Austan Goolsbee

The rules are moving around.

If you're in a business like the auto industry, the Chicago Fed District has by far the most auto production in the United States.

It's a global supply chain for the auto industries.

They're very amped up about what will be the treatment of parts, components, supplies that they use to make the cars.

So far, they were pleasantly surprised that anything USMCA compliant was kind of exempted.

If the rumors are to be true that whatever, they might renegotiate the USMCA or would Canada be in the USMCA, of course that's what, they're going to express uncertainty about things like that and it's going to affect their decisions in the short run.

Over the long run, as I say, I still think the American consumer has been pretty solid.

We've got a steady job market.

If we make progress on inflation, I think rates are trending down.

Some, I mean the economy's extremely diverse and the answer to the question of what are the labor market prospects and do they need to hire depends very much on the industry.

If you talk to software companies, a lot of them are saying, hey, the AI technologies, there's some uncertainty, but the only uncertainty is should we not hire or should we actually let people go?

But if you look in the healthcare sector,

It's a booming sector.

Employment continues to expand in that sector.

And you don't hear some of those.

So the answer to that depends a lot on who you're talking to.

Yeah, look, I hope that that is what happens.

Let's remember, productivity growth is the thing that makes us rich.

So if we get high productivity growth, incomes are going to go up.

There are a balance of things that happen when productivity goes up, though, that we should remember.