Does US Economic Stimulus Boost the Global Economy?

The United States has poured trillions of dollars into its economy during the pandemic, and if President Joe Biden has his way, it will continue doing so for the next several years.  

While most of the attention to the stimulus and recovery payments in the U.S. has focused on the domestic economic impact, economists have their eye on another side effect: the "spillover" benefits to the rest of the world.  "The government is sending out checks to everybody," said Joseph Gagnon, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "Households and state and local governments are buying all kinds of supplies for education and health care — we haven't had a government budget deficit this big since World War II."  Even though it is currently impossible to say what percentage of the stimulus money coming from the federal government will be spent rather than saved, the "massive" amount of money involved guarantees large economic impacts, Gagnon said.