extent that markets were worried about a growth slowdown, they should breathe a sigh of relief,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at the Independent Advisor Alliance. Despite the lull in the U.S. economy seen during the first quarter, growth is strong again, and most economists now peg the U.S. economy to grow 2.3% in 2024 before dropping below 2% in 2025. Consumer sentiment has yet to recover, though. According to the University of Michigan’s latest monthly survey, sentiment dropped again, this time from 68.2 in June to 66.4 in July. Consumer expectations and the “current conditions” index both also nudged slightly downwards. “Continued strength in consumer spending is consistent with the fact that sentiment among wealthy and high-income consumers — those with the most purchasing power — which has climbed sharply over the past two years,” said survey chief economist Joanne Hsu in a statement. She noted they generate a disproportionate share of spending, while “the burden of high prices continue to drag down sentiment for less wealthy consumers.” Experts say the downward trend in sentiment should pick up starting next month. “With the methodological transition behind us, and further disinflation and interest rate cuts on the horizon, we expect that the index will begin to rebound,” Grace Zwemmer, associate economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in an investor’s note. “However, a gentle rise in unemployment over the next quarters may temper future gains in the index.”

The unemployment rate has steadily ticked up in recent months to the point where the Sahm Rule is on the verge of being triggered. A 4.2% unemployment rate in July would mean that the three-month moving average has risen half a percentage point since last August.

In the past, such rises in unemployment have meant that the economy is already in the midst of a downturn. (Recessions are only officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the nation’s official recession referees, months or even years after they began, based on backward-looking data.)

Vice President Harris faces a double-edged sword on the economy as she seeks to capitalize on strong economic data while grappling with President Biden’s unpopular record on inflation.

As Harris ramps up her campaign, the economy appears to be moving in the right direction with inflation easing, the labor market cooling and hopes rising that the Federal Reserve will soon cut interest rates.

Statistician Nate Silver released on Tuesday his first election model since Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Silver wrote in Substack that although Harris is favored to win the popular vote, she is "a modest underdog to Trump in the Electoral College, risking a repeat of the popular vote-Electoral College split that cost Democrats the 2000 and 2016 elections."

A new poll released Tuesday indicates that former President Donald Trump still has a sizeable lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Florida.

The poll, conducted by the University of North Florida, asked likely Florida voters their choice for president, U.S. Senate and three proposed amendments to the Florida Constitution.

Former President Trump is narrowly edging out Vice President Harris in Arizona and Pennsylvania, while he runs behind her in Georgia, according to new polling first shared with The Hill.

The polling, which was commissioned by Democratic super PAC Progress Action Fund and conducted by the left-leaning pollster Public Policy Polling, showed Trump at 49 percent and Harris at 47 percent in Arizona, with 3 percent of respondents not sure.

Vice President Kamala Harris lags behind former president Donald Trump in several recent polls taken in swing states.

Harris launched her presidential campaign shortly after President Joe Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race on Sunday. Biden then announced that he was endorsing Harris as the Democratic nominee for president.

Today, in our ninth edition of this tracker, our Presidential Voting Intention poll of 6,927 swing state voters finds Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris in seven out of the nine potential swing states.

In a hypothetical match-up between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. included as an independent candidate, Trump leads Harris by between two and eight points in seven of the states, while Trump and Harris are tied in Wisconsin (44% each). Harris leads Trump in Minnesota by three points (44% vs 41%).

Even though the Democrats have regained much of the lost ground since Vice Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump is still leading in crucial ‘battleground states’, according to a poll of polls. A bunch of states that have a history of swinging between Democrats and Republicans are called battleground states in the United States. These states are critical to the outcome of US presidential election. In recent days, polls nationally as well as in some of the battleground states have shown that Harris has largely caught up with Trump and is even ahead of him in some polls. For one, a Fox News poll of battleground states showed that while Harris was ahead in Minnesota, Trump was narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, and the two were tied in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Now, a poll of polls by Decision Desk HQ has reported that Harris is only ahead in one battleground states of Virginia where Trump is ahead in seven other critical swing states. The poll of polls is based on an analysis of 83 surveys. Trump still ahead of Harris in battleground states: Poll of polls The Decision Desk HQ’s poll of polls studied the survey for the states of Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. While Harris was ahead of Trump by 2.6 per cent, she was trailing in all other states, as per the analysis. The findings of the poll of polls are as follows: Virginia : Harris 44.9% (+2.6), Trump: 42.3% Wisconsin : Trump 49.1% (+0.6), Harris 48.5% Michigan : Trump 49.1% (+2.0), Harris 47.1% Pennsylvania : Trump 48.5% (+2.6), Harris 45.9% Georgia : Trump 47.9% (+4.8), Harris 43.1% Arizona : Trump 51.1% (+6.4), Harris 44.7% Nevada : Trump 49.5% (+8.6), Harris 40.9% Overall, the Decision Desk HQ reported that Trump has a lead of 2.1 over Harris as he polls 48 per cent votes and Harris polls 45.9 per cent. A caveat with the poll of polls is that since it not only includes the latest polls but older polls as well, it may not reflect the current and most accurate mood of the public.

