020 7898 05002017 was certainly a good year for the eurozone, as it consistently posted impressive growth across several sectors. 2018 hasn’t been a disaster, but there have been quite a few recent economic data releases that came in below expectations. The German manufacturing PMI was forecast to dip from 60.6 in February to 58.4 in March, but the figure actually came in at 58.2. While the eurozone’s manufacturing PMI came in as expected at 56.6, it is this third monthly drop in a row and represents an eight-month low.
The euro weakened against sterling and the dollar as a result and the question really is whether this is the end of the eurozone’s boom of last year? The figures still show healthy growth, so we should be careful to not get too far ahead of ourselves, but growth is certainly slowing. One mitigating factor is the Trump tariffs that could be imposed on eurozone imports before too long. This has led to a decline in business confidence and you do have to wonder what will happen if/when the tariffs are imposed.
Today we have February’s unemployment rate across the eurozone and we will also see the flash inflation rate for March.
