Do The New York Times, 12 de novembro, 2018
U.S. quarterly business fixed investment (annualized rate)
’06
’08
’10
’12
’14
’16
’18
%
20
10
0
-10
-20
Recession
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New tax law takes effect
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The $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law late last year has already given the American economy a jolt, at least temporarily. It has fattened the paychecks of most American workers, padded the profits of large corporations and sped economic growth.
Those results weren’t a surprise. Economists across the ideological spectrum predicted the new law would fuel consumer spending, in classic fashion: When the government borrows money and dumps it into the economy, growth tends to accelerate. But Republicans did not sell the law as a sugar-high stimulus. They sold it as a refashioning of the incentives in the American economy — one that would unleash more investment, better efficiency and higher wages, along with enough growth to offset any revenue lost to the government from lower tax rates.
Ten months after the law took effect, that promised “supply-side” bump is harder to find than the sugar-high stimulus. It’s still early, but here’s what the numbers tell us so far:
The Investment Bump
Proponents of the tax overhaul said it would supercharge the recent lackluster pace of business spending on long-term investments like buildings, factories, equipment and technology.
Such spending is crucial to keeping economic growth strong. And strong growth is central to Republican claims that the tax cuts would ultimately pay for themselves.
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Capital spending did pick up steam earlier this year. For companies in the S&P 500, capital expenditures rose roughly 20 percent in the first half of 2018. Much of that was concentrated: The spending of just five companies — Google’s parent, Alphabet, and Facebook, Intel, Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs — accounted for roughly a third of the entire rise. Much of that spending went toward technology, including increased investment in data centers and computing, server and networking capacity.
For the full year, Goldman Sachs analysts expect that capital expenditures for companies in the S&P 500 will be up about 14 percent, to $715 billion. Research and development spending, another component of business investment, was expected to be up 12 percent, to $340 billion.
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For the economy as a whole, the surge in business investment was a bit less impressive. It’s true that business spending on fixed investment — such as machinery, buildings and equipment — rose, jumping 11.5 percent and 8.7 percent during the first and second quarters. The first-quarter jump was the fastest for investment since 2011.
But that pace fizzled during the third quarter. Recently data showed third-quarter business investment rose at an annual pace of 0.8 percent. The last quarter of the year — traditionally a big one for capital spending — will fill out the picture, but that data won’t be released until early 2019.
It will likely take years to get a better sense of whether the law fundamentally reshaped American corporate investment. But there’s little clear evidence that it is drastically reshaping the way in which most companies invest and spend.
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