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Thursday, July 1, 2021

Economy contracted 0.3% in April, biggest hit since early days of pandemic - Cowichan Valley Citizen

The Canadian economy appears to have suffered its worst two-month stretch since the great plunge it took just over a year ago, as Statistics Canada reported a decline in real gross domestic product for April and foresees a similar drop in May.

Statistics Canada said Wednesday real gross domestic product fell 0.3 per cent in April, which was better than an initial estimate a few weeks ago of a drop of 0.8 per cent. It was the first decline in real GDP since April 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic.

The agency also said its preliminary estimate for May showed a similar drop of 0.3 per cent as many restrictions remained in place through the month as the country grappled with the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The overall decline in April, as well as the early estimate for May, put overall economic activity about one per cent below pre-pandemic levels seen in February 2020.

Attention will now turn to June as experts expect a consumer-led recovery with vaccination rates on the rise and restrictions rolling back, which should fuel job growth and reduce health concerns.

“The ingredients that support consumer spending are all lining up,” said Deloitte Canada chief economist Craig Alexander.

“It isn’t going to go back to pre-COVID levels, but the direction of growth is going to be unambiguously positive. I firmly believe that by the end of the year, I won’t be able to get a reservation at a restaurant because people are going to want to reconnect.”

In Alexander’s latest forecast, spending on durable goods grows by 13.4 per cent this year, which he said is already pretty much in the books from strong gains in the first half of 2021. He said tempering annual growth is an expected spending shift to service-sector activities in the second half.

Card-transaction data suggests service-sector spending is on the rise for retail and restaurants, and some early signs of dollars flowing into the travel sector, said RBC senior economist Nathan Janzen.

“The backward-looking data for April and May still looks soft, as would be fully expected, but there’s a more optimistic story for June and the summer that’s already in place,” he said.

CIBC senior economist Royce Mendes said indications now suggest that annualized growth in the second quarter should at least hit two per cent, compared with the no-growth scenario many experts had previously expected.

Driving the decline in April was a 5.5 per cent drop in the retail sector after two months of increases, including a strong March where retail sales hit $55.3 billion, a year-over-year increase of 26.7 per cent. Manufacturing fell one per cent in April after growth in March of 1.5 per cent.

Statistics Canada also noted the real estate sector contracted 0.7 per cent in April, its first drop since October 2020, as home sales slowed in Canada’s major urban centres. As well, accommodation and food services declined 4.6 per cent.

There were some silver linings, though.

Despite travel restrictions, accommodation services rose 0.5 per cent in April as Statistics Canada noted more Canadians opted to go camping.

The overall picture was of an economy that has adapted where able to restrictions, such as online shopping and curbside pickup, but one whose trajectory is still tied to path of the pandemic.

One pothole in that path is the virus’s more contagious Delta variant.

TD senior economist Sri Thanabalasingam said companies could face tighter restrictions if the variant picks up steam and case counts and hospitalizations rise. That would weigh on economic activity and slow the recovery, he said.

He added the variant poses a similar risk to the pace of the recovery in countries like the United States that would dampens demand for Canadian exports.

“Even though domestically we might be a little bit more inoculated from the impacts of the variant because of our impressive vaccination take-up, it really is a global challenge that has to be overcome for Canada to really get back to its full economic capacity,” he said.

Jordan Press, The Canadian Press

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Economy contracted 0.3% in April, biggest hit since early days of pandemic - Cowichan Valley Citizen
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EU Recovery Funds Are Set to Transform Spain's Economy, CEOs Say - BNN

(Bloomberg) -- European recovery funds flowing into Spain will help to transform its economy as firms invest to make businesses more digital, cleaner and energy-efficient, leaders of companies including Repsol SA and Endesa SA said in a Bloomberg panel.

Repsol has presented projects under the EU framework worth $6.3 billion in investment, Josu Jon Imaz, Repsol’s chief executive officer, said at the event hosted by Bloomberg Thursday on the outlook for use of the funds. Endesa has presented 122 projects for consideration for EU funds, Endesa CEO Jose Bogas said.

“Next Generation European funds are the right answer to boost the economy to recovery after the pandemic,” Imaz said. “The industrial sector in Spain is prepared to grow and to be the catalyst for the Spanish recovery -- Spain has a great opportunity to transform.”

