By Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey March 30 at 5:25 PM
Republicans have no intention of heeding President Trump’s urgent demands for a new health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, fearing the potential political damage that such a proposal could cause in 2020 and hoping he will soon drop the idea, according to interviews with numerous GOP lawmakers, legislative staffers and administration aides.
Not only is there no such health-care overhaul in the works on Capitol Hill — there are no plans to make such a plan.
Senate Republicans, who were caught off guard by Trump’s rapid shift to focus on health care last week, said the White House would need to make the first move by putting forward its own proposal. But administration officials said nothing firm is in the works.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — acutely aware of the perils that health care poses for Republicans — does not intend to wade extensively into the issue, senators and aides said, even as Trump has revived his fixation on a campaign promise to eliminate former president Barack Obama’s health-care law.
Nor does Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), whose panel would be central to any such debate. When asked whether the two Senate committees overseeing health-care policy are planning to draft a replacement proposal for the Affordable Care Act, Grassley responded flatly: “No.”
“Obamacare is something that’s not going to be replaced unless the courts would declare it unconstitutional,” Grassley said in an interview. “You won’t know that for a long time.”
The renewed debate over health-care policy was set off by Trump’s abrupt decision last week directing the Justice Department to intervene in a federal-court case seeking to eliminate the ACA in its entirety on constitutional grounds.
Although the outcome of that case is far from certain, the Trump administration’s aggressive move in court sparked panic among many Republicans — and a measure of glee among Democrats — over the prospect of a protracted battle over health insurance for tens of millions of Americans during a presidential election cycle. Most Republicans are particularly wary given that Democrats took control of the House after last year’s midterm elections in part because of their focus on preserving and expanding health-care programs.
Trump’s move also has baffled Republicans who wish he would have remained focused on the end of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections rather than plunging the party into another fight over Obamacare, which the party has tried and failed to eliminate for nearly a decade.
But any plans to ride on the high of Mueller’s findings — which, according to Attorney General William P. Barr, did not establish a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia — swiftly ended with a tweet around 1 p.m. last Tuesday as the president began making his way to the Capitol.
That tweet — in which Trump proclaimed “The Republican Party will become ‘The Party of Healthcare!’” — was how McConnell learned the president was interested in taking up the issue again, according to an adviser to the majority leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal GOP interactions.
McConnell had previously wondered why Trump had suddenly invited himself to the weekly Senate GOP policy meeting at the Capitol, the adviser said. But McConnell later learned that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), out golfing with Trump at his southern Florida resort last weekend, had revived the subject.
Another perplexed GOP senator speculated that the rest of the party will figure out the next steps the next time Graham goes golfing with Trump.
The private pessimism from Republican lawmakers is nonetheless leaving Trump undeterred.
In phone conversations with senators and discussions with White House officials, Trump has made it clear he sees health care as a priority. He announced before traveling to a political rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Thursday that he had tapped a trio of GOP senators with health-care expertise — Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Bill Cassidy (La.) and Rick Scott (Fla.) — to piece together an ACA replacement.
Barrasso, the No. 3 in Senate leadership, has drafted legislation promoting short-term, limited-duration health insurance that has caught the eye of White House officials. Cassidy, who like Barrasso is a physician, was one of the lead authors of GOP health-care legislation in 2017 that would have turned money for Medicaid and ACA subsidies into block grants for states, which could then use the money for any health-care system to their liking.
The president has praised Barrasso to other aides as someone who should be in the conversation, while indicating his interest in the block-grant bill developed by Cassidy and Graham.
Meanwhile, Scott has been focused on a narrower health-care effort targeting the cost of prescription drugs and is close to introducing legislation. He spoke privately on the phone with Trump on Wednesday, when the two men both expressed interest in taking on health care, Scott recalled.
“Look, I’m going to try to get something done,” Scott said. “But I think it accelerates everything if the White House had a plan.”
Indeed, there is little indication any health-care plan will materialize — or advance in Congress.
A senior White House official directly involved in the discussions said there was no specific proposal. McConnell also has no plans to put together a working group of Republican lawmakers to draft a health-care blueprint as he did in 2017, according to one official familiar with party strategy.
