There’s enough on the calendar to keep macro watchers engaged this week, although the unofficial beginning of summer and Monday’s US holiday could foster indifference if not disinterest.

When Donald Trump’s president, you can’t completely tune out. He’s always good (or bad, depending on how you want to look at it) for some excitement. A weekend check on the presidential social media feed found Trump demanding a list of Harvard’s international students (“we want to know who they are”) and demonstrating, for the second time in three days, that he doesn’t know how many zeros are in a billion. (Harvard’s endowment is $52 million, according to Trump, just like Europe’s trade surplus with the US is $250 million.)

In terms of the price action, all eyes will be on the long-end of the US Treasury curve, where Scott Bessent’s really hoping to see dip-buyers step in. Is 5% sufficient compensation to loan money for 30 years to a country which elected Trump twice? That’s the big question. A term premium-driven bear steepener’s just death for equities.

On the data front, Conference Board confidence for May’s due on Tuesday. Given the environment, that’s probably the marquee event. Recall that the last release was abysmal and came packaged with an expectations gauge print so bad it could’ve walked out of the financial crisis. As noted in “Anomaly,” long-end US yields are typically lower when the consumer outlook’s this dour. Not this time, and that says a lot about why the current Treasury selloff feels dangerous.

For whatever it’s worth, consensus is looking for a slight improvement on the confidence headline. I said this about the University of Michigan survey and I was wrong, so I should probably be wary of saying it again, but: The Conference Board release can’t really get a lot worse, and if you don’t count all the democratic (small “d”) backsliding since last month’s poll, not a lot’s changed. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see an improvement, slight though it may be.

On Wednesday, traders will get the May FOMC minutes. I’m not sure there’s a lot to be gleaned from those. Anyone inclined to parsing the account (i.e., feeding it to a LLM) will learn how many (“a few,” “several,” etc.) policymakers are worried about “tension” between the Committee’s goals in a stagflationary environment, and also a little more about “participants'” inclination to shrug off Q1’s negative GDP headline.

Speaking of Q1 GDP, the second estimate from Howard Lutnick’s BEA is due Thursday. Maybe Howard will introduce a new methodology showing that in fact, the economy expanded at a record-breaking 87% clip at the start of the year thanks entirely to that visionary among visionaries, “Donald J. Trump.” I’m just kidding. That release should be a non-event. Traders and Fed officials have already written the “contraction” off to import drag, and it’s anyway old news.

On Friday, the Fed will get an update on its preferred inflation measure. Core PCE’s likely to come in cool in light of a very favorable PPI release.

Consensus is looking for 0.1% from the MoM print. An even cooler readout’s possible, and barring any surprises, this’ll be the second release in a row tipping negligible core price growth.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean a Fed cut’s on the table for June’s SEP meeting. It’s not. Or at least not unless Trump does or says something between now and then to torpedo the growth outlook.

Also on deck this week in the US: Updates on the two main national home price indicators, pending home sales and the final read on University of Michigan sentiment for May.