On the heels of the strongest domestic economic performance in years, experts largely see good things for the U.S. economy in 2015.
The country recently wrapped up its best year for hiring since 1999, and rising wholesale inventories suggest an increase in the fourth quarter gross domestic product—after the GDP grew at its highest rate since 2003 in the previous quarter.
Across the pond, however, a slow recovery in Europe could put a damper on the global manufacturing economy.
A recent analysis from the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation suggests a European economic recovery has been "sapped by a paucity of fiscal impulses and near-absence of centrally managed monetary stimulus."
Report author Kris Bledowski wrote the manufacturing outlook predicts 2014 numbers will show minimal growth, and that the Eurozone nations will see just over 2 percent production growth this year.
The report said Poland and the United Kingdom had the strongest GDP ranks for the third quarter, alongside Greece, Ireland and Spain, which are recovering from programs designed to bolster their flailing economies.
"If recovery kicked in in 2014, it likely came from the periphery," Bledowski wrote. "Countries that recently went through wrenching fiscal adjustment and structural reforms are already growing faster than the core."
The tepid forecast is also notwithstanding the ongoing fiscal crisis in Russia, which is facing plummeting oil prices and economic sanctions due to its intervention in Ukraine. The value of the ruble declined sharply last year, raising fears the world's eighth-largest economy could default on its foreign debt.
That possibility is not expected to dramatically affect the U.S., whose economy is far larger than Russia's, but potential losses to lenders totaling $670 billion would reverberate throughout the global economy. An anticipated decline in Russia's GDP would also impact its foreign trade partners.
Analysts, meanwhile, do not expect Russian President Vladimir Putin to back away from Ukraine, which could result in additional sanctions.
“Our deepest fear has been—and still is—that putting Mr. Putin in a 'nothing-to-lose' situation removes any constraint he might have had against reneging on his foreign debt obligations, which Russian borrowers probably cannot pay off or service now," wrote economist Carl Weinberg of New York-based High Frequency Economics.