Grassley said no hearings are planned on replacing Obamacare in his committee, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who leads the Senate’s major health panel, said his focus is working on “reducing health-care costs” and emphasized bipartisan efforts to do so.
Although Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a close Trump ally, is working on a health-care plan to present to the president, several GOP officials said they want the president to just drop it.
“We are very eager to see what the White House submits for Congress to consider,” said one senior Republican aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “Until then, Republicans will focus instead on their legislative agenda and confirming Trump appointments.”
Operatives at the committees charged with electing GOP lawmakers — the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — have privately warned that the issue is not helping Republicans up for reelection next fall. Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, has told others involved in the 2020 effort that he does not want health care to be the main issue in the race, people familiar with his comments say.
The GOP has been eager to highlight divisions among Democrats over various proposals for a Medicare-for-all type system, which Republicans characterize as a dangerous lurch toward socialism. Instead, they now confront questions about how exactly they would draft an ACA replacement — allowing Democrats to go on the offensive and tout the now-popular nine-year-old law.
About 20 million Americans would lose their health coverage if the law was overturned, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank. Tens of millions more with workplace plans could also be affected, as employers would be allowed to scale back certain medical benefits and people with preexisting conditions buying coverage on their own would no longer be guaranteed access to coverage at no extra cost.
“They’re trying to take away health-care coverage from tens of millions of people, to take away protections for people who have preexisting conditions, to take away protections for 25-year-olds who are on their parents’ insurance policies, to take away protections so that people don’t get cheated by their insurance companies,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told reporters Friday while campaigning in Marshalltown, Iowa. “That’s where the Trump administration is. That’s where their values lie.”
Yet Trump has viewed his new health-care push as a way to correct what he sees as his biggest political vulnerability, aides say. Trump has occasionally brought up the issue as one of his main frustrations as president, according to a senior administration official, and still complains frequently in private that the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) — who died last August — voted against the last Obamacare repeal effort in 2017.
“A lot of the squeamish Republicans will say they campaigned on this, and it’s a losing issue. But in 2018, they basically campaigned without Republicans putting forth an alternative,” said Marc Short, chief of staff to the vice president. “We should welcome a debate about whether more freedom and more choices lowers costs relative to Democrats’ march toward socialism.”
Annie Linskey in Marshalltown, Iowa, contributed to this report.
"An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies"
Trump’s trade war is about more than economics.
By Paul Krugman Opinion Columnist May 11, 2019
President Trump in the Oval Office earlier this month. Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times
O.K., they weren’t supposed to start the trade war until I got back from vacation. And I really have too many kilometers to cover and hills to climb to weigh in on a regular basis or at great length. But since I’m currently sitting in an outdoor cafe with my coffee and croissant, I thought I might take a few minutes to address two misconceptions that, I believe, are coloring discussion of the trade conflict.
By the way, I don’t mean Trump’s misconceptions. As far as I can tell, he isn’t getting a single thing about trade policy right. He doesn’t know how tariffs work, or who pays them. He doesn’t understand what bilateral trade imbalances mean, or what causes them. He has a zero-sum view of trade that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned over the past two centuries. And to the (small) extent that he is making any coherent demands on China, they’re demands China can’t/won’t meet.
But Trump’s critics, while vastly more accurate than he is, also, I think, get a few things wrong, or at least overstate some risks while understating others. On one side, the short-run costs of trade war tend to be overstated. On the other, the long-term consequences of what’s happening are bigger than most people seem to realize.
In the short run, a tariff is a tax. Period. The macroeconomic consequences of a tariff should therefore be seen as comparable to the macroeconomic consequences of any tax increase. True, this tax increase is more regressive than, say, a tax on high incomes, or a wealth tax. This means that it falls on people who will be forced to cut their spending, and is therefore likely to have a bigger negative bang per buck than the positive bang for buck from the 2017 tax cut. But we’re still talking, at least so far, about a tax hike that is only a fraction of a percent of GDP.
This means that it’s hard to justify claims that the trade war, at least what’s currently in the pipeline, will cause a global recession.
If the trade war expands not just to all imports from China but to imports from Europe and other parts of the world, we could get this up to a contractionary fiscal policy of a couple of points of GDP; $200 billion here, $200 billion there, and soon you’re talking about real money. And that certainly could happen: Trump imagines that he’s winning, and might well move on from China to European cars and so on. But we’re not there yet.
