Traditionally, tariffs have been used to protect domestic industry, particularly agriculture and labor-intensive manufacturing. Trump has argued that his tariffs will return manufacturing to the United States and further that they will raise revenue helping offset the $3.4 trillion increase the tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations will add to the debt over the […]

 – by New Deal democrat Last week I suggested that there might have been a break in the trend of higher YoY jobless claims, but there was not enough evidence yet. It is fair to say that this week’s report supplied that evidence. Initial claims declilned another -4,000 to 217,000, the lowest weekly number since mid-April. […]

 – by New Deal democrat Housing data for June resumed this morning with existing home sales.  Let me start with my usual caveat: although they typically constitute about 90% of all sales are the least important for forecasting purposes, since the main thing that happens is only a change in ownership, and therefore they have much less economic […]

Or How Trump’s Bill (with the help of Republicans) Funding Tax Breaks to a Select Upper Income Few Deliberately Breaks the Rest of the Nation. Cost of Financing U.S. Government Debt, EconoFact The Issue: The share of government spending devoted to paying interest on the United States’ government debt has risen since 2020 exceeds what […]

 – by New Deal democrat New economic data will resume tomorrow. Since I haven’t updated the impact of Tariff-palooza! on transport and spending in awhile, let’s take a look at that. The “tip of the spear” is container shipping. Here’s a graph of traffic at the busiest ports in the US, from CNBC: At the busiest […]

Janet Yellen warns of dire consequences of drastic Fed rate cuts “Former Fed Chair sends stern message on economy,” Fed “There have been episodes in the past that we know about now where U.S. presidents have attempted to pressure the chairs of the Federal Reserve, Yellin said in a CNBC interview. She said the most […]

– by New Deal democrat Once again there is a hiatus in the data for a couple of days. So let’s take a look at two of my favorite labor indicators: real average hourly wages and real aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory workers. First, here are real average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory workers: These were unchanged in […]

Its appears Coca-Cola will be launching a cane-sugar soda this fall in the U.S. The beverage company announced its implementation in its second quarter earnings on Tuesday. This, according to Hannah Parker at Quartz. The new product announcement comes nearly a week after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday to declare Coca-Cola agreed to switch […]

The government funding for public broadcasting is relatively small in the scheme of things. In total an ~ 1.1 billion.  ~$535 million appropriated for fiscal year 2026 under the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024, and another $535 million under the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act of 2025. It does play a role getting information out to […]

Been following this issue for a while. Pulled this from an Atlantic article from December 2024. In the 1980s, consumers did more than half of their grocery shopping at independent stores. This included both single-location businesses and small, locally owned chains. This changed in the 1980s. Convinced tough antitrust enforcement was holding back American business, […]