A group of business economists expect US economic growth to remain solid next year, with unemployment falling further and only a slight chance of a recession.
However, they expressed concern about potential risks, notably from trade conflicts.
In its latest forecast released yesterday, the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) predicted that the US economy will grow 2.7 percent next year, only slightly below the 2.9 percent that they expect for all of this year as measured by GDP.
The 2.9 percent predicted growth for this year would be up significantly from meager gains of 1.6 percent in 2016 and 2.2 percent last year.
However, it would still fall shy of the pace that US President Donald Trump has pledged to achieve with his program of tax cuts and deregulation.
During the 2016 US presidential campaign, Trump vowed to double the lackluster 2 percent average annual growth that has prevailed since the Great Recession ended.
The current expansion, in its 10th year, is the second-longest on record, but is also the weakest in the post-World War II period.
If the expansion continues through the middle of June, it would become the longest on record in the US, surpassing the one that ended in 2001.
Among the threats to the US economy, 40 percent of the NABE panel ranked trade policy as the greatest risk, followed by interest rates (21 percent) and political or geopolitical events (13 percent).
For next year, 80 percent of the economists said they had downgraded their forecasts because of the trade disputes.
In addition to scaling back their GDP forecasts for next year, nearly two-thirds of the economists said they had lowered their expectations for business investment because of the trade conflicts.
Two-thirds said they had raised their inflation forecasts moderately because of a belief that the tariffs would increase prices.
The new NABE outlook projected that job growth in the US will remain strong next year.
The economists expect monthly employment gains averaging 166,000, down slightly from an expected average of 207,000 for this year.
They predict that the unemployment rate in the US, already at a 49-year low of 3.7 percent, will dip to an average 3.6 percent next year.
Inflation is expected to remain tame, with prices rising 2.1 percent next year, the same as the forecast for this year and in line with the US Federal Reserve’s 2 percent annual inflation target.
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