But doesn’t the prospect of foreign retaliation change the picture? Actually, what foreign retaliation does is prevent tariffs from being less bad than an ordinary tax increase. When a large country like the U.S. imposes tariffs, one effect — if we don’t face foreign retaliation — is a rise in the price of U.S. exports, either though a rise in the dollar or by drawing resources away from export to import-competing sectors. This price rise is, other things equal, a gain for America (although not for export-oriented sectors like agriculture.) And this “terms of trade” effect can mitigate or even reverse the overall losses as tariffs distort the economy.
If (when) foreigners retaliate, however, the terms of trade effect goes away, and we’re back to tariffs just being a tax on domestic consumers.
Maybe the larger point here is that there tends to be a certain amount of mysticism about trade policy, because the fact that it’s global and touches on one of the most famous insights in economics, the theory of comparative advantage, gives it an amount of mind space somewhat disproportionate to its actual economic importance. Yes, trade policy is important; but in terms of the strict economics it’s not more important than health policy, or fiscal policy, or policy in general.
I say this, by the way, as someone whose career as a professional economist was based mainly on research into international trade and finance. In general, people who actually work on these issues tend to assign them less importance than those who haven’t studied them closely.
All of this, however, is only about the strict economics of a trade war, which may be the least important aspect of what’s happening.
For trade policy isn’t just about economics. It’s also about democracy and peace.
This is obvious and explicit in Europe, where the origins of the European Union lie in the Coal and Steel Community of the early 1950s — an agreement whose economic benefits, while real, were in a way incidental to its real purpose, preventing any future wars between France and Germany. And membership of the E.U. has always been contingent on democratization — which is, by the way, why the E.U.’s limp reaction to the de facto collapse of democracy in Hungary and, it appears, Poland represents such moral failure.
It’s more implicit in the case of the United States. But the historical record is pretty clear: the postwar trading system grew out of the vision of Cordell Hull, FDR’s Secretary of State, who saw commercial links between nations as a way to promote peace. That system, with its multilateral agreements and rules to limit unilateral action, was from the beginning a crucial piece of the Pax Americana. It was as integral to the postwar order as the I.M.F., which was supposed to provide a safety net for nations having balance of payments trouble, or for that matter NATO.
And Trump’s trade war should correspondingly be seen as part and parcel of his embrace of foreign dictators, lack of respect for our allies, and evident contempt for democracy, at home as well as abroad.
But wait, you say: China is neither an ally nor a democracy, and it is in many ways a bad actor in world trade. Isn’t there a reasonable case for confronting China over its economic practices?
Yes, there is — or there would be if the tariffs on Chinese products were an isolated story, or better yet if Trump were assembling an alliance of nations to confront objectionable Chinese policies. But in fact Trump has been waging trade war against almost everyone, although at lower intensity. When you’re imposing tariffs on imports of Canadian steel, on the ludicrous pretense that they endanger national security, and are threatening to do the same to German autos, you’re not building a strategic coalition to deal with a misbehaving China.
What you’re doing, instead, is tearing down what’s left of the Pax Americana.
Wasn’t this inevitable in any case? I don’t think so. True, U.S. economic dominance has been eroding over time, not because we’re getting poorer, but because the rest of the world is getting richer. But there was reason to hope that a relatively peaceable international order could be sustained by an alliance of democratic powers. In fact, until a few years ago it seemed to me that we were seeing exactly that taking place for the world trading system, which was transitioning from largely benign U.S. hegemony to a comparably benign co-dominion by the U.S. and the E.U.
At this point, however, things look a lot bleaker. It’s not just Trump. And it’s not even just Trump plus Brexit. The Europeans are also turning out to be a big disappointment. As I said, if they can’t even deal with the likes of Viktor Orban within their own community, they’re definitely not up to providing the kind of leadership the world needs.
But where the Europeans are weak, Trump is malign. He’s working actively to make the world a more dangerous, less democratic place, with trade war just one manifestation of that drive. And the eventual negative consequences for America and the world will be much bigger than anything we can capture with economic modeling of the effects of tariffs.
