UCF economist tells Sarasota commissioners national fiscal uncertainty clouds forecasts; local outlook remains resilient

Dr. Sean Snaith, director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida, told the Sarasota Board of County Commissioners on May 21 that unprecedented policy and geopolitical uncertainty has made economic forecasting unusually difficult but that Florida’s labor market and Sarasota’s tourism and housing markets are holding up.

Snaith described several structural and policy forces he said complicate national forecasts: the expansion of federal debt and deficits, recent credit‑rating actions, tariffs and trade actions, and election‑linked policy uncertainty. “The interest payments on this debt are now over a trillion a year,” he said, citing federal interest‑cost projections. He said the federal deficit and rising interest costs are squeezing discretionary…