Credit where credit’s due?

Daily update

If the US had a functioning federal government, we would be getting September trade data today. In theory, one could calculate US trade numbers by using bilateral trade data from other economies. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has been seeking to minimize trade tariffs by careful rerouting of exports, which makes it very difficult to identify what the US is buying using the data of those that are selling.
The Federal Reserve is still functioning, and released the senior loan officers’ survey. This data makes it hard to argue that credit constraints are a serious limiting factor for growth—some areas saw a modest tightening of credit conditions (mainly due to concerns about policy uncertainty), but for the most part conditions were not changing.
The US pattern is not dissimilar to that of Europe. This reported behavior suggests that central banks are / have been cutting rates to act as an insurance policy against the brittleness of labor markets spilling over into weaker economic growth, and not as a direct stimulus to economic activity.
Federal Reserve governor Cook highlighted that the full effects of US tariffs had not yet been felt on domestic inflation—that will have to wait until the first quarter of next year.