The Week Ahead - 14 - 18 April 2025
These are the Key Macro Events for the upcoming week.
US – The macro side of US data next week is relatively calm. March likely saw a strong retail sales, with control-group sales (excluding cars) growing at 0.7% in anticipation of tariffs, while headline retail sales, which does include cars grew even stronger at 1.4% ahead of the announced 25% tariff on all cars. Consistent with weaker PMIs, industrial production likely decreased by about 0.2%, undoing some of the gain from last month.
Eurozone – We expect the ECB to lower rates by a further 25bp, taking the deposit rate to 2.25%. There is no staff projections update at this meeting. The focus at the press conference will be on how the Governing Council views the impact of the unfolding US tariffs. We think tariffs will be negative for both growth and inflation, which should spur the ECB to continue cutting rates at the coming meetings, until the deposit rate reaches 1.5% in September.
The Netherlands – The unemployment rate for March is expected to come in at 3.8%, thereby unchanged from the previous two months. While the unemployment rate climbed to the two-year high of 3.8% in January, it remains low, and the labour market continues to be a bottleneck with companies continuing to report that labour market tightness is their primary challenge. While we do expect some breathing space in the labour market, the unemployment rate will likely stay low going forward given still high labour demand, limited labour supply, and a greying population.
China – A full data week ahead, with GDP and March activity data. Q1-GDP is expected to come in around 5.0% (Q4-24: 5.4%), partly helped by trade frontloading in the run-up to US tariffs, which have now sharply escalated to 145% and will lead to a severe export shock. Just before that shock will set in, March activity data are expected to show some signs of resilience, with annual growth of exports and retail sales expected to pick up compared to February.