This holiday season, sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years, according to the Business Mirror. Despite inflation, shortages and the new Covid-19 strain, US holiday sales grew 8.5%, the news outlet reported.According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, clothing sales rose 47%, jewelry 32% and electronics 16%. "I feel really good about how the seas...

Businesses and consumers are watching closely as the highly contagious Omicron variant raises new questions about economic recovery. Will the new variant force shutdowns like seen in the early days of the pandemic? Will Omicron feed the inflation fire or cool things off instead? "These mutations keep coming," Robin Brooks, chief economist at the In...

The House and Senate voted this morning to increase the federal debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion, allowing the U.S. government to avoid default until early 2023, according to government officials. The vote was made just hours before the deadline that the U.S. government risked breaching its debt limit, said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.Th...

Concerns are growing over lingering inflation, prompting the Federal Reserve to consider speeding up its plan to raise interest rates. Federal Reserve officials plan to discuss stopping their bond-buying stimulus program early during a policy meeting next week, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ending the program in March instead of June would ...

Stocks took a major hit yesterday as fears over the recently discovered Omicron coronavirus variant brewed. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell also shared before Senate that he no longer believes inflation is "transitory," noting new factors—like Omicron—could mean high inflation will stick around well into next year.Growing concerns abo...

Another factor will soon further complicate the global supply chain crisis and international trade—new harmonized system numbers (known as HS codes). HS codes are the global standard for classifying goods in international trade. Starting Jan. 1, more than 350 global HS codes will be updates and roughly 1,500 U.S. tariff codes will also be chan...

The U.S. and Japan set the foundation of a trade partnership today, agreeing to work toward resolving tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. U.S. Trade Representative Katharine Tai and Japan's trade and industry minister also agreed to cooperate toward a "common global-agenda" for trade, according to ABC News."This Partnership will deepen the ...

President Joe Biden announced Tuesday plans to determine and pay for needed upgrades to U.S. ports over the next 90 days, according to the Associated Press. This comes as supply chain disruptions continue to overwhelm major ports across the country and drive inflation. U.S. port authorities will be allowed to reallocate leftover money originally me...

The U.S. service sector grew to a record high in October, the fourth time in 2021, and the manufacturing sector also continued to rise for the 17th consecutive month, according to reports released Wednesday from the Institute of Supply Management (ISM).ISM's survey of the service industry reached a reading of 66.7, up 4.8 points from September...

During a meeting between the Group of Seven wealthy nations (G7) on Friday, a consensus was reached on a set of principles to govern cross-border data use and digital trade. The deal is considered to be a breakthrough as it could free up hundreds of billions of dollars of international commerce. "The deal sets out a middle ground between highly reg...

 The United States accused China of unfair trade practices today during the World Trade Organization (WTO) review, saying the country's industrial policies "skew the playing field" against imported goods and services."We also cannot ignore reports of China's use of forced labor in several sectors," U.S. charge d'affaires David Bisbee told the ...

 The World Trade Organization (WTO) updated its economic forecast for 2021-22 with a more positive outlook for global trade. The WTO now predicts trade will grow 10.8% this year, up from the 8% forecasted in March.However, while overall recovery is strong, many developing regions remain far behind partly due to the lack of vaccine access. "The...

The European Union warned that only one month is left to resolve a metals dispute with the U.S., otherwise new EU tariffs will hit American products starting Dec. 1.An agreement must happen by the beginning of November in order to avoid consequences, said EU trade commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Bloomberg Television. "We are now working very i...

 Wholesale food prices like wheat, sugar and vegetable oil have increased by roughly 33% globally since last year, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. But in some countries, the rising cost of food might be a tipping point – resulting in protests and even war, said Ida Rudolfsen, doctoral researcher at Uppsala University a...

The United Kingdom will postpone the start of Brexit border checks on food imports from the European Union until July 2022, said Brexit minister David Frost in a statement on Tuesday.The goal of delaying some Brexit protocols is to give businesses more time to adjust and prevent the current food shortage in the U.K. from getting worse. Europe suppl...

China's global trade soared to record high levels last month, according to a report from CNN. The country's exports jumped 25.6% in August from one year ago to $294.3 billion, and imports spiked 33.1% to $236 billion, both the highest numbers on record.These economic strides are in despite of new coronavirus outbreaks and supply bottlenecks. "While...

Vietnam is next in line to grapple with the challenges of widespread supply-chain woes as the country struggles to contain the coronavirus. Beginning today, Vietnam's major industrial southern provinces of Binh Duong and Dong Nai stay-home orders are extended for another 15 days."American companies that diversified their supplier bases outside of C...

The construction industry is traditionally notorious for consuming large amounts of raw materials and natural resources, but that may be about to change. The sector is making strides to find more sustainable alternatives and working to reduce its carbon footprint, according to a recent global survey from SAP, a German multinational software corpora...

Global trade continues to recover at an unexpected rate from the pandemic, but new data indicates recovery may now start plateauing, according to the World Trade Organization's (WTO) goods trade barometer reading posted today.The barometer latest reading reached a record level of 110.4, the highest number since the indicato...

A paper published this month by the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyzes how vaccine supply chains were setup during the pandemic and what it can tell us about international trade. The production and distribution of vaccines were put under unordinary pressures, but still the paper draws parallels to the cross-border trade of othe...