New Report: Corporate Tax Transparency Becoming the Global Norm
"An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies"
April 23, 2019
Image: Ryan DeBerardinis / Shutterstock
Investors, Businesses, and Policymakers Increasingly Take Steps Toward Public Country-by-Country Reporting of Tax Information
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Public disclosure of multinational corporations’ disaggregated profits and taxes is steadily progressing toward a global norm as investors, businesses, and policymakers have increasingly taken steps toward transparency , according to a new study published Tuesday by the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency (FACT) Coalition.
The FACT Coalition is a non-partisan alliance of more than 100 state, national, and international organizations .. https://thefactcoalition.org/about/coalition-members-and-supporters/ .. working toward a fair tax system that addresses the challenges of a global economy and promoting policies to combat the harmful impacts of corrupt financial practices.
“The rapid shift from complete secrecy to increasing transparency has been remarkable,” said Gary Kalman .. https://thefactcoalition.org/about/staff/gary-kalman, executive director of the FACT Coalition. “Before the financial crisis, no one was seriously talking about disaggregated corporate tax reporting. Fast forward a decade, and 77 countries now require multinationals to file country-by-country reports privately to tax authorities; oil, gas, and mining companies in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere must disclose the information publicly; large banks in Europe also have public disclosure requirements; and the largest sustainable investment standards-setting body has proposed new tax transparency requirements that include public country-by-country reporting.”
The report notes the broad and growing array of voices supporting increased disclosure. Major investors, chief executive officers of multinational firms, standard-setting bodies, and legislators increasingly support and encourage tax transparency measures like public country-by-country reporting.
“The evidence suggests we are quickly reaching a turning point,” said Christian Freymeyer, researcher and author of the report. “Investors see the value, policymakers see the benefits, and businesses see the inevitability of greater transparency. It’s only a matter of time before tax transparency is accepted and expected of financial disclosure.”
“When representatives from the accounting, investment and tax justice sectors all agree, you know you are headed toward real reform,” added Mr. Kalman.
Specific Policy Recommendations
To better inform investors, the report calls on the U.S. Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Financial Accounting Standards Board to specifically require multinational corporations to publicly disclose, on an annual, country-by-country basis:
* Number of entities;
* Names of principle entities;
* Primary activities of entities;
* Number of employees;
* Total revenues broken out by third-party sales and intra-group transactions of the tax
jurisdiction and other tax jurisdictions;
* Profit/loss before tax;
* Tangible assets other than cash and cash equivalents;
* Corporate tax paid on a cash basis;
* Corporate tax accrued on profit/loss;
* Reasons for any difference between corporate tax accrued on profit/loss and:
>>> the tax due if the statutory tax rate is applied to profit/loss, and
>>> the tax due if the statutory tax rate is applied to profit/loss before tax; and
* Significant tax incentives.
In addition to public country-by-country reporting, the report recommends a number of additional tax-related disclosures (see pages 25–26), which would be useful to shareholders.
###
Notes to Editors:
Click here to read an online version of this press release on our website. Click here to read more about the report. Click here to download a PDF of the report.
Journalist Contact:
Clark Gascoigne Deputy Director, The FACT Coalition +1 202 810-1334 cgascoigne@thefactcoalition.org
"An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies"
The president endorsed a bipartisan budget deal without any of the spending restraints previously demanded by Republicans.
By JOHN BRESNAHAN and BURGESS EVERETT
07/22/2019 07:32 PM EDT
Updated 07/22/2019 08:26 PM EDT
[...]
In fact, Trump is approaching the level of red ink from President Barack Obama’s first term, when Obama racked up trillion-dollar deficits four years in a row. Trump is on pace to do the same, starting with this year's yawning deficit of more than $1 trillion, according to budget estimates.
But there are huge differences: Trump has a growing economy with historically low unemployment and a soaring stock market, while Obama was battling a brutal downturn in the economy during the worst recession in 80 years, making it much harder to curb federal spending.
Dems Are Better for the Economy. Why Won’t They Say So?
‘We’ve been better for the economy over the last 60 years, and here are the numbers that prove it’ sure does seem like a pretty good campaign line.
Michael Tomasky Special Correspondent Updated 08.03.18 11:56AM ET / Published 08.03.18 9:40AM ET
[...]
