December 22, 2025

Hi, everyone. My name is Taylor St. Germain with ITR Economics. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. We at ITR are your apolitical and unbiased source of economic intelligence. And today I wanted to recap our longer-term thoughts when we think about our forecast, not just for next year, but as we look at our five to 10 year future.

For those of you that have been following ITR, we have been sharing with our clients that we are very optimistic on what’s in store for the economy in the second half of this decade. We have US Industrial Production growth characterizing 2026 through 2029. We have GDP growth characterizing 2026 to 2029. We do not have a recession in our forecast until we get to that 2030 timeframe. So a lot of our comments with our clients, a lot of the things that we’ve been sharing are how do we diversify our business? How do we grow our market share? How do we take advantage of all of this growth over the course of the next four years so we’re positioning ourselves well to take on that downturn of the 2030s? We hope folks aren’t afraid of downturns, even downturns as bad as a potential depression in 2030, because downturns offer significant opportunities for the companies that are prepared for them.

And that was really the focus of our presentation that we gave, that I should say our chief economist, Brian, and one of our economists, one of my colleagues, Lauren, they delivered our long-term expectations through a presentation, through a webinar that highlighted how do we best prepare over these next few years, and what markets are likely going to, I’d say, flourish or at least be less negative during this 2030 downturn. And they shared a list, and I wanted to just recap this list for you all, for those of you that weren’t able to attend that presentation, Lauren and Brian shared a list of markets that are potentially helpful markets to participate in as we look at a potential downturn in 2030.

Those markets were the food, insurance and annuities, hospital, medical, pharma applications, med labs, electrification, pets, defense, and physical AI and cybersecurity. This list of markets is important to us because not only are they likely to help you weather the 2030 storm, but they’re markets that we expect to grow over the course of the next four years as well. So we’re urging our clients to try to diversify yourself into these markets. Do you have an application that can support these markets? Because it’s going to be beneficial for the long-term health of your company. That’s a lot of the work that we’re doing right now is, listen, 2030 isn’t that far away, and with all this growth in the second half of the decade, we really need to take advantage of this growth to ensure that we are well positioned to take on this downturn of the 2030s.

This list is just a little snippet of what Lauren and Brian covered in their presentation. If you want to know more about the 2030 markets, about the areas that we expect to perform better than others, please head over to our website. There’s a recording of their presentation available if you missed it. We need to take these next four years to prepare. Downturns, recessions, depressions are some of the best times to grow your personal wealth, to grow your market share, to be making acquisitions for pennies on the dollar compared to where they are today. You want to be one of those companies during the 2030s.

I’m going to continue to keep you updated on the 2030s through this TrendsTalk podcast. We have a lot of resources on our website, but time’s ticking. And so it’s important that we’re taking steps to diversify our business and put ourselves in a position to thrive during a downturn rather than be reactive to it. There’s more information to come. I sure hope you found this helpful. Thanks for joining me on this episode of TrendsTalk. Please like and subscribe to TrendsTalk wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I look forward to seeing you on the next one. Thanks so much. Take care for now.