The US economy is still in a freefall despite the fact most states in the United States have started to reopen from lockdowns imposed over the novel coronavirus pandemic, White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th May, 2020) The US economy is still in a freefall despite the fact most states in the United States have started to reopen from lockdowns imposed over the novel coronavirus pandemic, White House Economic Adviser Larry Kudlow said on Friday.
"We're essentially still in a freefall because of the economy, there's no question about that," Kudlow told a Fox business interview. "The pandemic's contraction and Q2 is going to be very difficult."
Kudlow's comments came as data revealed on Friday that US retail sales fell 16.4 percent in April due to the economy being effectively grind to a halt by the lockdowns and other restrictive measures imposed against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
The US economy shrank 4.8 percent in the first three months of 2020 for the sharpest economic decline since the Great Recession of 2008. While nearly all 50 states in America have reopened their economies in one way or another over the past two weeks, economists have warned of a sharp recession by the second quarter.
Kudlow said there were some "glimmers of hope" for the US economy, but these would not really slow the slide for now.
"We haven't turned the corner yet on unemployment claims," Kudlow said, referring to the 36 million jobs lost over the past two months. "I was looking through the continuing claims and they look a little lighter or lower than people might have thought. But they've been in a pretty steady downtrend for the past six or seven weeks and they're still bad numbers and they're still heartbreak numbers, hardship numbers."
The Trump administration has already launched trillions of Dollars worth of stimulus and other fiscal responses to the effects of the COVID-19-imposed measures.
