While the US entered the coronavirus recession with few structural advantages, the US economy ranks near the top. The US is predicted to contract by 4.4% in 2020, while countries like Japan, Germany, and the United Kingdom are expected to contract at 5.3%, 7.1%, and 10% respectively. When looking at how each country handled the pandemic, these countries outperform the US with fewer cases and a quicker reopening. Additionally, the US's rate of unemployment exceeds these countries. The success of the US economy is deemed only to the stimulus package.
In the coronavirus recession, the US has a few structural advantages that other countries cannot rely on. One advantage is the diversified economy. Some countries rely heavily on one industry, like Spain with tourism. Additionally, the US does not rely on exports for growth, making up only 12% GDP. This compares to Japan at 18% and Germany at 47%. Some of the advantages the US has are a flexible labor market and better monetary policy implementations.
How do you think these advantages affected the US recession compared to countries like Japan and Germany?
link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/america-failed-covid-economys-ok-why/617223/
While our diversified industry may have helped our economy stay afloat, I think the fact that we never really went into a full lockdown during anytime of the pandemic help our economy. Even though it caused a lot of our cases to rise, I think it favored our economy is a great way compared to other countries.
ReplyDeleteI think that because our leaders did not really seem to care about the pandemic, our economy was able to do okay. Other countries around the world closed nearly every business for months to help the pandemic. I think was this did was hurt their economy more although it did help cases.
ReplyDeletei agree with you Ethan the simple feeling of a lot of our leaders not caring to much about the pandemic definitely has lead to are economy being in a better spot then others unfortunately those same countries our economy is doing better then they are doing much better in the sense of curbing the rate of cases while the US is seeing new highs of the disease
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see if the US has any longer term effects or delayed recoveries due to how we handled COVID. While our economy certainly remained more stable than other countries, we did have more cases and deaths. We also are having to put in place more stay-at-home orders now, when some other countries who truly went into lockdown, are beginning to fully open back up.
ReplyDeleteWith U.S. leaders underestimating the severity of the virus, the U.S. shutdown a lot later than most of the world and opened up its country a lot earlier than most. And with covid cases increasing everyday not only in the U.S. but in other countries as well, the U.S.'s reluctance to shutdown its economy completely like some of their peers have with spiking cases helped our economy. But it is interesting how our country places the economic status above the spreading virus and the increase of cases in the country.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Ethan and Noah, our economy stayed open a lot longer than other countries. Many other countries were quick to shut down to prevent the spread, but the US stayed open later to see how everything would go down and this gave us a slight economic advantage.
ReplyDeleteThe pandemic has caused countries to decrease their imports because global trade itself has decreased significantly. America never relied on exports for its economy so during the pandemic which is a huge advantage because the pandemic has caused decrease in imports and since the US never exported many products, other countries would not need to decrease their imports from US hence not much change in the economy through trade. Federal aid such as stimulus checks have also helped consumers to keep on consuming so the increased unemployment rates do not affect the economy as much as they would have if the aid were not distributed.
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