Now, the report quickly notes that this isn’t just because Democrats are smarter economic managers. The main reason they cite, in fact, is “oil shocks.” That is, the big, unexpected oil controversies, like the 1973 OPEC embargo, just so happen to have taken place under GOP presidents. So Republican presidents had bad luck.
Well, fine. At the same time, three points. First, that particular embargo was imposed in response to a Nixon administration policy: its support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Now, any American administration of either party would have done that. But the embargo was announced on Oct. 17. In response, two days later, Nixon authorized $2 billion in additional military aid to Israel. In other words, maybe that particular Republican administration made that particular oil shock worse than it might have been.
Second, while the Democratic advantage surely involves some luck, it can’t be all luck, over the course of 67 years (Blinder and Watson’s time frame). And even if it was, in political terms, so what? The numbers are the numbers. You think if they were reversed, the Republicans would have forgotten to mention that the economy has been in recession four times as often under Democratic administrations as under Republican ones? The truth, according Blinder and Watson, is that the economy has been in recession 28 percent of the time under GOP presidents and 7 percent of the time under Democrats.
And third, the story is even broader. What about job creation? Is that any closer? No. These numbers come to us from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, a widely respected and cited source on economic facts and figures.
"An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies "hookrider, White House Analysis Finds Tariffs Will Hurt Growth, as Officials Insist Otherwise""
Unemployment is low and growth is solid, but the president’s 2020 rivals are challenging the Trump economic record on several fronts.
Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Kamala Harris of California at the Democratic presidential primary debate on Wednesday in Detroit. Erin Schaff/The New York Times Jim TankersleyBen Casselman
By Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman
Aug. 1, 2019
It took more than 90 minutes for the moderators of the Democratic presidential primary debate on Wednesday night to turn to the economy, which polls show is a top issue on voters’ minds and is one of President Trump’s strengths as he seeks re-election.
The candidates wasted no time attacking him on it.
Over two nights of debates in Detroit, candidates assailed Mr. Trump’s record on trade, tax cuts and wage growth, accusing him of perpetuating economic inequality and a “rigged” system that favors the wealthy and powerful. It was a preview of the economic arguments that are likely only to grow as the 2020 race escalates.
“Donald Trump came in making a whole lot of promises to working people that he did not keep,” Senator Kamala Harris of California said. “He said he was going to help farmers. He said he was going to help autoworkers.”
Ms. Harris said that farmers were now staring down bankruptcy, that hundreds of thousands of autoworkers could soon be out of work and that the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, had just “admitted” that the central bank cut interest rates by a quarter point on Wednesday .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/economy/federal-reserve-interest-rate-cut.html?module=inline .. because of economic uncertainty created by Mr. Trump’s trade wars.
“Because of this so-called trade policy that this president has, that has been nothing more than the Trump trade tax that has resulted in American families spending as much as $1.4 billion more on everything from shampoo to washing machines,” Ms. Harris said, a reference to the tariffs Mr. Trump has imposed on foreign metals, washing machines and $250 billion worth of Chinese imports.
The attacks came amid the lowest unemployment rate in a half-century and a steady, though slowing, pace of economic growth. Polls show voters give Mr. Trump higher marks on the economy than almost any other issue. The president proclaims the economy to be stronger than at any point in American history, while also clamoring for the Fed to advance it further by cutting interest rates even more than it did this week.
Economists widely see that rate cut as an effort to sustain the economic expansion that began more than a decade ago and now faces challenges from a global manufacturing slowdown and Mr. Trump’s trade fights.
In that economic mix, Democrats see opportunity. Here are some of their likely economic attacks on the president.
IMAGE - Growth is slowing.
This is now the longest economic expansion in American history. But while it has been durable, it has not been particularly strong, especially in terms of delivering big wage gains. Now it is again downshifting, suggesting the economy may have peaked.
The gross domestic product grew 2.5 percent last year — below Mr. Trump’s 3 percent target — despite a jolt of energy from the Republican tax cuts and increased government spending. Now that boost is fading. This spring, the G.D.P. grew at a 2.1 percent rate .. https://tinyurl.com/y5g64y7z , and forecasters expect about the same from the current quarter. Job growth has also cooled, and some common recession signals are flashing warning signs .. https://tinyurl.com/y5qumfwn .
