by jpitney | Aug 8, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Kailyn Rhone at NYT: The sweeping tariffs target nearly all U.S. trading partners and push the average tax on imports to more than 18 percent, the highest since 1934 and a steep jump from 2.4 percent in January, according to Yale’s Budget Lab. While the taxes are...
by jpitney | Aug 4, 2025 | Economic Policy, Nixon
Philip Rossetti at R Street: A number of political candidates who promote price freezes—also called price controls—in industries like housing have recently won electoral victories. This trend makes it worth asking what will happen if the government freezes energy...
by jpitney | Jul 31, 2025 | Budget, Economic Policy, Trade
Jessica Riedl at WP: [E]conomists generally agree that trade wars harm long-term economic growth by limiting consumer options, raising costs, reducing investment capital and killing jobs in industries that suffer from foreign retaliation. This slowdown in the growth...
by jpitney | Jul 28, 2025 | Debt, Economic Policy
Desmond Lachman at AEI: A key vulnerability of the United States is its high dependence on foreigners to finance its large budget deficits. One measure of this dependency is that foreigners own almost one-third of the $29 trillion of outstanding U.S. Treasury bonds....
by jpitney | Jul 22, 2025 | Canada, Economic Policy, Reagan, Trade
Robert Zoellick at WSJ: After the Trump-Biden era fades into history, which party will offer an alternative to costly, backward-looking industrial policies? While Vice President JD Vance lectures Europeans on democracy and philosophizes about state-led capitalism,...
by jpitney | Jul 21, 2025 | Economic Policy, Trade
Tariffs aren’t instant inflation. Goods take a month at sea, another in customs, and more time in storage. Then you work through the storerooms that businesses filled ahead of time. Only then do new costs hit shelves. So yes, tariffs raise prices—just not right away....