The United States election will be held on November 5. It’s been a week since President Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential contest and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris. No other Democrat is contesting the Democratic nomination, so Harris will be the nominee. FiveThirtyEight does not yet have an aggregate of polls for Harris against Republican nominee Donald Trump. Individual national polls usually have Trump ahead by one or two points. Trump led Biden by 3.2 points nationally in the final FiveThirtyEight aggregate. Harris does better in polls where third party candidates are included. In a Siena poll for The New York Times, Trump led Harris by one head to head, but Harris led by one with other candidates. In a poll for The Wall Street Journal, Trump led by two head to head, but Harris by one with others. Polls conducted during Biden’s candidacy didn’t show this difference. Natural Democrats have probably returned to Harris after saying they would vote third party out of frustration with Biden. Transparent, research-based, written by experts – and always free. In a national Ipsos poll for US ABC News that was conducted Friday and Saturday, Harris’ net favourability surged to +1 from -11 last week, before Biden’s announcement. Trump’s net favourability dropped five points to -16 after peaking following the Republican convention last week. The net favourability of Trump’s vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, slumped nine points in a week to -15. Trump is now 78 and Harris will be 60 by the election. Biden will be almost 82. The age difference between the candidates now advantages Harris. US presidential elections are not decided by the national popular vote, but instead use the Electoral Vote (EV) system. There are a total of 538 EVs, and each state receives a number of EVs based mostly on population. With two minor exceptions, states award their EVs winner takes all. It takes 270 EVs to win the presidency. The six closest Biden-won states in 2020 were Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. These are considered the key states in this election. It’s likely that Trump has about a two-point edge in the key states relative to the national popular vote, so Harris will need to win nationally by about two points to win. At the 2020 election, Biden won nationally by 4.5%, but only won the decisive state (Wisconsin) by 0.6%, so the Electoral Vote system favoured Trump by 3.9 points relative to the national vote. I think the August 19–22 Democratic convention will be very important for Harris. Major party presidential candidates are normally well known to voters much earlier in the year as they need to win primaries to clinch their party’s nomination. The primaries occur early in an election year. While Harris has been vice president since January 2021, she has been in Biden’s shadow. The US vice president has no power of their own except to break a tie in the Senate. The Democratic convention will give Harris a chance to differ herself from Biden, and be personally appealing to voters. Overall, the polls suggest that Trump is still favoured to win, but Harris has improved on the polling during Biden’s candidacy, and could further improve with a successful Democratic convention. Proposed Supreme Court reforms and US savings rate Biden has called for Supreme Court reforms to impose term limits on judges and establish an enforceable code of ethics. A constitutional amendment would probably be required to enact these reforms, which requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress and a three-quarters majority of the state legislatures. As long as Republicans are opposed, such a constitutional amendment would be impossible to obtain. The Supreme Court, which has a 6–3 right majority, has a 56.0% disapprove, 36.0% approve rating in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, so this is probably a good issue for Democrats. There was a blowout in disapproval after the decision overturning Roe vs Wade in June 2022, but perceptions of the court had improved by April 2023, with more approving than disapproving. A second blowout in disapproval came in May 2023, and disapproval has kept rising. In June the personal savings rate (the percentage of personal income that is saved) dropped 0.1 point to 3.4%, the lowest since December 2022. After surging during COVID owing to government stimulus, the savings rate has been between 2.7% and 5.2% since June 2022.

Former President Donald Trump led Vice President Kamala Harris by one point in a new national poll, less than a week after she launched her 2024 White House bid.

The survey, released Thursday by the New York Times and Siena College, showed Trump leading Harris 48 to 47 percent among likely voters. It’s well within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the group – 3.4 percentage points.

