There's a trade war on – why aren't the hard data showing it?

The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics · May 2, 2025 · 22m

If you’re looking for evidence of the negative hit from Donald Trump’s tariffs, you’ll struggle to find it in the hard data. Group Chief Economist Neil Shearing is on The Weekly Briefing from Capital Economics minutes after the release of the US employment report for April to talk about how economies have been holding up in the weeks since the ‘Liberation Day’ announcement. In his conversation with David Wilder, he addresses the key issues of the moment, including:

What Q1 US GDP data and port data aren’t telling us about the negative hit to impact on economies from tariffs;

Whether markets…