Courtenay Brown
speaker
31 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 31 Jul
Courtenay Brown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
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Apple News Today · A surprising slowdown in the U.S. economy. Here’s what’s going on. · 31 Jul 2026
podcast
So look under the hood of the GDP report and you see that underlying growth was actually super strong.
And what the headline figure that's kind of mad is showing is basically distortions in trade and swing in businesses piling up their inventories, things that are a drag on GDP, but don't ultimately say anything about the health of the economy.
The economy was in the thick of a ton of geopolitical uncertainty related to the Iran conflict.
So it's good to see that the consumer had a little bit of gusto and that helped carry strength in the second quarter.
there's something really interesting happening that we've done some reporting on, which is that with respect to AI, we depend so much on foreign nations to make some of the inputs that are necessary for the AI build-out.
And so part of the story with the GDP report this quarter was a slew of imports related to the AI build-out weighing on growth.
We are really putting all of our eggs in the AI basket.
We are really relying on businesses continuing to spend billions and billions of dollars on building data centers and investing in a
Equipment and software and intellectual property, all the things that drive the AI build-out.
That's a huge contribution to growth this quarter and in previous quarters as well.
So I think a skeptic might ask, what if the AI build-out slows, tapers off, or, you know, something changes in the outlook with respect to AI?
Do those jitters that are in the stock market, because the stock market's not the economy, right?
Do those jitters in the stock market kind of spill over into the real economy in a way that would stunt economic growth in the quarters to come?
It was really easy for the president to wield tariffs as a threat on almost any issue.
And now it's a little bit more complicated.
Section 122, which dates back to the 1970s, says a president can impose tariffs if there is a balance of payments crisis, a big plunge in the dollar, for instance, related to a trade deficit.
And there are some lawyers that have been quite vocal over the weekend in my inbox and
On Twitter, other social networks, on television saying that I'm not sure that really fits the condition of the United States right now.
Justices said in the oral arguments that that process would be, quote, a mess.
And I think that's right.
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