Iowa Business Report Monday Edition -- Oct. 05, 2026
Oct 5, 2026 · 2 min · 5 segments
Iowa Business Report Monday Edition October 05, 2026 Phil Kerpen of American Commitment on the overall strength of the U.S. economy.
- Speakers
Jeff SteinHost
Oct 5, 2026 · 2 min · 5 segments
Iowa Business Report Monday Edition October 05, 2026 Phil Kerpen of American Commitment on the overall strength of the U.S. economy.
Jeff SteinHostWe have an economy that, in many ways, is very, very strong.
We had very, very strong record income growth in 2025.
We've got a pretty strong GDP growth right now, just revised up to 2.2% for the last quarter, which is a pretty substantial upward revision.
We've got a lot of business investment.
We've got a huge boom in business investment.
Uh, that tends to flow through to higher productivity and higher wages, so there are a lot of positives.
Of course, there's one very, very obvious negative, which is we're dealing with a supply shock, price shock in oil, and, uh, we already had high prices from a crude oil shock in the Middle East when we got a second shock, a shock on top of a shock, uh, this one specific to diesel because of the Ukrainians bombing all those refineries in Russia that specialize in producing diesel.
And so now we've got this... sort of this double price shock, and that hurts.
And, uh, for the past several months, we've now been in the situation where prices are rising faster than income.
So people are falling behind a little bit again, as they were in the Biden years, after the opposite last year.
So this is the challenge we've got.
We've got a lot of very strong elements economically.
We have an economy that, in many ways, is very, very strong.
We had very, very strong record income growth in 2025.
We've got a pretty strong GDP growth right now, just revised up to 2.2% for the last quarter, which is a pretty substantial upward revision.
We've got a lot of business investment.
We've got a huge boom in business investment.
Uh, that tends to flow through to higher productivity and higher wages, so there are a lot of positives.
Of course, there's one very, very obvious negative, which is we're dealing with a supply shock, price shock in oil, and, uh, we already had high prices from a crude oil shock in the Middle East when we got a second shock, a shock on top of a shock, uh, this one specific to diesel because of the Ukrainians bombing all those refineries in Russia that specialize in producing diesel.
And so now we've got this... sort of this double price shock, and that hurts.
And, uh, for the past several months, we've now been in the situation where prices are rising faster than income.
So people are falling behind a little bit again, as they were in the Biden years, after the opposite last year.
So this is the challenge we've got.
We've got a lot of very strong elements economically.
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