Bloomberg Surveillance · Wednesday, August 5, 2026
The US economy is characterized by a benign macro backdrop, with expected disinflation, robust consumption around 2%, and a stable labor market. However, voters are primarily concerned about affordability and the impact of AI, particularly job displacement and the build-out of data centers. These concerns, especially regarding electricity costs and quality of life, present a political constraint on data center development.
“If you look at things like inflation, we're expecting more disinflation throughout the remainder of this year. If we look at things like consumption, the overall sentiment is not great, where we're a little bit higher off of the low lows, but we don't think that really translates to spending intentions. We still see relatively robust consumption this year around two percent. We just revised that up from one point seven percent. You know, the labor market still relatively sideways. So all of that paints sort of a decent picture for the ECON. We call it a benign macro backdrop.”
“Extremely present, And this is probably the biggest wedge issue heading into the midterm elections. Right, We know AI is unpopular. We know specifically among younger voters so eighteen to twenty nine, something like sixty percent are worried about job displacement. When we look at the data center build out specifically, the concerns are really threefold.”