Today’s graph has been circulating on Twitter for the last couple of days. It shows that together, US consumers and China account for one third of global GDP.
The Chinese government has lowered its GDP growth forecast for this year to between 6% and 6.5% (the latest GDP number was 6.4% growth), and is currently taking steps to stimulate the economy. US consumers should, on average that is, be in pretty good shape given the strength of the US labour market.
In recent months, this has been accompanied by a gradual rise in wage growth and somewhat lower inflation, increasing spending power. The importance of the US consumer for the global economy also explains why the jobs growth number for February caused some market jitters – coming in at just 20,000, it was much lower than forecast.