Economist (US Macro), RDQ Economics

Conrad DeQuadros

Economist (US Macro)

RDQ Economics

RDQ Economics provides global macroeconomic consulting services with an emphasis on U.S. economic fundamentals and monetary policy.  
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Our views are driven by consistent application of classical economic and monetary principles and has generated superior anticipation of changes in the stance of monetary policy and of movements in economic growth and inflation.
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The founders of RDQ Economics—John Ryding and Conrad DeQuadros—worked together on Wall Street for a decade, in the independent research space for nine years, and have experience in central banking at the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England.  John and Conrad have worked closely with fixed income, foreign exchange, and equity traders and portfolio managers, which has enabled their analysis and advice to be tailored to a clientele that is focused on trading and investment decisions.

Macroeconomics

<p>The Trump Administration’s announcement in late May of the imposition of tariffs on imported goods from Mexico represented another escalation of global trade tensions.  Tumultuous trade policy has been a feature of the economic outlook for over a year but central to our 2019 U.S. growth forecast was an expectation that trade-related uncertainties would eventually ease allowing for a pickup in business investment later in the year.  This outlook still looked reasonable to us last month but the message to Corporate America with the Mexico tariffs, coming after the deal of the USMCA, is that trade agreements do not permanently alleviate uncertainties about their input costs or supply chains.  With business uncertainty about trade now less likely to ease we need to reconsider our central forecast that business investment will strengthen substantially later this year.  Forecasting uncertainty seems higher than normal so in addition to a revised baseline outlook we summarize two alternative scenarios (and provide some highly-subjective probabilities for these scenarios).</p>

The Trump Administration’s announcement in late May of the imposition of tariffs on imported goods from Mexico represented another escalation of global trade tensions.  Tumultuous trade policy has been a feature of the economic outlook for over a year but central to our 2019 U.S. growth forecast was an expectation that trade-related uncertainties would eventually ease allowing for a pickup in business investment later in the year.  This outlook still looked reasonable to us last month but the message to Corporate America with the Mexico tariffs, coming after the deal of the USMCA, is that trade agreements do not permanently alleviate uncertainties about their input costs or supply chains.  With business uncertainty about trade now less likely to ease we need to reconsider our central forecast that business investment will strengthen substantially later this year.  Forecasting uncertainty seems higher than normal so in addition to a revised baseline outlook we summarize two alternative scenarios (and provide some highly-subjective probabilities for these scenarios).

U.S. Economic Forecast Scenarios Amid Worsening Trade Uncertainties