The slowdown is particularly acute in manufacturing, a potential vulnerability for Mr. Trump given his frequent promises to bring back factory jobs. Manufacturing did experience a rebound early in Mr. Trump’s term, but it has since lost momentum .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/business/economy-manufacturing-jobs-trump.html?module=inline .. under the weight of tariffs, trade tensions and slowing global demand.
After averaging close to 20,000 jobs per month during Mr. Trump’s first two years in office, manufacturing job growth has fallen below 8,000 jobs per month so far this year. Factory output has fallen, and other measures of the industry show it either barely growing or contracting outright. The fallout has hit politically important places in the Midwest particularly hard. General Motors this year idled its plant in Lordstown, Ohio .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/business/gm-lordstown-trump.html?module=inline , a symbolically important move that drew Mr. Trump’s ire when it was announced.
Several Democratic presidential candidates accused Mr. Trump of breaking his promise to factory workers. “Donald Trump is malpractice personified — we’ve got to point that out,” John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, said Tuesday night. “Where’s the small manufacturing jobs that are supposed to come back?”
Candidates also pressed the case that growth was not lifting American workers nearly as much as it was helping the rich. “The major issue that we don’t talk about in Congress, you don’t talk about in the media,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Tuesday, “is the massive level of income and wealth inequality in America.”
IMAGE - Tax cuts aren’t delivering as promised.
Republicans promised that Mr. Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax cut, which featured large reductions for corporations and other business owners, would supercharge business investment in the United States. And it did — but only briefly.
Nonresidential fixed investment grew at an annual rate of nearly 9 percent in the first quarter after the tax cuts were enacted, its highest rate since 2012. That growth trailed off in the second half of 2018 and slid further at the start of 2019. This spring, it turned negative — in part because investment in America is increasingly linked .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/business/trump-economy-election.html?module=inline .. with the price of oil, and oil prices have fallen sharply from a peak last fall.
The tax cuts, which lowered individual income tax rates, delivered benefits to most Americans .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/business/economy/income-tax-cut.html?module=inline . Democratic candidates are not acknowledging those gains in the debates. Instead, they are focusing on high earners, companies and shareholders, who enjoyed the largest benefits from the cuts.
“Since 2001, we have cut $5 trillion worth of taxes,” Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said Wednesday. “Almost all of that has gone to the wealthiest people in America. We have made the income inequality worse, not better, through the policies of the federal government.”
Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota promised on Tuesday to pay for an infrastructure bill by raising capital gains rates and “doing something when it comes to that regressive tax bill that left everyone behind, but really made his Mar-a-Lago friends richer, as he promised.”
Trade wars are disrupting some industries.
The Fed chair handed Democrats a talking point at a news conference after the Fed’s rate cut .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/economy/federal-reserve-interest-rate-cut.html?module=inline .. on Wednesday, saying the move was “intended to ensure against downside risks from weak global growth and trade tensions” and noting that Mr. Trump’s trade fights “do seem to be having a significant effect on financial market conditions and the economy.”
Mr. Trump’s imposition of tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, washing machines, solar panels and products from China, along with threats to impose others on automobiles and even French wine, has fueled a spike in business uncertainty both domestically and abroad. The tariffs have also slightly raised prices: A recent study .. https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2019/05/new-china-tariffs-increase-costs-to-us-households.html .. from economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that the tariffs on Chinese goods cost the average household $419 last year. Higher duties that took effect this year could add hundreds more to that total.
Many Democrats, like former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, portrayed those tariffs as a tax on middle-class consumers.
“They’re a huge mistake,” Mr. O’Rourke said. “They constitute the largest tax increase on the American consumer, hitting the middle class and the working poor especially hard, and farmers in Iowa and across the country are bearing the brunt of the consequences.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts criticized Mr. Trump’s proudest trade accomplishment: a new agreement, still pending in Congress, with Canada and Mexico.
“Anyone who thinks that these trade deals are mostly about tariffs just doesn’t understand what’s going on,” she said Tuesday. “Look at the new NAFTA 2.0. What’s the central feature? It’s to help pharmaceutical companies get longer periods of exclusivity so they can charge Canadians, Americans and Mexicans more money and make more profits.”
