As this report makes clear, these barriers include not only tariffs that in general are much higher than America’s. They also include more formidable non-tariff barriers (like intellectual property theft and phony health and safety regulations) and high value-added taxes (VATs) that have no U.S. counterpart. And P.S.: Many of the worse transgressors are those U.S. security allies that free trade zealots insist don’t deserve the harsh trade treatment that Mr. Trump has in store (and, in the case of metals and automotive tariffs, has already put in place).

At the same time, the importance of the non-tariff barriers (NTBs) should explain why they’re going to be so difficult to incorporate rationally into the upcoming trade policy framework, and why the kind of universal baseline tariff (with a few important product and country exceptions) that the president had supported previously make more sense that the reciprocity-anchored approach he now seems to favor.

According to Council authors Allison J. Smith and Matthew P. Goldman, of sixteen big economies they examined, the United States has the lowest duties levels as measured by a gauge called the“total simple applied MFN (Most Favored Nation)” average. The next closest figures to the United States’ 3.3 percent are Japan’s (3.7 percent) and Canada’s (3.8 percent). The highest tariff levels according to this measure are India’s (17.5 percent), South Korea’s (13.4 percent) and Thailand’s (9.8 percent).

But looking more closely at this list should tell you in an instant that tariffs are only one form of trade curb American exporters need to deal with. In particular China, widely viewed as the world’s greatest trade outlaw, maintains an average total simple applied MFN levy of a middle-of-the-range 7.4 percent. And historically closed Japan registered the aforementioned lowly 3.7 percent.

So as I explained years ago in this article, it’s essential to take into account those foreign VATS, too. The leader of this pack is Italy, a supposedly loyal and faithful member of America’s leading security alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Its VAT is 22 percent – and that comes on top of its five percent average total simple applied MFN tariff. Next comes another NATO ally – Germany – with a 19 percent VAT. And that levy must be added to its own five percent average total simple applied MFN tariff.

Generally speaking, in order to sell to India’s huge (but of course still largely very poor) population, an 18 percent VAT gets added on to that 17 percent average total simple applied MFN tariff.

Then guess which countries come next? None other than the U.S. economy’s partners in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada-Trade Agreement (USMCA). Although this Trump-negotiated NAFTA update kept most trade within North America tariff-free, it neglected to deal with Mexico’s 16 percent VAT and Canada’s 15 percent version. Also interesting – the VATs of all these allies and friends are higher than the 13 percent average for China (although Beijing applies differing VAT rates to different products).

Something else these high-VAT U.S. allies and friends (and others) do: They rebate the VAT on exports – including to the United States. As a result of this export subsidy, domestic American producers trying to compete with them get it coming and going.

Finally come the wide variety of NTBs. The United States uses its own. But of the 14 major economies examined by the Council authors for this category, it’s only the ninth worst offender on the list. China’s Number One by both measures used, but those supposed U.S. BFFs Germany and Italy are right behind it, and Canada’s hardly a virgin in this respect, either.

And here’s where that special problem created by NTBs for a reciprocity-centered trade policy comes in. Their impact is fiendishly difficult to quantify – and therefore to offset precisely with American duties. Efforts have been made to calculate their extent. For example, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of the world’s wealthiest economies, has tried to keep track – and finds China an out-performer when it comes to “very large subsidies” (those that top 15 percent of the recipients’ revenue).

But as noted by scholars who have recently studied the OECD database, among other problems, it fails to “quantify other forms of government subsidies, such as differential treatment in relation to regulatory measures, export restrictions on upstream inputs, below-market energy inputs, and government land acquired or rented by firms at below-market prices.”

More important, its findings “rely heavily on governments providing sufficient public information and are affected by whether governments report individual transactions or aggregate programmes only. Consequently, they can give a misleading picture of the scope and scale of industrial subsidies, particularly in less transparent jurisdictions.”

Translation into plain English: The governments that provide these subsidies tend to do so through their very secretive bureaucracies. They’re simply not into giving competitor countries this valuable information. And if Washington can’t even identify many of these NTBs, how can it figure out the toll they’re taking on U.S.-based exporters?

One measure of the difficulty: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative yesterday came out with the latest of its annual reports on foreign trade barriers. In the Foreward, the authors state, “Wherever possible, this report presents estimates of the impact on U.S. exports, U.S. foreign direct investment, or U.S. electronic commerce of specific foreign trade barriers and other trade distorting practices.”

