Overload

If you’re like me, you’re finding it difficult to pay attention to what’s going on around us. I subscribe to a bunch of Substacks and other newsletters to keep me grounded in reality, but there are days – many days, tbh – when I don’t take the time to read everything I subscribe to.

I want to tell you about one newsletter that I’m finding to be increasingly valuable – Chartbook, by Adam Tooze. I subscribe to the free version of his Substack newsletter, and it’s good enough for me.

Chartbook provides – well, charts. About economics, mainly, but also about related topics. Here’s the chart I found interesting today.

A detailed explanation of this chart is behind his paywall, but here’s what he says in the free version. First of all, this chart shows how each sector contributed to the rise in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in the second quarter. At first I was confused, because the large print talked about a fall in imports, while the graph shows an Imports category that appears to be larger. But the original source (Financial Times) explains that the annualized 3% growth rate in the second quarter was driven by a sharp drop-off in imports, as companies that had rushed to purchase foreign goods in anticipation of the tariffs during the first quarter. So the Imports bar is big because the decline in the Imports sector had an outsized impact on GDP. Or something like that. Here’s the link to the Financial Times story that was the basis for this chart. I found it helpful.

The chart also noted an increase in inventories (which I understand to be the result of companies’ front-loading their purchases of imports) and a decline in consumer spending.

The Financial Times article concludes with this quote from analysts at JPMorgan: “We expect further softening of demand into [the second half] as the impacts of recent protectionism and deportations are felt.”

We should note that the current Republican president has fired JPMorgan because of these statements. (jk but had you worrried, right?)