2025 Economic Forecast Summit: Optimism, tradeoffs, & Bellevue’s path forward
This year’s Economic Forecast Summit — despite having the same keynote speaker for over a decade — took a bit of a different path, as we started the event on the hyperlocal level, working our way up to the state, national, and global economic landscapes. The overarching themes, though?
Keep building for shared prosperity. Stay pragmatic about tradeoffs. Invest where it moves the needle on affordability, mobility, and talent.
Oh … and optimism pays.
The Bellevue Perspective
Bellevue Mayor Lynne Robinson opened with the City perspective, reflecting on the past year of growth within our own city limits.
“Today, we have 162,000 jobs in Bellevue, and we are still growing,” she said, noting that 1,400 new businesses opened here last year. “We never over promise, and we never under deliver.”
The State Perspective
University of Washington’s Thomas Gilbert then took the stage for a broad strokes overview of our state economy, blending a sense of optimism about innovation, with realism about costs.
He didn’t mince words when it came to the tech industry — “We will look back on this and say, ‘There was the internet, and then there was generative AI,” — and he highlighted how our proximity to global AI leaders gives the Eastside an edge if we keep on training, and keep on adopting.
Gilbert also spoke to the ballooning population growth in our region, and the fact that permits for housing simply aren’t keeping up, urging local leaders to keep entitlement and construction throughput moving so households and employers can stay in Washington.
The National & Global Perspective:
Bringing things even further out from our Eastside focus, keynote Joe Quinlan took us up to the 30,000‑foot view. He has studied economies across the world and, despite our quirks, still lands here: “No one does it as well as America … no one this decade. We’re crushing it.”
Quinlan described market uncertainty by describing a bifurcated consumer, as the top decile accounts for roughly half of all U.S. consumption, buoyed by market gains and home equity. Meanwhile, many households are feeling the pinch from rent, health care, and groceries, so his conclusion was not to cheerlead or hand‑wring, but to plan for both realities.
On the policy front, Quinlan highlighted how a run‑it‑hot posture in Washington, D.C. and possible rate cuts can keep growth expanding, even as inflation risks linger. Globally, he flagged U.S.–China tech competition, tariff dynamics, and supply‑chain pressure points like rare earths and undersea cables. The advice for leaders here is to stay agile, keep investing in productivity, and diversify risk.
And, he closed with a line that became the day’s refrain: “Pessimism sells. Optimism pays.”
