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October 3, 2024

Protectionism is Failing and Wrongheaded: An Evaluation of the Post-2017 Shift toward Trade Wars and Industrial Policy

Abstract The Trump–Pence and Biden–Harris administrations enthusiastically embraced protectionism. Each administration explicitly argued for a break from the bipartisan consensus of recent decades that has been generally supportive of free trade and of allowing markets to shape US industrial and employment composition. But the protectionism of the Trump and Biden administrations has not succeeded and…

September 23, 2024

Toward a Potential Grand Bargain for the Nation

The views expressed in this report are those of the individual authors who collectively constitute the Grand Bargain Committee, co-chaired by Michael R. Strain and Isabel V. Sawhill. This report was sponsored by the Center for Collaborative Democracy and was prepared independent of influence from the center and from any other outside party or institution. It…

September 5, 2024

Hurt Pennsylvania’s Workers to Win Pennsylvania’s Votes?

Have populist politics gotten so out of control that politicians believe they need to hurt Pennsylvania’s workers in order to win Pennsylvania’s electoral votes? Yesterday, the Washington Post reported: President Joe Biden is preparing to announce that he will formally block Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9 billion acquisition of U.S. Steel, according to three people with knowledge of the…

September 3, 2024

Event: New Census Data on American Families’ Economic Well-Being

On September 10, the United States Census Bureau will release what is arguably 2024’s most important economic data. We will learn for the first time whether families’ economic well-being improved in 2023: Did wages outpace inflation and deliver real income gains for middle-class families? Did a strong labor market help families escape poverty? Did income…

June 26, 2024

American Workers Are Doing Great. They Could Be Doing Even Better.

Editor’s note: This is one of a pair of essays responding to the Economic Innovation Group’s report, “The American Worker: Toward a New Consensus”, by Adam Ozimek, John Lettieri, and Benjamin Glasner. The other is by Paul Krugman of the New York Times. To the Economic Innovation Group’s attempt to articulate a “new consensus” about the American…

June 10, 2024

Employment and Labor Supply Responses to the Child Tax Credit Expansion: Theory and Evidence

AbstractThe 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion increased government benefits to families, andespecially to families with the lowest incomes. Economic theory predicts that this policyintervention would have led to a reduction in labor supply among adults in those families. Ourreview of available research suggests that employment within broadly defined demographicgroups was not reduced by the…

June 10, 2024

The Economic World We’ve Lost

Populism has infected both major parties in the United States, leading to policies that previous generations of economic policymakers would immediately recognized as foolhardy and counter-productive. But whether the country can escape its self-destructive pessimism is anyone’s guess. WASHINGTON, DC – The past decade has brought a sea change in US economic policy, and not…

June 4, 2024

What Comes After Neoliberalism?

The steep tariff increases on Chinese goods that US President Joe Biden’s administration recently announced are just the latest in a long string of interventionist economic policies that fly in the face of decades of neoliberal orthodoxy. And the Biden administration is hardly alone: a growing number of governments, economists, and institutions are rethinking the…

May 13, 2024

The American Dream Is Alive and Well (and the Problem of US Inequality Greatly Exaggerated)

Don’t listen to the populist naysayers: The U.S. economy continues to deliver jobs, higher wages and upward mobility for those who need it most. What do former President Trump and Bernie Sanders have in common? Or Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Nobel Prize-winning Clinton administration economist Joseph Stiglitz and billionaire investor Ray Dalio? Among many other prominent elected officials, commentators, public…

December 18, 2023

The State of Democratic Capitalism: 2023

How to assess the health of democratic capitalism in the United States? Fundamentally, it is very strong. The marriage of democratic politics and a free-market economy continues to strengthen each, with free markets generating the employment opportunities and prosperity that lead to widespread support for our political system and the rule of law, strengthen democratic…