Macro Tracker: US strength persists while China remains stable, leaving luxury in wait-and-see mode

Research evidence excerpt

Macro Tracker: US strength persists while China remains stable, leaving luxury in wait-and-see mode

Equity Research

7 July 2026 | 10:45PM CEST

EUROPE BRANDED CONSUMER GOODS: LUXURY GOODS

Macro Tracker: US strength persists while China remains stable, leaving

luxury in wait-and-see mode

Ahead of Q2 reporting, we update our Luxury Macro Tracker, which looks at 60+ Adrien Duverger

+33(1)4212-1929 |

variables that correlate closely with the four key regions of Luxury spend. We adrien.duverger@gs.com

Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE - Paris

highlight below key trends for 2Q26, with a focus on 3 key data buckets: (1) Imports Branch

and exports of key luxury items from EU sourcing countries; (2) Retail sales; and (3) Pedro Anton

Asset prices, which we believe provide insight into the near-term outlook for luxury. +44(20)7552-2220pedro.anton@gs.com|

Goldman Sachs International

GS view: Overall, Apr-May datapoints show that global trends were broadly stable,

with continued strength in the US, Japan improving, although mainly reflecting a

comp effect, while China performance is holding steady at subdued levels and

Europe remains impacted by events in the Middle East. We highlight: (i) our

expectations for continued solid performance in the US particularly for the high-end

consumer cluster given supportive commentary of trading trends; for (ii) China, we

continue to expect a divergence in brand performance, and while we continue to

expect a modest improvement in 2026, we expect more stable performance QoQ;

(iii) Europe is showing signs of modest improvements given an easier base of

comparison, while we expect MEA performance to reflect ongoing geopolitical

pressures; in (iv) Japan, we note some improvement reflecting an easier comparison