Joaquin Arenas, Bank of America Corp.’s senior executive for Spain, said investor appetite for Spanish assets remains strong and he expects to see more companies raising funds in the stock markets. He spoke as Acciona SA’s clean-energy unit rose on its debut on the Madrid stock exchange after its initial public offering priced at the bottom end of its indicative range.

“We will continue to see listings,” he said. “It will not only be in the renewable sector, which has taken a lot of prominence.”

Spain is expected to receive as much as 140 billion euros ($166 billion) in grants and cheap loans during the next six years with an initial 19 billion euros installment from the EU recovery fund due by the end of the year.

Forum Insights

  • Arenas urged the government to use all the loans at its disposal from the recovery fund to fuel an economic recovery that’s already poised to be stronger than that in other euro-area countries
    • “Any further support, any additional support to get the economy stronger and in better shape going forward is very good news,” he said
  • CaixaBank SA is becoming more optimistic on bad loans trends and the lender is seeing an increase in consumer loan demand, CFO Javier Pano said
    • “We are already observing an increase in consumer loan demand - this is already happening since May,” Pano said
  • Endesa’s Bogas said he sees recent surges in energy prices as temporary due to cold winter conditions and high gas and carbon prices although they may endure for some months
    • He doesn’t see the need for reform of pricing structures because they’ll come down over the longer term

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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EU Recovery Funds Are Set to Transform Spain's Economy, CEOs Say - BNN
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Stubborn optimism about China's economy after a decade on the ground - The Economist

PICTURE THE moment of confusion in a taxi in Guiyang, a city in south-western China. Your columnist had asked the driver to go to the new district. “The new new district or the old new district?” he asked. It was, it emerged, the old new district—a place that seven years ago, on an earlier visit to Guiyang, had looked like the sort of ghost town then dominating horror stories about China’s economy, full of giant empty buildings. This time, however, the problem was the exact opposite. What was meant to be a quick jaunt turned into a traffic-clogged headache, the taxi crawling along in a sea of red tail lights. The old new district had filled in, and then some.

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One reason why it is good for journalists to stay in a country for a long stint is that it helps breed humility. Assumptions that once appeared iron-clad gather rust as the years roll by. That is true for most places. But it is especially so when covering something as complex as China’s economy, which your columnist had the privilege to do over the past decade.

This, to be clear, is not a mea culpa for being overly gloomy. There were also times of excess optimism about China’s capacity for change. Take rebalancing. As far back as 2007 Wen Jiabao, then China’s prime minister, decried its economy as “unstable, unbalanced”—evidence, it seemed, that leaders grasped the problem and were ready to act. Yet the economy only became more unstable, culminating in a nearly epic meltdown in 2015. And it is as unbalanced as ever, with investment running far ahead of consumption. Nevertheless, it is hard to escape the conclusion that in the economic realm, China got more right than wrong over the past decade. How else to score its performance when, despite many predictions of doom, it doubled in size during that time?

A common riposte is that this success is illusory—that the government has simply delayed the comedown from its debt-fuelled high. The deferral of pain is certainly part of the mix. Perhaps the safest bet in economics is that when growth slows sharply, China will unveil yet more infrastructure projects and call on banks to make still more loans. And if those projects or loans fail, officials have few qualms about orchestrating bail-outs and roll-overs.

What is less appreciated is that China’s ability to engage in such engineering is itself a measure of success. The government can lean on its banks because they are enormously profitable to begin with. The telltale signs of an overdrawn economy—high inflation, rampant unemployment and corporate malaise—exist in pockets in China, but they are the exception, not the rule.

This point was driven home when your columnist moved from Beijing to Shanghai in 2014. Each city has its charms, but Shanghai unquestionably offers a more flattering picture of the economy. Beijing, a showcase for political power, is blotted by the hulking headquarters of state-owned enterprises. Day trips take reporters to China’s greatest economic calamities, from overbuilt Tianjin to coal-mine carnage in Inner Mongolia. In Shanghai, which functions remarkably well for a city of 25m, reporters instead hop over to see high-tech innovators in Hangzhou, nimble exporters in Wuxi and ambitious entrepreneurs in Wenzhou. They show that even as the tenth year of Xi Jinping’s rule approaches, two of the fundamental underpinnings of China’s economic dynamism remain intact: red-blooded competition in the private sector and the restless quest of millions upon millions of ordinary people to improve their lot in life.

