摘要：Amid recent market turbulence and growing policy uncertainty, the U.S. stock market has experienced significant volatility, with t

Amid recent market turbulence and growing policy uncertainty, the U.S. stock market has experienced significant volatility, with the Trump administration’s tariff policies emerging as a key focal point for investors. Meanwhile, Chinese concept stocks have outperformed, showcasing a different market trend compared to U.S. tech stocks. As tariff policies advance, concerns over stagflation and a potential "Trumpcession" in the U.S. economy have intensified, prompting investors to closely monitor the economic outlook for 2025.

In this evolving economic landscape, the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy trajectory remains a critical point of discussion. The Fed Chair Jerome Powell recently stated that the central bank can afford to be patient in adjusting interest rates. This raises the question of whether the Fed is signaling a "higher for longer" stance on interest rates or if unexpected rate cuts could occur in 2025. Additionally, as global supply chains adjust to new trade policies, some industries may face significant challenges, while others could emerge as beneficiaries, potentially reshaping market dynamics.

To provide insights into these pressing issues, this episode of Wall Street Frontline features an exclusive interview with Phil Mackintosh, Chief Economist at Nasdaq. He offers a deep analysis of U.S. stock market volatility, the impact of tariffs, labor market trends, and the Federal Reserve’s policy outlook. Mackintosh highlights that tariffs not only influence inflation but could also reshape global supply chains, while business confidence and layoff data may serve as key indicators for assessing the U.S. economic trajectory in 2025. Below is the full interview.

Southern Finance: The first question is about the recent U.S. stock market. The U.S. stock market has been very, very volatile in recent months, probably due to President Trump's tariff policies. Do you think this is a short-term correction, or it signals deeper economic concerns?

Phil Mackintosh: Yeah, I mean, there's a couple of factors that have started to affect the market. I mean, obviously, the U.S. market outperformed by a lot last year, and that was partly because of all the spending on artificial intelligence, and the companies in the U.S. were doing most of the artificial intelligence modeling. So we had the DeepSeek news, which made a lot of people think about the growth rates and the revenues going forward for those companies, and so the Mag 7 companies, a lot of the chip companies, growth rates have been sort of maybe revisited, and they have underperformed the general market.

The general market has come back off. It's gone to post-election highs, but it's not actually down that much compared to the Mag 7. So, what's happening in the general market, kind of to your point, there's a lot of uncertainty as the tariffs are getting rolled out in terms of how much impact they'll have on the economy, which companies are going to be hurt the most, which companies are going to benefit. And so, everybody's trying to work that out, and there's a lot of new data coming into at least my inbox, trying to help us think through all the steps of the tariff war.

I mean, even Europe started to outperform the U.S. market. So whether the U.S. market is underperforming because of those Mag 7 stocks underperforming and everything else just being okay, or whether, I mean, Europe's kind of an interesting counter case, where with the Ukraine conflict going on and the U.S. becoming a bit less engaged, Europe has stepped up and said, we're going to have to rebuild our military and defense industries.

And so that sector realizes there's going to be more spending, more sales going through the military complex. So the defense sector in Europe is helping pull its economy up. That also could help Germany rebuild its industrial base a bit, and it's been underperforming ever since the COVID.

And so there's a few, this is one of the classic examples, right? There’re a few places where, once you start to think about tariffs and the geopolitics changing, there's winners as well as losers. And so we're starting to see some winners coming out and the market's pricing them in, as it always does.

Southern Finance: In the first three months of 2025, what economic indicators have you been watching closely?

Phil Mackintosh: Yeah, I still think my favorite indicator is layoffs. And obviously with the DOGE layoffs in the government sector, there's been a spike in layoffs. The reason I look at layoffs is because the unemployment rate typically, when it goes up half a percent, half a year, roughly, kind of creates a feedback loop where people know that someone that's lost a job. So the person that's lost a job spends less money. Everybody else starts to worry about their job, so they start to save a bit more. Sales at the businesses go down, so the businesses then have tighter margins, and maybe they let people go to keep their margins profitable. And you end up with a spike in unemployment and a recession.

The unemployment that we've seen coming up in America in the last 12 months has been actually because people coming into the workforce, because wages have been going up. The layoffs have not gone up materially at all. And so I think that that's still going to be important to watch.

If we have enough layoffs that people's confidence starts to fall. The consumer confidence, the consumer spending was one of the big factors that made the U.S. economy stronger last year. And so that's the thing I'm really watching. And in terms of the DOGE layoffs on the government sector, we haven't actually seen the data yet. So it's all a bit too new.

Southern Finance: Yeah, it sounds like layoff is a starting point for everything. That's why you pay specific attention to this economic indicator. However, 2024 has been characterized as a Goldilocks economy, with easing inflation, a balanced labor market and moderate GDP growth. What is your overall projection for the U.S. economy in 2025? Do you see like continued GDP growth, or the US economy is entering a more challenging economic environment?

