UNITED STATES

摘要

The final release of the Q3 national accounts adhered closely to the preliminary report. The economy grew at its fastest rate in more than two years, accelerating by 3.2% (q-o-q annualized). Growth was lifted by business spending which has started to take off after a lacklustre 2015 and 2016. Personal consumption was revised down from 2.3% in the preliminary release to 2.2%. However, the 2018 outlooks for both consumption and investment have noticeably improved, after Congress passed the Republicans' sweeping overhaul of the tax code. US$1.5tn in tax cuts will be implemented, including corporate tax which has been slashed from 35% to 21 %. Our panel's GDP outlook for 2018 has been upgraded from 2.5% to 2.7%. Still, some data reports for Q4 paint a mixed picture. M-o-m industrial production slowed noticeably in November even though base-year effects helped to lift the y-o-y rate from 2.9% in October to 3.4%. November was also a muted month for business investment, with non-defense core capital orders (a proxy for investment spending) falling by -0.1 % (m-o-m). However, construction spending that same month rose 0.8% (m-o-m) to an all-time high of US$1.257tn. Extreme cold weather conditions and snow storms in December-January will undoubtedly hit the construction sector.