Economic

Trump’s reciprocal tariffs for the EU add to uncertainty

President Trump has announced plans for the US to impose sweeping tariffs on the EU from April in an escalation of trade tensions. Cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals have been...

UK GDP result for December and Q4 due on Thursday

UK GDP is the main item on the economic release calendar for this week. Consensus forecasts point to a broadly flat outcome, in line with much of the second half of 2024. A speech by...

Markets pricing in further rate cuts on Trump tariff newsflow

A busy weekend of tariff-related newsflow from the US has culminated in market pricing of an additional rate cut this year in both the UK and euro area. Since this is despite ongoing...

Euro area and US interest rate decisions due this week

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to cut the deposit rate by 25bps to 2.75% on Thursday. On Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve is likely to keep the federal funds rate on...

Consumer spending enters 2025 on a strong footing

The Irish economy began 2025 in good shape. Tailwinds from strong labour demand have been helped along by lower interest rates and a decline in headline inflation, which remains the...

Expansionary Budgets add to a strong economy in 2024

The December Exchequer returns suggest strong economic activity in 2024, boosted by successive expansionary Budgets. Voted current and capital spending each grew faster than...

Transactions for new homes climb 26% in October

Residential property prices grew 9.7% in October, close to the double-digit rates seen in recent months. However, rapid increases in Q4 last year mean some reduction in headline growth...

Ireland’s Exchequer begins to receive back-taxes from Apple

While October is not a crucial month for the Irish Exchequer, volatility of recent years continued with a near-trebling of corporation tax. This was driven by the first arrival to the...

Services disinflation boosts the case for Bank Rate cuts in 2025

UK inflation declined marginally in December, helped by services price disinflation. This marks an improvement on recent months, especially for a subset of non-volatile services (excluding...

Invest, invest, invest: Labour’s plan to restore UK growth

Labour’s first Budget since 2010 was delivered this afternoon by Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Higher investment has been facilitated by a new fiscal rule targeting a broader measure of...

Grounds for optimism about the UK economy in H2 2024

The UK economy was flat in June and grew 0.6% in Q2, in line with consensus forecasts. However, we believe there are grounds for optimism heading into the second half of the year....

UK services inflation slows in July

UK inflation was lower than expected in July, driven by slower services inflation, which grew 5.2% in year-on-year (yoy) terms. This supports the view that disinflation is progressing and...