But at least according to the long (45-page) China chapter, it was never possible. Because despite China’s pervasive NTBs, and the exhaustive descriptions the report contains, no such estimates are presented.

That’s largely why I’ve argued for a trade policy based on a high universal tariff – if it’s stiff enough, it should capture and counteract the effects of both tariffs and NTBs. The two other big advantages of universality: It’s relatively simple to apply, and at a lofty enough level, will prevent extremely protectionist countries that would face especially high tariffs under a reciprocity-based regime from sending their products to the United States through economies that would face much lower tariffs.

In that article linked above, I also wrote that U.S. trade partners caught using these ploys and economies helping out them out would qualify for greater tariff punishment. So would countries that retaliate against the new U.S. Duties (as Mr. Trump has threatened) or that double down on NTB responses – like devaluing their currencies for reasons having nothing to do with market forces.

In addition, some exceptions could be made on a product- and/or country-specific basis (for example, the kinds of cutting-edge semiconductors from Taiwan that U.S. domestic producers simply don’t make yet). After all, it’s a complicated world, and cookie cutter policies are rarely the best. But “Keep It Simple, Stupid” is also often good advice, and the more skillfully the Trump administration strikes a balance between the two, the more effective its trade revamp will be.

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Here’s a claim – from Yale and Berkeley scholars – that typifies at least much of the conventional wisdom: “The evidence reveals that the Biden–Harris approach has been spectacularly successful [in “strengthening U.S. manufacturing”] while the Trump approach has been largely ineffectual.”

Yet thanks to this morning’s evidence from the U.S. Commerce Department, a big piece of “the evidence” for the Biden-Harris record is now available in its most important respect: manufacturing output.

Manufacturing employment is usually used as the key measure of industry’s health both by economists and politicians across the political spectrum, and for the latter, that’s perfectly understandable. After all, job holders vote. Journalists can also be forgiven for focusing on employment, since it provides for much more interesting story-telling than reporting dry statistics on something like production.

But economists should be stressing production for two main reasons. First, automation and other efficiency-enhancing improvements are undeniably real in manufacturing, so industry can thrive even as its payrolls shrink. Second, no manufacturing jobs can be created or sustained without adequate levels of production.

What came out today were Commerce Department data covering “GDP-by-industry,” and they include statistics for what economists call “real value-added.” That’s a gauge considered especially reliable because it eliminates a double-counting effect of the gross output figures (such as those published in the Federal Reserve’s monthly industrial production releases). That double-counting in turn results from the latter including in their totals the parts and components of a final product both when they’re manufactured separately and when they’re put together.

And how do the Biden and Trump records compare? During Trump 1.0, manufacturing real value-added rose by 5.10 percent, while on Biden’s watch, it was up 6.61 percent. That doesn’t look like the difference between a “spectacularly successful” and a “largely ineffectual” policy to me.

Trump’s numbers, moreover, were held down by the brief but deep pandemic-induced slump (although they rebounded to pre-covid levels after only a quarter’s worth of economic activity, too).

Biden defenders can note that his administration saw a major factory-building boom take place, due largely to the former president’s major spending on infrastructure, green manufacturing, and semiconductor production. So since these plants take time to complete, the full effects of these Bidenomics initiatives won’t be felt for years.

At the same time, no one can know how many of those facilities will be completed. Ditto for the final impact of Trump’s tariffs (which aim largely to bring both U.S.- and foreign-owned production back from abroad), and his proposed tax and regulatory cuts (which could be equally powerful magnets for offshored facilities, and major incentives for completely new factory building). Moreover, as would be admitted by all honest students of the economy, presidents have anything but total control over it. What a blessing it would be if our leading politicians and analysts alike could remember that.

I still doubt that any such slump is in the cards for the foreseeable future, and have pointed to solid recent official data on for total employment, job openings, and manufacturing output. It’s true that some unofficial reports have looked pretty recessionary – especially the “GDP Now” estimates put out by the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve, which have been projecting a sizable contraction in the economy for the first quarter of this year. “

In addition, the consulting firm of Challenger, Gray, & Christmas’ widely followed survey reported that U.S.-based employers announced 172,017 job cuts in February— “the highest monthly total for the month since 2009 when 186,350 job cuts were recorded” and “the highest monthly total since July 2020 when 262,649 cuts were announced….” Signs of important drops in the “foot traffic” component of consumer spending (the latter represents about 70 percent of the economy) have appeared in some private sector analyses. (See, e.g., here.) U.S. stock markets have fallen by several percentage points since their pre-election highs. And of course the President himself hasn’t exactly helped his own cause by declining to rule out a recession.

