Never mind the Congressional slugfests, trade battles, fears of war and a bitterly fought election that has put Alabama in an international spotlight: None of it seems to have made much of a dent on a bubble of optimism in Mobile’s business community, to judge from a new survey.
The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce unveiled its 2017 State of the Economy Survey results on Wednesday, and the sense of high hopes was clear among the 136 executives surveyed. Nearly 70 percent thought the U.S. economic outlook for 2018 was better or much better than this year. More than three quarters of them thought their own businesses would do better in 2018, and more than 80 percent thought Mobile’s economic outlook was better.