Phil Mackintosh: Yeah, so I mean, the Goldilocks is is true, right? Because inflation around the world has come down from it's like 9%-10% level to it's still above two in a lot of countries, although Europe is actually starting to see inflation below two.So that's not too hot, not too cold. Unemployment rates are starting to come back up in the US. And so that's cooling, but still not too cold.

And then to your point, the GDP growth around the world, we basically missed a recession, Europe just missed a recession, it didn't grow very strongly. But the U.S. was growing quite strongly because of the AI spending in the stock market. And because of the consumer spending on the economy.

The outlook for 2025 was actually for things to start to broaden out. So you're starting to see earnings and the S&P 500 companies improving across more sectors, you're starting to expect to see small cap companies become more profitable, you're starting to expect to see the wage growth in Europe helping Europe actually start to spend more on the consumer side and boost its economy. And so that was kind of the outlook we had walking into this year.

It's been interesting lately, I've been seeing a lot of corporates and the uncertainty itself is just causing people to pause. So we haven't seen layoffs yet. And I still think layoffs are going to be important because of what we talked about.

But a pause is different to a contraction. So far, what we've seen is people want to wait and see what the tariffs are going to do, how their business needs to respond, maybe how other countries respond. And then the supply chains will all change.

But there's gonna be winners and losers. So we need a little bit more information before we really know how it's going to affect 2025.

Southern Finance: So given the latest CPI number, and also other economic indicators, is your projection for 2025 GDP growth different from three months ago when we just entered 2025?

Phil Mackintosh: I mean, I think the tariffs and how they play out is going to make anything I think right now probably wrong. We we really need more information. There's a classic theory that says tariffs are inflationary. And it makes sense because you're increasing the cost of an input.

And the increasing cost of inputs was one of the things that made good prices go up when we had that first inflation spike. So tariffs are probably going to have to be inflationary in the short term. Maybe companies can rework their supply chains, maybe they can make things more cheaply in new factories, but those factories have to be built, staff will have to be hired.

And so if we look at what happened in 2018, when we had the tariffs on China, the supply chains of all the goods coming out of China basically halved the amount of imports we got from China. A lot of companies moved their manufacturing to different places or actually brought manufacturing to the U.S., worked out how to automate it for the same price and could stay competitive and still have a business model.

But all that stuff actually took years to work through. So I don't think in three months, we're really going to see the net impact of changing the way the economy is structured because of the tariffs.

Southern Finance: And I also heard some worries about stagflation and “Trumpcession”. What is your viewpoint on this?

Phil Mackintosh: Yes. So stagflation is when you have low growth and high inflation.And that's really bad for a central bank, right? Because the way that you slow inflation is to put interest rates up, which slow growth. But you've got slow growth. You don't want to slow it anymore.

You actually need to kind of get both to go the opposite direction. So stagflation is difficult. If we have tariffs increasing inflation and growth slows while companies refactor their supply chains, that's why people are talking about it.

But there are winners from some of the geopolitics and the tariff debates. And we talked about the defense industry in Europe. I think we've got to think a little bit more laterally about some companies are going to benefit from tariffs.

They're going to hire more people. They're going to increase their factory floor plate and grow their economy, grow their businesses as well. So it's not all doom and gloom when you have a tariff. It just creates winners and losers.

Southern Finance: It's like a sector rotation.

Phil Mackintosh: Maybe even with the interest sector rotations. I mean, there was an interesting story about with the lumber tariffs. Some companies have their lumber in America. So they have American lumber for American customers. They don't pay tariffs. If you're getting lumber from Canada, that's going to make those companies less competitive. So even within a sector, you might have winners and losers.

Southern Finance: The last question is about the Federal Reserve, because the Federal Reserve Chairman Powell recently stated that the Federal Reserve can afford to be patient in adjusting interest rates. So do you think this actually suggested that they are leaning toward a “higher for longer” stance? Or will there be more than expected rate cuts in 2025?

Phil Mackintosh: I think they're pausing because they have uncertainty too. So the actual bond market had been pricing in tariffs being inflationary. The number of cuts we were expecting to get this year had gone down to about one. That's changed a lot in the last few weeks, because now people worry the tariffs are going to be recessionary. And so the Fed is kind of caught between the two outcomes could require rates to go opposite directions.

So let's let the data come through and let's see what really happens. And so they can adjust after they know what the data is really showing the economy is doing.

Southern Finance: So what is your projection for the Federal Reserve's monetary policy in 2025?

Phil Mackintosh: I mean, talking to companies, looking at the amount of interest expense that small companies are paying, it's got up close to 50% of their EBIT, their earnings before interest and tax. So I would like to see rates come down just for the small companies to start to improve their margins for them to be able to keep hiring people and sort of grow their profitability, have small cap kind of catch up to the large cap complex that performed so well last year. So I would personally like to see rates come down a little bit more. But obviously, if we get tariff inflation, that's going to put a spanner in the works.

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