Week Kicks off Light on Data but Heavy with Anticipation
August 24, 2026
(125) Even for a Monday, today’s session has very few scheduled releases of economic data around the world. Financial market participants are focused on what lies ahead.
- Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz failed to exceed a measly ten vessels yesterday. With a shift from military to economic warfare, President Trump has called today “Economic D-Day.” Treasury Secretary Bessent will be detailing a package of new sanctions against Iran that has been promised to be far tougher than measures tried before.
- Take-Two of Liberation Day has also occurred. Over the weekend, trade talks between the United States and Canada collapsed. Invoking the infamous Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, a 50% U.S. tariff was imposed on about 5% of Canadian shipments to the United States, and Canadian Prime Minister Carney, who as former governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada knows something about economic history, promises retaliatory tariffs on the United States to go into effect on September 8. If that happens, the U.S. will widen the range of products covered by its 50% levy. And so it goes.
- A session of China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee will run from Tuesday through Friday. Economic growth in China downshifted in the second quarter and is at risk to miss the government’s 2026 target unless more policy stimulus is brought forward. So far, the central bank has refrained from cutting interest rates further.
- Important U.S. data releases are scheduled for Wednesday, including a re-estimate of second-quarter GDP growth after the advance estimate of 2.1% got revised downward in late July to just 1.5%, July personal income and consumption, and the all-important PCE price deflators for both 2Q and July.
- Also on Wednesday, Chicago Federal Reserve District President Goolsbee, who has made hawkish remarks in the past, is scheduled to be speaking publicly.
- Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Himino delivers a speech on Thursday that will be watched for clarification of the possibility that that authority may be poised to tighten policy at next month’s scheduled meeting.
- The most widely anticipated event of the week lands on Friday when the enigmatic Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh delivers a keynote address at the annual Kansas City Fed-sponsored economic policy symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. As in Japan, there appears to be a chance that the Fed may raise interest rates next month, but Warsh by design is very non-committal about future policy decision whenever he speaks publicly.
- President Lagarde of the European Central Bank is not scheduled to address the the Symposium, but the perceived likelihood of an ECB rate hike next month happens to be greater than is the case with either the Fed or Bank of Japan.
In overnight market action, the dollar carved back a small piece of its recent losses, rising by 0.2% against the yen, Swissy and kiwi and by 0.1% versus the euro, Aussie dollar, peso and sterling. Bigger gains of were made against the Canadian dollar of 0.6% and Korean won of 0.4.
West Texas Intermediate crude oil fell back 1.8% but remains above $85.0 per barrel. Gold (+0.7%) and silver (-0.5%) moved in opposite directions.
A 3-basis point drop in the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield has been greater than one-basis point dips in comparable sovereign debt yields of Japan, France, Italy and Great Britain but less than those in Canada (8 bps) or Australia (4 bps). The 30-year Treasury yield also retreated three basis points overnight.
All four major U.S. stock market indices are in the red in pre-open futures trading, but the losses are small. European equities are narrowly mixed. Taking their cue from a difficult U.S. session before the weekend, stock markets in the Pacific Rim closed down 3.1% in South Korea, 1.9% in Hong Kong, 1.0% in Taiwan, 0.6% in China and New Zealand and 0.5% in Australia.
Mexican GDP growth last quarter has been revised downward by 0.1 percentage point (ppt) to 1.4% but was still well above the first quarter reading of -0.6%. Year-on-year growth of 2.1% was also 0.1 ppt below its initial measurement but the strongest gain in two years and above last year’s average growth rate of 0.6%. The peso was the rare currency to score a gain overnight, albeit just 0.1% against the dollar.
The -0.8% reading of the Chicago Fed National Activity Index in July changed sign for a fifth straight month following scores of +0.06 in June, -0.19 in May, +0.19 in April, -0.15 in March and +0.09 in February.
Retail sales in New Zealand fell unexpectedly last quarter by 0.5% following a rise of 1.0% in the first quarter. The year-on-year 3.3% increase in sales was the slowest since the second quarter of 2025.
Retail sales in Poland rose by a quicker 2.2% in July, but its 12-month rate of increase slowed to 3.9%.
Consumer price inflation in Singapore climbed 0.3 percentage points to a 23-month high of 2.2% last month. Such had imploded from a high of 7.5% in the third quarter of 2022 to as low as 0.5% in August 2025.
Finnish producer price inflation rose 0.2 percentage points last month to 6.9% but was below May’s 7.4% reading and the mid-2022 peak of 32.5%.
In the Czech Republic, consumer sentiment fell to a one-year low in August even as business confidence held steady at July’s 3-month high.
Copyright 2026, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved.
Tags: Economic D-Day and Liberation Day, U.S. Treasury Secy Bessent, Warsh and Himino
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