Global Investors Are Telling Donald Trump His Deficits and National…
Washington is unnerved these days about budget deficits and the national debt. Deficit angst comes along periodically, often as a pretext for cutting social spending. This time, however, there’s genuine cause for alarm. Outsized deficits are par for the course when the economy is in recession or reeling from a shock like the pandemic or the financial collapse; most of… Continue reading
Trump’s Failures and Lies about Manufacturing Jobs
To hear President Trump describe it, “the manufacturing sector is booming,” and “we’ve witnessed one manufacturing miracle after another.” These paeons to his own success with manufacturing are the economic equivalent to his claims that he has masterfully handled the pandemic. In fact, under his presidency, foreign outsourcing by U.S. manufacturers rose frighteningly f while the number of U.S. manufacturing…Continue reading
Donald Trump’s Political Problems with White Voters Threaten His Reelection
Donald Trump’s heated racial appeals betray his growing political problem with white voters. Trump is running far behind Joe Biden in national polls because, according to data from the Pew Research Center, his 20 percentage-point advantage with white voters in 2016 (57% to 37%) dwindled to nine points by mid-August of this year (54% to 45%). Trump’s deficit with Hispanic…Continue reading
Is Trump Playing a Long Game to Stay Out of…
Donald Trump has a serious dilemma. If Joe Biden loses in November, he can go home and settle in as a party elder statesman, as defeated nominees have often done. But if Trump loses, he faces years of intensive investigations by Congress and, assuming he pardons himself, years of investigations by state prosecutors, likely criminal indictments, and possible conviction and…Continue reading
Donald Trump’s Big Lies about What He Has Done for…
Donald Trump and his operatives haven’t figured out how to go after Kamala Harris. Now that Joe Biden has named her to be his running mate, they are discovering she’s hard to tear down. It would come as no surprise, then, if Trump starts to double down on his famous boast: “I’ve done more for Black Americans, in fact, than…Continue reading
Trump and Senate Republicans Pose a Grave Risk to the…
The headline from last Thursday’s report by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on second quarter GDP was horrific: The economy contracted 9.5 percent from April through June. On an annual basis, GDP fell at an astounding rate of nearly 33 percent. Still, there’s another ominous aspect to the agency’s findings that has gone largely unnoted: The pandemic-driven collapse in…Continue reading
Trump is Wrong Again: U.S. Manufacturing is Not Recovering
The headline from the Commerce Department’s new report on the economy is that new shipments and new orders of durable goods by U.S .manufacturers increased at healthy rates in June – by 15 percent and 7 percent respectively. Larry Kudlow almost certainly will herald the numbers as proof that American manufacturing is back and good times are just around the…Continue reading
Investors are Doing Great in this Crisis, But What About…
Welcome to Crony Capitalism 2.0, brought to America by the Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic. Washington’s current approach to rescue the economy has made investors in stocks and bonds whole, even as incomes fall for most Americans. Now, only Congress can lessen that injustice—and the suffering of millions of people—and only by going big. Until the crisis ends, everyone…Continue reading
Trump’s Bungled Pandemic Response Has Badly Damaged Americans’ Incomes
Donald Trump may have normalized cognitive dissonance for many of his supporters and some young people. But wishing away the pandemic does not affect reality. The May data on personal incomes released last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis) (BEA) is a serious wake-up call. The data show that our nearly singular failure to wrestle the pandemic to manageable…Continue reading