Global deflationary pressures emanating from China are symptomatic of wider demand issues gripping economies from South America and Europe to much of Asia. China is far from the sole cause of price weakness; others include new crude-oil supplies in North America and sluggish growth in Europe. But China’s sheer size, reach and central role in global manufacturing make it a potent force.
The losses will be uneven, said Richard Howitt, an agricultural economist at UC Davis and a co-author of the report. Regions with a reliable supply of groundwater will do best. He cited Tulare, Kings and Kern counties as areas with poor groundwater supplies that could struggle this year.
U.S. consumer spending unexpectedly stalled in April as households cut back on purchases of automobiles and continued to boost savings, suggesting the economy was struggling to gain momentum early in the second quarter.
A better approach would be to fold in services but cut the sales tax rate deeply enough to make the shift revenue-neutral, thus aligning it with the economy, providing tax relief to low-income families and allowing revenues to grow with consumer spending.
Retail sales barely budged in April, confounding projections for a small increase, figures from the Commerce Department showed Wednesday. That followed a 0.2 percent drop from January through March that marked the first quarterly decline in almost three years.
About 251 million people – visitors and residents – traveled in California in 2014, spending an all-time record of $117.5 billion, according to a new report released by Visit California, the nonprofit that helps develop the state’s travel and tourism marketing programs
A gauge of U.S. business prices rose in March for the first time since October, a sign of stabilizing inflation in the economy.
Sales at retailers and restaurants increased 0.9% last month to a seasonally adjusted $441.4 billion, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That was the biggest monthly gain in a year, but it was still down from November, when retail sales reached their highest level since the end of the recession.
U.S. consumer spending barely rose in February as households used the windfall from lower gasoline prices to boost savings to the highest level in more than two years, the latest sign that the economy hit a soft patch in the first quarter.
Snowy and cold weather and the now-settled labor dispute at the country’s West Coast ports, which disrupted the supply chain, hurt economic activity early in the year. The persistent weakness in retail sales could temper expectations for a June interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve.
The retail restraint is somewhat surprising given that the average household is expected to save hundreds of dollars this year on gas that averaged $2.23 a gallon on Thursday, down from $3.32 a year ago, according to auto club AAA. Americans appear to be saving the money they’re not spending at the pump, or using any excess funds on services that don’t show up in the retail-sales report.
Sales at retailers and restaurants decreased a seasonally adjusted 0.9% in December from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. But that drop, the largest since last January, likely overstates the severity of the pullback. Some economists blamed technical factors such as seasonal adjustments, warning about potential revisions to the data or a rebound in coming months.
The association said California car and light truck sales improved 7.3 percent in the first six months of 2014. That compared with a 5.4 percent increase nationwide.
The TechAmerica Foundation proudly presents our 2014 edition of Tech Trade in the States: A State-by-State Overview of International Trade of Tech Goods. It provides 2012 data on tech trade at the national level and export data for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The report also provides an estimate as to the number of jobs that are supported by export activities.
In January, as businesses struggled through a weak post-holiday period in a month that already tends to be slow, industry sales slid by their largest margin in 18 months.