These days, saying nice things about China’s economy comes with baggage, not least because of the Communist Party’s insistence that its growth record is proof of its superior political system. It is true that the government has had a crucial hand in the country’s development, starting with the fact that it has been “Infrastructure Week” just about every week in China since 1990.

The correct response to the party’s boasting is not to deny China its success, but to insist on proper attribution. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan were its forerunners in using repressed financial systems to enable investment and in relying on exports to become more competitive. China has repeated all this, albeit at a far greater, and arguably more impressive, scale. At the same time, its sustained rapid growth of the past four decades has less to do with the wisdom of the Politburo than with the work of a brilliant Saint Lucian economist, Sir Arthur Lewis, who in the 1950s explained that shifting labour from low-value farming to higher-value industry can, if managed right, engender just such a catch-up process.

And now for something completely different

The coming decade is sure to prove more challenging. With 65% of Chinese people already in cities and the population close to peaking, Mr Lewis would point out that there is little scope for further gains from turning farmers into factory workers. Parallels between China and the Asian dynamos of yesteryear are breaking down. China is older and more indebted than they were at the same stage. Whereas most countries seek to strengthen the rule of law as they mature, Mr Xi is cultivating stronger party control.

Add to that a treacherous external environment. Faced with the threat of economic decoupling from the West, it is only rational for China to pursue greater self-reliance. Thanks to its size and sophistication, it may well triumph in key sectors, from semiconductors to robotics. But the sorry history of import substitution globally should make clear that this is a sub-optimal strategy involving much waste and eventually leading to lower growth.

All this is almost enough to turn you into a China bear: to predict not an almighty crash but rather an ineluctable slide towards stagnation. In conversations with analysts and investors, versions of this narrative crop up again and again. That it has become something like the consensus view is the single biggest reason why your columnist, after a long run in China, suspects that its economy will fare considerably better. ■

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "A decade of Chinese lessons"

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Stubborn optimism about China's economy after a decade on the ground - The Economist
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EXCLUSIVE Bolivia seeks to stabilize economy with vaccines and gold, minister says - Reuters

Bolivia's Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro speaks to Reuters, in La Paz, Bolivia June 30, 2021. REUTERS/Monica Machicao

LA PAZ, July 1 (Reuters) - Bolivia's government is looking to stabilize the country's economy, which plunged the most in over half a century last year, with a mix of fiscal spending, vaccines and gold.

Economy Minister Marcelo Montenegro told Reuters in an interview that the Andean country was looking to buy up to 4 tonnes of gold each year to help rebuild foreign reserves that have sunk to the lowest level since 2006.

"The aim is to buy between 2-4 tonnes of gold annually, in such a way that this can be refined and become monetary gold," Montenegro said this week at the ministry in the center of the highland administrative capital, La Paz.

"Gold has an erratic, volatile fluctuation, but it is a global security asset."

Montenegro said this would help increase net international reserves, with the Central Bank of Bolivia (BCB) purchasing the gold from local producers.

The country's net reserves had fallen to some $4.9 billion as of June of this year, down from a peak of over $15 billion in 2014. Montenegro, however, played down liquidity concerns.

"At the moment there is no alarm or problems in the matter of liquidity," he said. The bank currently has some 43 tonnes of gold, he added, which made up 53% of its international reserves.

'RETURN TO NORMALITY'

Bolivia has been through a turbulent few years with a series of political, economic and health crises.

In late 2019, then leftist President Evo Morales resigned and fled the country amid widespread protests over a disputed election in which he had sought a fourth term. His party returned to power last year after a period of interim government.

The country has also been hurt badly by the COVID-19 pandemic, with some 440,000 cases and almost 17,000 deaths, while its vaccination program lags far behind countries starting to open up in the developed world.

Montenegro, however, struck a cautiously optimistic tone, saying that a revival of mining, gas production, construction and manufacturing was helping drive a nascent revival that he estimated would boost growth to 5% in the first half of the year.

"Growth this year will reach 4.4%. We hope it will be more," he said. The more than 8% contraction in 2020 had been the worst since 1953, during the "first great Bolivian crisis" when the economy shrank about 9.4%, official data shows.

Montenegro said the revival would be driven by public investment of more than $4 billion to carry out infrastructure projects that generate sources of employment and service contracts, along with cheap loans for small businesses.