So when I read poll numbers like the New York Times, Siena poll, the first thing I looked at, of course, was the under 30 vote, which is mostly Gen Z with some millennials. And it’s close. And it’s far too close than it should be for a Democrat to feel confident at this stage.

What that poll tells me is that this is a very different electorate than what we saw in 2020. Increasing levels of cynicism, lower levels of interest in voting, less affiliation with the Democratic Party, which means that we now have a greater degree of interest in finding alternative solutions.

In an unofficial video doing the rounds on TikTok, a beaming Kamala Harris jives through the street with school children decked out in a glittery LGBT pride jacket while holding an umbrella. The clip then cuts to images of Donald Trump with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — all set to a diss track by rapper Kendrick Lamar. In the four days since Harris became the lead candidate to replace Joe Biden as Democratic presidential nominee, the internet has exploded with memes of the US vice-president giggling, dancing and telling zany stories. On platforms such as TikTok and X, Gen Z users are creating and sharing content featuring the vice-president, with added colours and electro beats, and spliced with other niche pop culture references. Democratic strategists say the positive memes are part of a new, youth-led wave of enthusiasm for the party, which Biden, the oldest main party candidate in America’s history, failed to muster. A post on Kamala Harris's TikTok account featuring a song by Chappell Roan called 'Femininomenon' has reached 5.8mn views © KamalaHQ/TikTok Although Biden won 59 per cent of voters aged 18-29 in 2020, a YouGov/Yahoo news poll taken before he withdrew from November’s election showed his support had dropped to 43 per cent. Trump’s rating in the same age group was 31 per cent. “Young voters will be one of the arteries needed to make sure this campaign is alive and well,” said Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist. “I certainly think we’re seeing energy, interest and participation that we had not seen before.” Some of the most popular memes describe Harris as a “brat” — a reference to pop singer Charli XCX’s hit summer album that Gen Zers across the US and Europe are having to explain to their elders. Far from being an insult, the singer said it refers to “that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes”. After Charli XCX’s post about Harris went viral, the vice-president’s campaign adopted Brat trappings, changing the colour and font of its X account to those of the singer’s album, an in-joke that has resonated with Gen Zers. An analysis of Harris’s popularity on TikTok shows a recent leap in the use of #kamalaharris on the video platform, with mentions going up 455 per cent in the past 30 days. Her campaign has been quick to lean into the online buzz, by making memes referencing XCX and other artists popular with Gen Z, like Chappell Roan. Part of Harris’s appeal is her relative youth and historic status as the first main-party Black and Asian-American female presidential candidate. But she has also tapped into Gen Z’s irreverent and obscure brand of online humour. In another viral clip Harris shares an anecdote about her mother admonishing young people: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” “In an alternative universe we would see the coconut tree clip and think it’s sort of an incoherent phrase — like I don’t exactly know what she’s talking about, but because of that it’s funny,” said Haley Ellant, a 20-year-old junior at Barnard College. “We don’t know if she can beat Trump but Gen Z is kind of rallying behind her, because there’s not much else we can do and her personality fits our humour.” There is already some evidence that the online enthusiasm could translate into tangible support. In the 48 hours after Biden withdrew from the race, Vote.org, a voter registration non-profit, said it registered 40,000 new voters, 83 per cent of whom were aged 18-34. Gen Z political advocacy group Voters of Tomorrow said that it had seen more chapter sign-ups since Harris kicked off her campaign than in the previous two months combined, and its political action committee had its best fundraising day in its history on Sunday, raising nearly $125,000 from grassroots donors. “That money rolling in the door is a big deal. It costs us about $4.77 to register one voter, so that’s a whole lot of new young voters that we can register,” said Marianna Pecora, Voters of Tomorrow’s director of communications. Harris is also seen as being to Biden’s left on some crucial policy issues that appeal to young voters, such as climate change, student debt forgiveness and the war in Gaza, as well as having been the administration’s standard bearer on reproductive rights. “I think she should obviously claim credit for the foundation Joe Biden laid,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a progressive advocacy group. “But she would do well to take it a step further and get to the root causes of some of these issues.” But while Harris is enjoying a newfound popularity on social media platforms, engagement data shows that Trump’s numbers still dwarf those of the Democratic vice-president.  Despite Trump posting only five TikToks to date, their viewership ranges from 3mn-164mn, far above the Democrat’s average of 330,000 views per post.