New COVID-19 Wave Could Stall V-Shaped Economic Rebound in US - White House Aide Kudlow

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th July, 2020) A new wave of COVID-19 infections could stall the V-shaped US economic recovery the Trump administration is counting on, although data thus far indicates a positive story, White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday.

"I don't see it yet, but one cannot rule out that," Kudlow told the CNBC network when asked if the COVID-19 would dash hopes for a V-shaped economic recovery. "There's a lot of scenarios here. And we really don't have any real experience of that kind of economic metric modeling for this type of thing, because so much is generated by the virus at the moment."

The United States has been reporting some 40,000 new cases of coronavirus daily in the so-called "second-wave" of the US COVID-19 outbreak. Top US pandemics expert Anthony Fauci said recently the daily case growth could reach 100,000 without proper social-distancing and other safety measures.

Data shows that some 3 million Americans have already been infected by the COVID-19, with a death toll exceeding 133,000. A new model by the University of Washington also predicts 200,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States by October 1, casting further doubts on economic reopening from lockdowns.

The US economy shrank 5 percent in the first three months of 2020 for its sharpest decline since the Great Recession of 2008/09, as most of the 50 states in the country went into lockdown to stem the outbreak of the virus. While most businesses have reopened over the past two months, economists still warn of a double-digit recession by the second quarter.

Kudlow said data he had seen on the economy thus far - including gains on employment, retail sales and the number of applications to buy new homes - were encouraging and did not indicate that the second quarter would be as bad as prophesied by analysts.

"I don't see any evidence of that from the monthly numbers we are seeing," he said.

The US labor market added a surprise gain of 7.3 million jobs between May and June, data showed.

Mortgage applications to purchase a home rose a seasonally adjusted 5 percent for the week ending July 3 compared with the previous week and were 33 percent higher than 2019,

Retail sales jumped a record 17.7 percent in May, easily topping the record 6.7 percent from October 2001, the month after the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States.