The government has also launched payouts to alleviate poverty and hunger and looks to raise taxes on the rich.

Gonzalo ChĂĄvez, a Bolivia economic analyst, said the economy was being helped by strong global commodities prices for gas, minerals and soy, though it remained fragile.

"Our economy is extremely sensitive to the volatility of the world economy," he said.

Montenegro also said revving up the vaccination program would be "vital." Bolivia has so far administered over 2.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, a Reuters tracker shows, enough to give 2 doses to around 11% of the country's 11.7 million people.

President Luis Arce on Wednesday announced inoculations would be open to anyone over 18, saying the economy was starting to recover after being paralyzed last year, but needed "people to be protected from the disease."

He added that there would be a "massive" vaccine push in July and August with the arrival of 1 million doses every 10 days from July 10, including Russia's Sputnik V, and deals with China's Sinopharm (1099.HK) and J&J's (JNJ.N) Janssen.

"This allows people to return to normality," said Montenegro. "And to keep carrying out economic activities in the most normal way possible."

Reporting by Daniel Ramos in La Paz; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Dan Grebler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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EXCLUSIVE Bolivia seeks to stabilize economy with vaccines and gold, minister says - Reuters
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On this Canada Day, Canadians face calls for change — and economic historians have been trying to adjust - CBC.ca

This week's deadly heat wave, with its new record temperatures, is just one example of how the country's economy seems to be embroiled in change this Canada Day.

Urgent plans to speed the switch to electric cars and the painful process of moving away from Canada's dependence on carbon-producing fuels are part of a longer list of economic earthquakes.

The country is currently adapting to a string of extraordinary events:

  • A recession caused by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
  • The return of inflation after a decades-long absence that some expect will lead to a rise in interest rates.
  • Government intervention in the economy not seen since the decades after World War II. 

But as difficult as it is to be sure of the country's economic future in such changing times, historians are struggling to re-examine Canada's economic past.

As former economic heroes, such as Henry Dundas, Egerton Ryerson and John A. Macdonald, are knocked off their pedestals, the discovery of Indigenous children's unmarked graves and the past year's Black Lives Matter movement are opening people's eyes to long-standing economic injustices.

The founding narrative

One of the leaders of that re-examination is Angela Redish, an economic historian and a professor at the University of British Columbia, who, like most who studied Canada's economic history in past decades, was educated almost exclusively on "the founding narrative" of the European extraction of Canada's resources through the St. Lawrence and its role in creating a powerful industrial economy. 

But as Redish began doing her own research, she also began to realize what the economic history texts had left out.

"Everybody knew about the Treaty of Paris and what that meant for the Canadian economy," said Redish, referring to the 1763 agreement that turned a big chunk of North America over to Britain.

"All the treaties of the Indigenous nations weren't even in the books," she said.

The deaths of children at Canada's residential school is a tragic reminder of another side of Canada's economic history. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Canadians weaned on the heroic narrative of explorers discovering abundant empty lands and building a rich country from sea to sea to sea may have been shocked by recent revelations that Indigenous children were abused and died here.

But the brutal displacement of the land's original people by European settlers is well known to historians. It is a process now being described by the Canadian Historical Society as genocide. 

That simply hasn't been the focus of the traditional story, said Kris Inwood, an economic historian at the University of Guelph.

"It's unfortunate that it takes the kind of spectacular spectacle of unmarked graves being discovered to bring it to people's attention," Inwood said in an interview this week. "But it's clearly a good thing for people to have their awareness drawn to, by our standards today, how horribly people behaved in the past."

In 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, author Charles Mann describes a densely populated Indigenous North America devastated by the spread of European diseases first introduced by Spanish colonizers, leaving the continent appearing far less populated than it had once been.

The extent of that disease effect, though, is still being disputed by economic historians.

As Inwood points out, death rates in Canada were high for everyone in the 1800s and children suffered the most, but no one began collecting mortality data until the 1920s.

Recent research by University of Victoria economic historians Donna Feir and Rob Gillezeau disputes the idea that Indigenous people were weakened before Europeans came to the Great Plains and killed off the bison.

World's tallest people

"Once the tallest people in the world, the generations of bison-reliant people born after the slaughter were among the shortest," wrote Feir and Gillezeau in a much-quoted paper on the plains inhabitants.

Not only that, but being deprived of the means of their economic success had a long-lasting effect.

