The US economy faces risks from a potential resurgence of COVID-19 and from the failure so far of the US Congress to provide additional financial support for struggling individuals and businesses.
That judgement emerged from a survey released yesterday by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) of 52 forecasters who were polled last month.
Among the forecasters, 55 percent said they regarded a second wave of COVID-19 cases as the most serious threat.
Twenty percent said they thought a lack of further government economic aid would pose the biggest risk.
The inability of Democrats and Republicans to forge a compromise has meant that unemployed Americans are no longer receiving a federal unemployment benefit. Support for small businesses has also expired. States and localities, many of which have suffered sharp declines in tax revenue, are struggling, too, without further federal assistance.
Similar to many other economists, the NABE’s forecasters have estimated that the US economy, as measured by GDP, grew at a 25 percent annual rate in the July-to-September quarter. That would be the largest quarterly gain on records dating to 1947.
However, it would follow an even bigger contraction in the April-to-June quarter, when COVID-19 paralyzed much of the US economy.
For the current quarter, the NABE panel forecast a 4.9 percent annual growth rate.
The recovery from the pandemic recession, in the view of the forecasters, would remain sluggish in coming months. A majority of them do not expect GDP to return to its pre-pandemic levels until sometime in 2022.
For all of this year, the panel expects GDP to decline 4.3 percent. That would be the US economy’s first full-year contraction since a 2.5 percent fall in 2009 at the end of the Great Recession.
For next year, the forecasters expect growth of 3.6 percent.
“NABE panelists have become more optimistic, on balance, but remain concerned about a potential second-wave of COVID-19,” said Eugenio Aleman, an economist at Wells Fargo Bank and the chair of the NABE survey panel.
On the danger that the US economy might suffer a double-dip recession, in which GDP would shrink again, 51 percent of the forecasters estimated the chances at 20 percent or less. Only 12 percent saw the likelihood at 50 percent or more.
More than half the panelists believe that 10 to 20 percent of the jobs that have been lost to the pandemic recession are permanently gone, with many hotels, restaurants, retailers and entertainment venues unable to reopen.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS