by jpitney | Aug 17, 2025 | Canada, Foreign Policy, Mexico, Reagan, Russia, Trade
Ronald Reagan’s Announcement of Candidacy, November 13, 1979: On the foreign front, the decade of the 1980s will place severe pressures upon the United States and its allies. We can expect to be tested in ways calculated to try our patience, to confound...
by jpitney | Aug 11, 2025 | Business, Economic Policy, Trade
Patricia Cohen at NYT: Smaller firms, for instance, not only have fewer resources to weather unexpected costs, they also lack the bargaining power of megastores like Walmart to pressure suppliers to lower prices. They may also lack access to lines of credit available...
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 | 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 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....