"Today, formerly bison-reliant societies have between 20 to 40 per cent less income per capita than the average Native American nation," says the paper.

As one of the authors of the popular textbook A History of the Canadian Economy, Herb Emery has an intimate view of how changing perspectives can alter the understanding Canadians have about their economic history.

"The stories we tell are about the importance of property rights and legal systems to ensure an efficient and successful capitalist economy," said Emery in an email. "The blind spot is in the initial expropriation."

Before Europeans came and killed off the bison, the Indigenous people of the Great Plains were among the tallest in the world. After the slaughter, they were the shortest. (Three Lions/Getty Images)

As Feir points out, while the system of declaring ownership may have been different and was sometimes disputed in border conflicts, Indigenous groups had well-established title to agricultural or hunting lands. When the Europeans arrived with their much celebrated property rights, they simply ignored the existing property rights.

"So to talk about an abundance of land is bizarre," she said.

In fact, as Gillezeau points out, the ejection from their traditional lands that provided a good living cannot be separated from Indigenous peoples' ability to fight off European diseases.

Right up to today, poverty leads to negative health outcomes.

As shown with the plains bison hunters, Gillezeau said, the loss of the things that made them economically successful can have a lingering effect that's been shown to last generations.

Improving the lives of many Indigenous people and other people of colour can be expensive and difficult.

Finding a shared narrative

While economists may differ on which events are most important, Gillezeau said he has not seen a backlash in Canada against the idea of expanding our concept of economic history. But the fact that the revisions are almost entirely being made by settler scholars may skew those decisions.

"The profession is not as diverse as it should be, and if you don't have voices at the table, the conversation goes a lot more slowly," said Gillezeau. "Having more Black economists is going to change the profession." 

Redish has the same concern about the lack of Indigenous students in economics, something she is trying to rectify at UBC.

Contrary to the popular idea of history being a single and unchanging narrative, the economic historians I spoke to described it as a dynamic process that must take account of new developments, like climate change, new historical understandings and changing public values. It is a process that takes time.

"We should be working on a shared narrative," said Redish. "I think that's what we have to do. But it's very challenging."


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On this Canada Day, Canadians face calls for change — and economic historians have been trying to adjust - CBC.ca
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EU Recovery Funds Are Set to Transform Spain's Economy, CEOs Say - Financial Post

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(Bloomberg) — European recovery funds flowing into Spain will help to transform its economy as firms invest to make businesses more digital, cleaner and energy-efficient, leaders of companies including Repsol SA and Endesa SA said in a Bloomberg panel.

Repsol has presented projects under the EU framework worth $6.3 billion in investment, Josu Jon Imaz, Repsol’s chief executive officer, said at the event hosted by Bloomberg Thursday on the outlook for use of the funds. Endesa has presented 122 projects for consideration for EU funds, Endesa CEO Jose Bogas said.

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“Next Generation European funds are the right answer to boost the economy to recovery after the pandemic,” Imaz said. “The industrial sector in Spain is prepared to grow and to be the catalyst for the Spanish recovery — Spain has a great opportunity to transform.”

Joaquin Arenas, Bank of America Corp.’s senior executive for Spain, said investor appetite for Spanish assets remains strong and he expects to see more companies raising funds in the stock markets. He spoke as Acciona SA’s clean-energy unit rose on its debut on the Madrid stock exchange after its initial public offering priced at the bottom end of its indicative range.

“We will continue to see listings,” he said. “It will not only be in the renewable sector, which has taken a lot of prominence.”

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Spain is expected to receive as much as 140 billion euros ($166 billion) in grants and cheap loans during the next six years with an initial 19 billion euros installment from the EU recovery fund due by the end of the year.

Forum Insights

Arenas urged the government to use all the loans at its disposal from the recovery fund to fuel an economic recovery that’s already poised to be stronger than that in other euro-area countries”Any further support, any additional support to get the economy stronger and in better shape going forward is very good news,” he saidCaixaBank SA is becoming more optimistic on bad loans trends and the lender is seeing an increase in consumer loan demand, CFO Javier Pano said”We are already observing an increase in consumer loan demand – this is already happening since May,” Pano saidEndesa’s Bogas said he sees recent surges in energy prices as temporary due to cold winter conditions and high gas and carbon prices although they may endure for some monthsHe doesn’t see the need for reform of pricing structures because they’ll come down over the longer term

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Bloomberg.com

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    EU Recovery Funds Are Set to Transform Spain's Economy, CEOs Say - Financial Post
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    5 Findings From A New NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll On COVID-19 And The Economy - NPR

    A waitress wears a face mask while serving at Langer's Delicatessen-Restaurant in Los Angeles on June 15. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

    Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

    Normal is not easily defined.

