Tag Archives: Economic growth

Last week I talked about America`s fantastic growth of 4,1 percent on quarter in Q2 of 2018, and this is only the beginning. It is no doubt; President Trump must be doing something right. But, what about the European Union?

GDP in the European Union rose «only» 0,4 percent on quarter in the first three months of 2018. Not much to write home about. But the growth have never been above 1 percent since the financial crisis in 2008.

The European Union reached an all time high of 1,30 percent in 1999 and that is right before the tech bubble burst. Since then it has been a dead fish, reaching an all time low of -2,60 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

At the same time we can see that the unemployment rate reached a record low of 6,80 percent in February of 2008, and that`s right before the financial crisis. It reached an all time high of 11 percent in February 2013, but in May this year it fall down to 7 percent again.

This isn`t good enough if we are living in a capitalistic world.

The European Union in Brussels are nothing more than unelected bureaucrats. Draghi and the ECB have, just like Japan and the U.S «printed» a lot of money, and will continue to do so. If they can`t turn around the ship, they need to consider a strong cheerleader.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had a meeting with President Trump last week. They were talking about trade, free trade and tariffs. Mr Trump`s goal is to make better deals so both the U.S and the EU can take more profit and prosper.

I think that the EU should be glad for that and they need to hurry up. The U.S is the world`s third biggest exporter, yet exports account «only» for 13 percent on GDP. Exports in the U.S reached an all time high of 215328 USD million in May this year, which is pretty impressive.

The EU has 28 member states and the biggest among them all is Germany (21 percent of total GDP), the United Kingdom (15 percent), and France (15 percent).

Exports of goods and services account for 46 percent of GDP while imports account for 42 percent, adding 4 percent of total GDP. But this is about to change. If the UK contribute with 15 percent of the total GDP in the EU, then what will happen to their growth after Brexit?

That being said; nor is the UK a success story. The British economy grew by 0,1 percent in the first three months of 2018 and well below 0,4 percent in the previous period. It is the lowest growth rate since a 0,1 percent contraction in Q4 2012.

The largest contribution to growth in the UK was from household spending at 0,2 percentage points. From the production side, the service industries made the largest contribution to GDP growth, followed by production.

Agriculture, the smallest component within the output approach of GDP made no contribution to growth to one decimal place, while construction deducted from GDP growth. The service industries increased by 0,3 percent.

Positive growth was recorded within all sub-sectors of the services industries; distribution, hotels and restaurants (0,1 percent vs -0,1 percent).

President Trump have repeatedly said that the EU have treated the US very bad. I have written many articles about that long before Mr Trump`s inauguration. The European Commission has fined Google €4,34 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules this month.

In May 2009, Intel was imposed with a 1,06 billion euro fined for abusing its market dominance on central processing units. Microsoft has been in trouble with the Commission on several occasions. In 2004, the Commission ruled that Microsoft had abused its market dominance.

In 208, the Commission fined Microsoft nearly 900 million euros for charging «unreasonable» royalty fees. In 2013, another fine of 561 million euros was imposed on Microsoft. This time for failing to comply with the Commission`s ruling that it had to allow users to more easily choose a prefered web browser.

The European Commission fined Facebook for 110 million euros in May this year in relation to its takeover of WhatsApp. Facebook acquired the messaging service in 2014 for $19 billion, but provided the Commission with misleading information about the acquisition.

In August 2016, the Commission ruled that tech giant Apple had received illegal tax benefits from Ireland worth up to 13 billion euros. Ireland was ordered to recover the unpaid tax from Apple, plus interest.

As early as 1966, British Politician Tony Benn said that «Communism run by commissars from Moscow did not work, and nor will capitalism run by commissioners in Brussels. Both deny people their right to develop in their own way.»

Now, under President Donald Trump, big companies like Apple are moving home to the United States with billions of dollars. Apple alone, are bringing in $230 billion. They will build new plants and a magnificent campus.

They will spend their money wisely and the money will be in the U.S. All this is possible because of Trump`s tax cuts and reforms. This is how you make growth.