SustainAbility: A walk down US industrials

There are a lot of debates about the health of the US economy with many arguing that the strength of equity markets driven by artificial intelligence (AI) hides cracks in the ‘real’ economy. Hyperscalers – the large cloud computing companies such as Meta and Alphabet – are expected to spend $370bn in capital expenditures this year, a significant increase over last year, and some economists have argued US GDP growth without this would be flat. Meanwhile, US housing market has been weak as high mortgage rates and high house prices are impacting activity. Freight shipping, a sign of economic activity,...