    The past 15 months, though, have certainly been anything but.

    Americans are starting to believe a "sense of normal" is approaching fairly soon, however, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey. The poll also found that with the coronavirus receding in this country, mask-wearing is declining and Americans are going out more. But they remain cautious about being in large crowds.

    As the country continues to open up, more focus turns to the economy, which cratered during the beginning of the pandemic last year. And Americans are split by race, gender and politics on whether President Biden's ambitious policies are helping or not.

    Race, gender and party divides on Biden and the economy

    Three months ago, in a similar survey, 49% of adults said the president's policies were strengthening the economy, while 44% said they were weakening it.

    Now, that's declined a net of 6 points, as 44% of respondents in the new poll say Biden's policies have strengthened the economy and 45% say the opposite. The percentage who were unsure also jumped 4 points. It's all a little bit of a warning sign for Biden as he pushes for two large — and expensive — spending packages.

    There are significant splits by race and gender:

    • Just 39% of whites said Biden's policies have strengthened the economy, but 52% of people of color say they have.
    • 54% of independent men say his policies have weakened the economy, while 56% of independent women say they've strengthened it. 
    • 45% of white male college graduates say Biden has strengthened the economy, but a significantly higher 64% of white women with college degrees said so.

    Inflation vs. wages by party

    A quarter of Americans rank inflation as the U.S. economy's top concern. That's followed by wages, unemployment, housing costs, labor shortages, gas prices and interest rates.

    But there's a sharp political divide on the question. Republicans and independents rank inflation as their top concern, while for Democrats, it was wages. Just 4% of Republicans said wages were their top concern.

    Loading...

    Return to "normal"

    Americans are growing increasingly optimistic about when life will return to a "sense of normal," as the survey labels it.

    In April, three-quarters of Americans said they believe it will take six months or more. Now, it's just half. About a quarter (27%) say it will be less than six months, up from 15% two months ago.

    People are also growing more comfortable doing certain things, saying they're:

    • dining out at restaurants (78%) and 
    • visiting unvaccinated friends and family (75%).

    But they are not as comfortable doing others:

    • almost 7 in 10 are not going out to bars; 
    • about two-thirds are not attending live concerts or sporting events (65%);
    • and a majority have also not resumed going to in-person religious services (54%).

    COVID-19 vaccines and going back to work

    While half say they are concerned about another coronavirus surge, almost 9 in 10 U.S. adults with jobs say they are at least somewhat comfortable returning to work.

    Notably, a majority (57%) of those with jobs do not believe employers should require COVID-19 vaccines as a condition to return to in-person work.

    More than a quarter of Americans say they will not get vaccinated. The most resistant to getting vaccinated continue to be supporters of former President Donald Trump. Half of them say they won't get the shot, the highest of any group surveyed. Trump has touted the vaccine and got it himself.

    Since Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines came out, noting that Americans who have been vaccinated can largely set masks aside, there's been a double-digit decline in those saying they wear a mask even when it's not required.

    There's also been a double-digit increase in those saying they generally do not wear a mask. In May, 49% said they wore masks even when it was not required. Now, that's just 36%.

    One in five said they generally do not wear masks. Two months ago, it was less than 1 in 10.

    Affordability, not the coronavirus, is limiting vacations

    Speaking of getting back to normal, a majority of Americans say they plan to take a vacation this summer.

    But of the significant minority (45%) who say they aren't taking one, almost three times as many cited affordability (35%) as the main reason for not going, as opposed to concerns about COVID-19 (12%).


    Methodology: The poll of 1,115 U.S. adults was conducted using live telephone interviewers from June 22-29. Survey questions were available in English or Spanish. The full sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points with larger margins of error for smaller group subsets.

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    5 Findings From A New NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll On COVID-19 And The Economy - NPR
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    Carney touts B.C. port expansion plan to strengthen independence, diversify economy - Toronto Star

    [unable to retrieve full-text content] Carney touts B.C. port expansion plan to strengthen independence, diversify economy    Toronto Star ...