GDP

In this podcast, Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman interviews Matt Muenster, Chief Economist for Green Bay, Wisc.-based Breakthrough, an innovator in transportation management, dedicated to creating transparent and fair strategies for the world’s leading shippers.

Logistics Management (LM) Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently spoke with Matt Muenster, Chief Economist for Green Bay, Wisc.-based Breakthrough, an innovator in transportation management, dedicated to creating transparent and fair strategies for the world’s leading shippers. Muenster provided Berman with an overview of the impact of the recently-issued third quarter GDP estimate and its impact on logistics and supply chain strategies.

NRF’s holiday sales forecast numbers are optimistic and positive, with 2023 holiday season retail sales pegged to be up 3%-to-4% annually, coming in between $957.3 billion and $966.6 billion.

A theme within freight transportation, supply chain, and logistics circles, which is always among the key “top of mind” themes, is the state of the economy, from various perspectives, whether it be, in our case, a freight or macroeconomic perspective.

There is, and has been, a fair amount of commentary and data pointing to a recession. The primary reason for that has to do with United States GDP (Gross Domestic Product) readings issued by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) over the course of 2022. First and second quarter GDP readings came in at -1.6% and -0.6%, respectively. Two straight months of GDP typically signal that a recession is underway. But it was not as linear, in this case,...

On a webcast hosted by the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA) this week, Jonathan Starks, Chief Intelligence Officer for freight transportation consultancy FTR, and Avery Vise, FTR Vice president of Trucking, addressed the current state of the economy with a freight-based focus, to help put things into perspective.

In a year of unprecedented disruption, U.S. business logistics costs fell 4% as shippers found new ways of moving freight. Like the supply chains they serve, logistics managers must now fundamentally rethink and redesign their solutions—and how they do will define their future success.

The often-used saying “what a difference a year makes” really takes on a new meaning these days, especially when taking into account just how, umm, unusual, the last year has been. Unusual is just one word, to describe the events of the last year. Other candidates could include: nervous, fearful, uncertain, angry, confused, and many others. But with more and more people getting their COVID-19 vaccine shots these days, the lexicon is slowly changing to words like: encouraging, optimistic, hopeful,...

It is pretty fair to say that the first quarter United States GDP number was going to be dismal. And now that presumption has become a reality, with the first quarter advanced estimate GDP tally, which was released today by the United States Department of Commerce, coming in at -4.8%, its lowest reading going back to the Great Recession period of 2008 and 2009 (and well off from the fourth quarter of 2019’s 2.1% GDP reading), as well as marking the first quarterly...

Following a very average second quarter GDP number of 2%, the new number for the third quarter, which was issued by the United States Department of Commerce yesterday, is really more of the same, albeit down one basis point to 1.9%. While these numbers are not terrible, they are not what was expected a year ago at this time, when things were truly humming, or so it seemed, especially during the third quarter of 2018’s 4.6,% tally a number that many economists viewed...

The theme regarding the economy a year ago at this time may very well have been “Happy days are hear again, given solid GDP growth, buoyed by high levels of consumer confidence, manufacturing output, and strong import volumes, among other factors. But move ahead to the present, and the theme could be something along the lines of “Where have all the good times gone?” The shift in economic themes, while jarring, to a degree, has been underway for a little...

Global shippers need to keep in mind that supply chain management capabilities—even those managed by the most expansive global 3PLs—vary greatly between countries

FTR Senior Partner Noel Perry noted at his firm’s transportation conference in Indianapolis last week that average recovery growth for GDP continues to decline, from 7 percent in 1950 to 1 percent in 2016, which means that there will not be much help coming from economic growth over the next 2-3 years, with a best case scenario being 2-3 percent growth during that span.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that the West Coast port labor disruption probably slowed Q1 real export growth by 1.5 percent, and in terms of the contribution to net exports to real GDP growth it would equate to a 0.2 percent decline in GDP.

The advance estimate for second quarter GDP at 4.0 percent could serve as a sign of a steadier and improving economy.