76 Items

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Energy Policies Can Be Both Geopolitical and Green

| Apr. 29, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has amplified the importance of national security objectives when Western nations formulate energy policy.  At the same time, they should not take their eye off the ball of reducing environmental damage and, in particular, slowing down greenhouse gas emissions.  Both goals, geopolitical and environmental, are urgent.  The national security and environmental objective should be evaluated together, rather than via separate “stove pipes.”

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

How China Compares Internationally in New GDP Figures

| May 31, 2020

The World Bank on May 19, as it does every six years, released the results of the most recent International Comparison Program (ICP), which measures price levels and GDPs across 176 countries.  The new results are striking.  It is surprising that they have received almost no attention so far, perhaps overshadowed by all things coronavirus.

For the first time, the ICP shows China’s total real income as slightly larger than the US.  It reports that China’s GDP was $19,617 billion in 2017, in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, while the United States’ GDP stood at $19,519 billion.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

RMB Reaches 7.0; US Names China a Manipulator

| Aug. 12, 2019

The US-China trade war heated up in the first week of August.  On August 1, Donald Trump abruptly announced plans to impose a 10 % tariff on the remaining $300 billion of imports from China that he had not already hit with earlier tariffs.   The Chinese authorities then allowed their currency, the renminbi (RMB), to fall in value below the highly visible line of 7.0 RMB/$.  The US Administration promptly reacted on August 5 by naming China a “currency manipulator” — the first time any country had been given that designation in 25 years.   Pundits declared a currency war, while investors responded by immediately sending stock markets down.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

The Sugar Swamp

| June 26, 2017

As the United States, Mexico, and Canada prepare to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, as US President Donald Trump’s administration has demanded, much attention is being devoted to one item in particular: sugar. The negotiations will probably produce a sweet deal for the US sugar industry, highlighting the emptiness of Trump’s promises to “drain the swamp” of special-interest influence over policymaking.
Sugar producers’ political clout is nothing new, in the US or other industrialized countries. They have often received trade protection, in the form of import tariffs and quotas, to ensure that domestic sugar prices far exceed those in supplier countries like Australia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, and Mexico.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Outlook for 2017

| Jan. 03, 2017
Five journalist’s questions about the economic outlook in the New Year and my answers: In the first year of Trump’s presidency, what do you predict for the US economy in 2017?The US economy is currently at or near full employment, for the first time in 9 years.  So there is limited capacity for an acceleration of growth in the medium term.  Mr. Trump is fairly likely to follow through with his proposals for massive tax cuts and spending increases (which the economy needed 5 years ago, but were blocked by Republicans).

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

What Will the Trump Presidency Look Like?

| Nov. 12, 2016
We unexpectedly find ourselves in uncharted territory, in so many ways. The United States has never before had a president with no political or military experience. And Donald Trump is especially unpredictable: he has so often said things that conflict with other things he has said. So it is hard to know what he will do.But a possible precedent for what the Trump presidency may look like sits in plain sight: the George W. Bush presidency. To be fair, the Bush family clearly did not support Trump’s campaign.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Economists Sign Letter Opposing Trump

| Nov. 02, 2016
370 of us economists have signed a new letter opposing Donald Trump:  Economists Lay Out List of Reasons to Vote Against Trump.   Here is the text of the letter, which the Wall Street Journal has reported on .The WSJ earlier surveyed all previous members of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, spanning eight presidential administrations, Republican and Democrat.  Not a single one supported Trump, including the Republicans!Also 19 Nobel Laureates have signed a letter endorsing Hillary Clinton.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

The Gold Standard and Trump

| Oct. 31, 2016
My preceding post, “The Fed and Inequality,” observed that populists have historically favored easy money and low interest rates.  I mentioned William Jennings Bryan’s campaigns for the presidency in the 1890s as well as the supply-siders in the early 1980s who blamed the failure of Reaganomics to produce sufficient growth on Paul Volcker’s efforts to fight inflation with tight monetary policy.An interesting dimension concerns gold.  Bryan’s proposed reform for allowing easy money was to take the US off of the gold standard, most famously in his 1896 “cross of gold” speech.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

The Fed and Inequality

| Oct. 28, 2016
Populist politicians, among others, have claimed in recent years that monetary policy is too easy and that it is hurting ordinary workers.   But raising interest rates is not the way to address income inequality.It is a strange claim for anyone to make, but especially for populists.  Low interest rates are good for debtors, of course, and bad for creditors. Throughout most of US history, populists have supported easy monetary policy and low interest rates, to help the little guy, against bankers, who had hard hearts and believed in hard money.