Q3 was “the best quarter so far this year for US businesses.”

That’s according to the editorial color accompanying the preliminary read on S&P Global’s PMIs for the world’s largest economy, released on Tuesday.

Although the flash prints actually undershot consensus on the margins, the readouts were decent — particularly considering the crosscurrents.

The services gauge registered 53.9 in the advance read for September, down from August, but still comfortably in expansion territory.

On the factory side, the manufacturing gauge likewise stayed above the 50 line separating expansion from contraction. 52 there was a slight miss and a one-point decline from August.

Again, these prints aren’t gangbusters, but they’ll work if you’re trying to fashion a “resilient economy” narrative. Specifically, the surveys suggest growth’s running 2.2% in the US. The Atlanta Fed tracker was at 3.3% for Q3 when it was last updated and the median Fed projection from the September SEP was 1.6% for this year.

The employment picture was mixed in the PMI surveys. Although companies added jobs, they did so at a slower pace citing concerns around softer demand. The good news is that weaker demand means less pricing power for corporates. That’s annoying for shareholders to the extent it means margin pressure, but it points to relief for stretched consumers.

“Although tariffs were again cited as a driver of higher input costs across both manufacturing and services, the number of companies able to hike selling prices to pass these costs on to customers has fallen, hinting at squeezed margins but boding well for inflation to moderate,” Williamson went on to remark. Nevertheless, he said, this month’s data is “still indicative of consumer inflation remaining above the Fed’s 2% target in the coming months.”

So, an economy growing at a better than 2% clip, payrolls that are still growing albeit at a slower pace and inflation that may moderate, but still looks set to run ahead of the Fed’s target for the balance of the year.

Does that really argue for 50bps of additional monetary policy easing over the last two 2025 FOMC meetings on top of the 25bps just delivered? Maybe, maybe not.

But it certainly doesn’t make the case for more than twice that much easing, Stephen Miran’s best efforts to make the case notwithstanding.