If it just seems like the first Friday of the month wasn't the same without being able to pore through the Bureau of Labor Statistics' hotly watched monthly jobs report, don't worry. You probably didn't miss much. While the BLS has gone dark with the shutdown in Washington, other reports outside the government data suggest the labor market just plodded along in September. The Dow Jones consensus forecast was for growth of 51,000 in nonfarm payrolls with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.3%. High-frequency data that includes job postings, private payrolls and state-by-state figures...
U.S. trade officials plan to meet with their Chinese counterparts within the next two or three months to discuss the future of economic relations between the two countries, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday. The announcement comes a day after the Trump administration extended a 90-day pause on implementing higher U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. Speaking in an interview on Fox Business Network's "Kudlow," Bessent indicated that any potential reduction in tariffs on China would require substantial progress on addressing fentanyl flows. "The U.S. will need to see months, if not...
Core consumer prices in the US, which exclude food and energy, rose by 0.3% from the previous month in July of 2025, picking up from the 0.2% increase in the previous month for the sharpest increase since January. The result was in line with the median consensus from markets. Prices accelerated for transportation services (0.8% vs 0.2% in June), medical care services (0.8% vs 0.6%), and rebounded sharply for new vehicles (0.5% vs -0.7%). Source: Trading Economics
The very data that caused President Donald Trump to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he did not like the July employment report, calling it "rigged," is being taken as serious evidence by Federal Reserve officials of a slowing economy and as a justification for the interest rate cuts Trump wants. "The latest employment report confirmed some of the signs of fragility and reduced dynamism in the labor market," Fed Governor Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee, said in a Saturday speech that elaborated on how the latest jobs numbers and revisions to prior months' data...
US President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is nominating economist E.J. Antoni as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 10 days after firing the previous head following weak labor market results, accusing Antoni of manipulating the figures without evidence. Antoni currently serves as chief economist at the influential conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. He has criticized the BLS, the Labor Department's statistical arm, whose monthly data on labor market conditions and inflation is consumed by a global audience of economists, investors, business...
On April 6, the Sunday after Donald Trump announced the "Liberation Day" tariffs, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined the president on his flight back to Washington from Mar-a-Lago. Bessent wanted to discuss damage control. At the time, photos of Trump in the Rose Garden waving a placard proclaiming tariffs as high as 49% had spooked investors worldwide, triggering the biggest two-day stock selloff since the pandemic. "We are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market for capital investment," billionaire...
Asia-Pacific markets traded higher, tracking Wall Street gains overnight.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.41% after hitting a fresh record high on Thursday, while the Topix added 0.61%. South...
Both the STOXX 50 and STOXX 600 hovered around the flatline on Friday, as investors adopted a cautious stance ahead of further developments in trade talks between US President Trump and Chinese...
The U.S. government shut down much of its operations on Wednesday as deep partisan divisions prevented Congress and the White House from reaching a funding deal, setting off what could be a long,...