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August 8, 2025
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported out the latest employment numbers on Friday, August 1, finding that nonfarm establishments added just 73,000 jobs in July compared with June. That was a disappointing number, but the news was worse below the headline. The combined number of jobs the economy added in May and June—previously reported by BLS…
August 1, 2025
Trump’s trade deals have been surprising in their one-sidedness, in favor of the United States. The president’s supporters have painted this in a positive light. But it likely reflects two things. First, Trump is willing to impose more economic harm through higher tariffs on the U.S. than our trading partners are willing to impose on…
July 24, 2025
We’ve all heard the mantra that half of all marriages end in divorce. This idea often gets peddled as a way of dissuading young adults from tying the knot. If you only have 50/50 odds of making it, is marriage really worth the risk? Much of this caution surrounding marriage comes from those who’ve personally…
July 2, 2025
A quick look at some recent headlines shows that we have problems. The nation sharply and angrily divided along political lines. Rioters in the streets of Los Angeles. A destructive trade war. Debt and deficits at unsustainable levels. Those are real and serious problems (and not close to an exhaustive list). But the tenor of…
June 5, 2025
The House of Representatives recently passed by a single vote Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” that reflects President Donald Trump’s tax and spending agenda, and GOP senators are now working to put their own stamp on the bill. Given that partisan pedigree, you would think this bill had little in common with legislation that Democrats crafted during the…
May 7, 2025
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed that “3.7 million Americans lost their jobs” due to the “China Shock”—the increased import competition occurring after China was granted membership in the World Trade Organization. He cites research by David Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, linking to two of their papers. But it appears…
April 24, 2025
Elon Musk told a conference in Saudi Arabia last year that his listeners “should view the birthrate as the single biggest problem [we] need to solve. If you don’t make new humans, there’s no humanity, and all the policies in the world don’t matter.” In this way, he spotlighted his commitment to the pronatalist cause—the idea that…
April 3, 2025
If implemented, the tariffs announced yesterday by President Trump would constitute the largest tax increase since the 1968 levies to fund the Vietnam War. The details will matter, but my back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the tariffs — which are taxes on imported goods — could be as large as 2 percent of annual GDP. This tax increase…
February 20, 2025
In my last column, I showed that Americans’ assessments of the economy have tracked the official unemployment rate well over the long run. That is important because it suggests that both public opinion and objective measures indicate that the labor market is historically strong (though accelerating inflation during and after the COVID-19 pandemic has caused these…
January 22, 2025
By setting an ambitious 3% growth target, US Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent has provided the Trump administration a North Star to follow in devising its economic policies. The task now is to focus on productivity growth and avoiding any unforced errors that would threaten output. US Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent is right to…