IMAGE -Wage growth has stalled.
The low unemployment rate means that nearly everyone who wants a job can get one. But not all of those jobs are stable, well paying or full time. More than four million Americans, for example, are working part time but would prefer full-time work, a number that is significantly higher than economists would expect given the low level of joblessness. Some of the fastest recent job growth has been in low-paying sectors like warehousing and hospitality, while hiring has slowed in better-paying industries.
Wage growth, which has been anemic for much of the decade-long expansion, picked up last year .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/business/economy/wage-growth-economy.html?module=inline , topping 3 percent for the first time since the last recession. But pay gains have not made further progress in recent months. And even now, pay growth is not coming close to keeping up with the rising cost of housing, especially in expensive cities that have many of the best jobs.
“There are a lot of Americans that are hurting,” Julián Castro, the former housing secretary under President Barack Obama, said Wednesday night, citing high rates of homelessness and the General Motors layoffs as examples. “The idea that America is doing just fine is wrong.”
Democrats have also highlighted longer-run shifts that have made workers more vulnerable, such as the declining unionization rates, the increasing automation and the rise of “gig economy” jobs that lack traditional workplace protections.
“This is about a moment when the economy is changing before our eyes,” Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., said Tuesday evening. “There are people in the gig economy who go through more jobs in a week than my parents went through in their lifetime.”
One Democratic candidate, Andrew Yang, has proposed a more drastic solution to weak wage growth: Give every American adult $1,000 a month in cash.
“We need to be laser-focused on solving the real challenges of today, like the fact that the most common jobs in America may not exist in a decade, or that most Americans cannot pay their bills,” Mr. Yang said. He said his plan would be a “game changer for millions of American families.”
Jim Tankersley covers economic and tax policy. Over more than a decade covering politics and economics in Washington, he has written extensively about the stagnation of the American middle class and the decline of economic opportunity. @jimtankersley
Ben Casselman writes about economics, with a particular focus on stories involving data. He previously reported for FiveThirtyEight and The Wall Street Journal.
'Precursor to war': Ambassador Joe Hockey's stark economic warning to Donald Trump
An A- for the U.S. Economy, but Failing Grades for Trump’s Policies "hookrider, White House Analysis Finds Tariffs Will Hurt Growth, as Officials Insist Otherwise"
VIDEO 01:14
With the end of his term as ambassador approaching, Joe Hockey has taken aim at President Trump's economic strategy. Updated Updated 35 mins ago
Delivering the high-profile Cherry-Price Lecture at Missouri’s Westminster College, Mr Hockey said the United States risked damaging its enormous economic influence.
Mr Hockey specifically singled out Mr Trump’s strategy of economic isolationism, instead of stressing the importance of free trade with other counties.
“Now more than ever the United States should be leading the world in debate in favour of free and fair trade,” he said.
“The United States, of course, was leading the charge to deliver the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It walked away from its own leadership.”
Ambassador Joe Hockey said the United States had a lot to lose by continuing on the path of economic isolationism. AAP
Mr Hockey said the United States would not prosper by shutting itself off from the rest of the world.
“The United States is the most innovative nation on earth but, like every market leader, it will be beaten if it thinks it can do it all on its own," he said.
He also said Mr Trump’s approach to trade was not sustainable in the long term, and there were more than just economic benefits to be had.
“Through free trade, we also have deeper and more meaningful relationships with other countries. It brings nations together, brings differing cultures together," he said.
US President Donald Trump has notoriously spruiked an "America first" approach to global trade.
"History proves that economic isolationism is a precursor for war. Plentiful trade is a facilitator of peace.”
The United States had a lot more to gain by remaining committed to international trade, Mr Hockey added.
“You are still the world’s largest economy. Your dollar is the world’s reserve currency. Your capital markets are the engine room for global commerce.
Joe Hockey @JoeHockey
Please join me live from Westminster College in Fulton Missouri where Winston Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain “ speech in 1946. 6pm CT, 7pm Washington DC,10am Friday Sydney time. http://Www.Wcmo.edu 11 6:44 AM - Oct 25, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy
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