The United States is in a "semi recession." That is the creative terminology coined by Jonathan Golub , the chief asset strategy officer of Crédit Suisse, in a note to the entity's clients on Wednesday. The data of the last days of the largest world economy seem to ratify that perspective, although the problem is that nobody knows what a "semi recession" is, and Golub has not explained it.

But what seems evident is that the industrial sector and the United States exporter are in recession, while the services sector continues to show vigor. Since manufacturing activity only accounts for 11% of GDP, and exports 12%, most of the economy is still doing well.

From the political point of view it is paradoxical, given that the axes of President Donald Trump's policy have been the defense of the manufacturing sector and the promotion of exports. But the big question is whether the slowdown of industry and the foreign sector is going to extend to services, which represent approximately 80% of GDP. For now, data from business organizations and private consultants indicate that the slowdown is beginning to reach services. Even so, almost all investment banks and analysts consider a slowdown inevitable. The Federal Reserve is of the same opinion. Thus, by using Golub's terminology, the recession will continue to carry the "semi" prefix.

The last indicator that has confirmed that slowdown has been the unemployment figure in September, published yesterday, which offered data for all tastes. Trump's team insisted on celebrating the fact that the unemployment rate has fallen to 3.5%, that is, the lowest level since December 1969, that job creation in August was revised upwards by 27, 5%, and that the new 136,000 jobs in September are more than enough in a country where about 100,000 citizens are added to the labor market every month. The president himself, true to his tradition, tweeted the low unemployment rate with a challenging "now, make an impeachment to your president (who is also innocent)!"

The flip side of the coin is that the 136,000 new jobs are 6.3% less than what the market expected, that wages, instead of growing 0.2%, were stagnant, and, finally, that The manufacturing sector lost employment, confirming the recession in which it is located . Of course, we must bear in mind that manufacturing only accumulates 8.5% of the US workforce, so that its impact on the labor market as a whole is very limited.

The result is a "confusing" scenario, which is how the German financial insurer Allianz and former investment director of Pimco, the world's largest fixed income manager, Mohamed El-Erian, defined it in statements to the Bloomberg agency. The Nobel Prize in Economics Robert Schiller summed it up to the financial television network CNBC in a more succinct way: one can interpret this data "as he pleases", although "this clearly indicates that we are not in a strong economy."

Meanwhile, the market is sitting waiting to see what happens. After a week marked by bad news about the industrial sector and the exporter, Wall Street yesterday used employment figures as an argument to record a moderate rise. But, in any case, that does not prevent the United States Stock Exchange from practically two years with lateral movements, that is, without going up but not going down. Since Congress approved a massive lowering of corporate taxes, Wall Street has remained with a sawtooth profile. In fact, this lowering of taxes not only did not cause an increase in the investment of companies, as their defenders had predicted. On the contrary. The profits went to dividends and treasury stock, and, in fact, the investment has fallen, although that is also partly due to the uncertainty generated by the trade war with China, which has distorted the supply chain of large companies and injected a considerable dose of uncertainty among managers when making decisions.

This is how everyone seems to have decided to wait to see what happens. The market estimates that the profits of the companies listed in the quarter just ended will be between the same or 3% lower than those of the April-June period. In the absence of a year for elections, no one expects any economic policy decision, and the Trump administration seems to have relied on everything to pressure the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates further.

Just yesterday, the president’s top foreign trade adviser, Peter Navarro , again insisted that the central bank has to lower the price of money within two weeks to make the dollar go down and exports rise. It is a measure that would not have any effect, according to experts, because the dollar rises due to uncertainty about the world economy and, in addition, the 2018 tax cut has increased domestic demand, which favors imports, not exports .

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