Welcome to the July 2021 edition of our newsletter, bringing you important policy and high-impact news about India.
We hope you find it useful.
A Forum for Indian Businesses in North East USA
(Covering: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont)
Higher June Retail Sales Bolsters U.S. Recovery
Americans stepped up retail spending in June, offering a boost to the economic recovery as it faces concerns about accelerating inflation. Retail sales—a measure of purchases at stores, restaurants and online—rose 0.6% last month compared with May, the Commerce Department reported Friday July 16, 2021.
The reopening economy’s hunger for goods from China, and for the containers that carry them, has left importers of coffee, of which the average American guzzles two cups a day, struggling to ship the stuff from Brazil. As the traders become ever-larger producers of foodstuffs and consumers of crops, they may welcome a bit more stability. But not too much. As the populations of Asia and Africa grow bigger and richer, the middlemen will be called on to supply them with crops from countries in surplus, says Jos Boeren, a former Bunge executive now at Stafford Capital, an investment firm.
One of the most important signals of future inflation has begun to ease in the past month, a development that should reassure the Federal Reserve in its prediction that the recent inflation surge will prove largely temporary. That signal is so-called inflation expectations: what businesses, consumers, workers and investors expect inflation to be over the next one to 10 years. Because such expectations can be self-fulfilling, economists consider them key to where inflation is going. Expectations are tracked through a range of surveys and market-based measures, and most are telling the same story. After rising sharply from October through May, they have now begun to ease.
A year ago employers were furloughing staff. Now many of them are desperately looking for more. The rapid bounce-back in some bits of the labor market—notwithstanding the risk of a new pandemic flare-up—has been good news for workers angling for a pay rise. It is also a boon for staffing agencies, which match firms with potential hires. Beyond short-term dislocations to the workforce, the changing way in which people want to work should keep the recruiters busy.
