Overall business conditions for the auto industry in the first half of 2019 were better than I expected. Things could get worse, for sure. But some upside risks are also emerging.

While the National Association of Business Economists may express concerns about trade issues, Bill Wood, economic editor, notes the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are driven more by nonpolitically motivated forces.

As anybody in the plastics industry can attest, the mainstream press is not always good with coverage of complicated issues.

This increase surprised most analysts, and while practitioners of the dismal science rarely get excited, this certainly caught our attention. It is not an exaggeration to say that the rate of change in productivity levels is the most important statistic in macroeconomics.

It is no secret that the labor market across all sectors of the U.S. economy is tight. The total number of job openings is at a historically high level. It is so high that there is less than one unemployed person per job opening. This gap is the widest for jobs in the high-wage industries. So it is no surprise that total wages are rising at an accelerating rate.

The outlook for Mexico's economy is typically dependent on two dominant factors: the Mexican political cycle and the U.S. economic cycle. That was certainly true in 2018, and it will continue to prevail in 2019.

Since this is now the longest period of economic expansion any of us has ever experienced, it is understandable if a quarter of slow economic growth makes people feel anxious that we are close to the next period of recession.

The good news is the U.S. Census Bureau is steadily recovering from the effects of the shutdown. The bad news is its latest data shows the number of houses started in the United States in December fell to 71,700 units.

The long-term outlook for plastic medical equipment and supplies are quite favorable. All the established demographic and technological trends spurring the market remain intact: The global population is aging, global access to medical care is expanding and rapid technological advances continue to bring new products and information to the market.

My outlook for plastics packaging in 2019 is generally favorable, but I must confess I feel a slowly rising sense of trepidation about both the U.S. economy and the market for some these products.

We will not sustain growth of 2.6 percent this year, but I expect the pace to stay just above 2 percent. The economic expansion will turn 10 years old this spring, and if this forecast is right, that will be about the time total production from U.S. manufacturers gets back to pre-recession levels.

In 2019, demand for light vehicles will continue to be supported by at least one more year of accelerating wage growth and rising employment levels.

For this last column of 2018, I want to look back at some of my forecasts from a year ago and then compare these forecasts to what actually happened during the past year.

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and we are already getting a flurry of data and news reports about how much Americans are spending this year.

It should not surprise anybody that when demand for heating fuels rise, the prices paid for fuels also rise. We should expect a seasonal increase in the prices paid for heating fuels when the weather turns cold.