The State of the Union in Numbers. A Quick and Short Review In 2025, the economy expanded as GDP increased, inflation decreased slightly, and the size of imports and exports shifted. These and other measures provide a snapshot of economic activity, prices, and the labor market heading into 2026. How was the economy doing? In 2025, […]

Explaining the impact of International Trade. Does International Trade Hurt the United States? Econofact In my opinion, International Trade does not hurt the United States. It does expand our economic impact. As the article points out when U.S. exports to the rest of the world are declining, U.S. imports of foreign goods tend to decline […]

It is doubtful Trump has ever seen an actual farm, rows of feed corn, or acres of wheat grown in the US. Indeed, he is the self-proclaimed expert of agriculture deals. Yet he has never navigated a field of cow-pies or stood in a field of corn watching it sway in the wind. Agriculture in […]

 – by New Deal democrat Over the past year, I have downgraded the importance of manufacturing indicators as a forecasting tool for the economy as a whole. This post explores why and suggests a revised tool that may be a helpful short leading indicator. On Monday, durable goods orders rebounded sharply in July from their […]

Via Tyler Cowen, here is a piece by David Autor, David Dorn, Gordon Hanson, Gary P. Pisano and Pian Shu. Cowen quoted the most important part, so let me follow his lead: The central finding of our regression analysis is that firms whose industries were exposed to a greater surge of Chinese import competition from […]