We expect global industrial production momentum to fade over the next few months, before rolling over during the summer. In the case of steel, chart below, output growth slowed from 8.1% YoY globally in January to 7.8% in February at 1.65bn tonnes annualised, Colin Hamilton and the Macquarie commodities team are forecasting 1.6% YoY growth for 2017, and -0.3% for 2018. The key to this is Chinese construction activity, where we expect some signs of weakening (but not collapse) to emerge during the coming months, and an adjustment in Chinese inventories (Fig.1 and Fig.15).
Please see pages 2-5 and 11-14 for more from the commodity team. For China, we expect 1Q17 to be the peak of PPI inflation, earning growth and nominal GDP growth—please see pages 16-17.
The tailwind from the global recovery has provided a policy window (2H2016, 1H 2017) for countries to tackle their major issues:
1) The US Fed has been reloading its monetary policy weapon
2) The PBOC has begun to deleverage part of the financial system
3) In the Eurozone, recapitalisation of banks is proceeding very slowly
4) In Japan, labour market flexibility reform is not even on the agenda
Global real GDP growth is forecast to remain in ‘the long grinding cycle’ of 2.5-3.0% pa, Fig 17. Our 2016, 2017 and 2018 global real GDP growth forecasts are 2.7%, 2.9% and 2.7%, respectively.
Short-term business-cycle judgements are more likely to succeed with a deep awareness of more medium- and longer-term issues. In global macroeconomics, there are a considerable number of the latter. We examine 24 of them from page 28; topical issues investigated in our Macq-ro insights reports.