The Commerce Department reported that retail sales rose for the first time in three months, however, the gains were less than expected as confidence in the economic recovery continued to wane and consumers were wary of spending amid a weak labor market.
A surge of 2.3 percent in gasoline station sales and a 1.6 percent boost in auto sales paced the advance. Overall retail sales rose 0.4 percent in July after an upwardly revised decline of 0.3 percent in June but, excluding autos, sales gained just 0.2 percent. Excluding both autos and gasoline, sales fell 0.1 percent, a clear sign that consumers have tightened their belts.
Clothing sales fell 0.7 percent while two categories closely linked to the nation’s troubled housing market – home furnishings and building materials – both declined 0.3 percent.
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At some point American economist are going to have to stop emphasizing that American can get back to economic health by going shopping…especially since most of the things you shop for in America are imported from China.
Take the fastest growing economy in the world…China. They manufacture goods and sell them to the rest of the world. That’s how they get rich. America used to manufacture things to sell but somewhere along the line US business convinced us that we should lay off US workers and ship our factories overseas to China.
So now Chinese make all our goods and Americans are unemployed.
Yes Free Market makes a lot of sense.
I’m all for opening up our borders and letting all the Mexicans and Chinese move to the US. They would be willing to work for cheap. It’s the only way we can compete with China
but somewhere along the line US business convinced us that we should lay off US workers and ship our factories overseas to China.
Tax breaks on profits overseas ‘convinced’ us. That would be the gov’t, not business doing the convincing.