If like me, however, you believe the official figures are the ones to go on, then it’s clear that the sky isn’t falling. But you wouldn’t know it from such stories with chicken little headlines like “Trump’s Policies Have Shaken a Once-Solid Economic Outlook” and “Corporate America’s Euphoria Over Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ Is Giving Way to Distress” and “Storm clouds gather over US economy as Trump kicks off trade war” and “A recession may be coming. It’s not too late to prepare” , and in particular like “Trump’s tariff plan would raise inflation and cost U.S. jobs, economist Mark Zandi says” and “Trump’s tariff threats are hurting your job prospects” and “Trump’s plan for mass deportation could have a big effect on prices.” (I could go on.)

And given the solid hard data, it’s hard to dismiss the idea that this constant flood of doom-mongering has genuinely warped Americans’ views of the economy and its prospects.

Just consider the advance March results of the University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment poll. The readings, which triggered their own burst of news coverage suggesting that the economy is falling apart (see, e.g., here), showed that Americans’ slid by 11 percent on a monthly basis, with declines coming across the board. Indeed, the headline number fell to its lowest level since November, 2022. Further, inflation expectations jumped at their fastest pace since 1993.

And the partisan split was absolutely gobsmacking – and when it comes to Democrats, clearly in derangement territory. After all, their expectations plunged to a level lower than hit during the 2008 global financial crisis (which was followed by the Great Recession) and the covid pandemic (when no cure was on the horizon, and no one knew how infectious the disease would turn out).

These findings matter because although not all Americans are Democrats, lots are. And as John Carney of Breitbart.com has observed (in the article linked above), “If spending patterns follow sentiment trends, the economy could face weaker consumer demand in the months ahead—even if politics is a major driver of the decline.” If so, weaker growth and even economic shrinkage could follow. (BTW, the raw Michigan data had been posted on-line here, where Carney and I saw them, but for some reason, are no longer accessible.)

Luckily, the above isn’t the only outcome – or even close. As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell noted in his latest press conference, “the relationship between survey data and actual economic activity hasn’t been very tight, there have been plenty of times where people are saying very downbeat things about the economy and then going out and buying a new car.”

He added that although “we don’t know that that will be the case here. We will be watching very carefully for signs of weakness in the real data.” That sounds like better advice to take than the alarmism being peddled in too much of the media.

That section of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) states that any alien (a legal category that includes legal residents like Khalil, who holds a green card), is deportable if their “presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States….”

The statute doesn’t say that once the Secretary has so decided, the alien in question automatically gets the boot. The defendant is entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge. But to win his or her case, apparently all the Secretary needs to do is “personally determine” that the alien’s presence here “would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest”. Rubio has already stated publicly on March 12 his views that Khalil should be deported, so that ship has sailed.

But the deportation criteria of the INA – whose Constitutionality has never been challenged in court – also specify other relevant reasons to regard Khalil as legally deportable, and the evidence that he’s met some is impressive.

For example, despite claims by Khalil and many others (e.g., here) that he’s been targeted by the government for expressing unpopular (though Constitutionally protected) ideas, the law specifies that any alien is deportable if he or she “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization.”

Of course, the facts are all-important here, but Khalil’s not looking remotely good in this respect. Specifically, he served as a negotiator with Columbia University authorities on behalf of CUAD, (Columbia University Apartheid Divest), a coalition of student groups behind most of the protests that disrupted official activities at the school since Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

He’s denied belonging to CUAD. But if so, why would the group have chosen him as their representative in such crucial dealings?

In addition, according to the New York Post, “Videos posted on social media show Khalil standing among the nearly 200 masked students who took over Barnard’s Milstein Library on March 5 — during which pamphlets praising the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, were distributed….”

Hamas was designated by the U.S. government as a “foreign terrorist organization” in October, 1997.

Moreover, in November, 2023, The New York Times reported that one of the groups belonging to CUAD “promoted a ‘tool kit’ for activists that proclaimed ‘glory to our resistance.’”

What did the tool kit contain? According to The Times,

“the packet included a template for an illustrated advertisement that showed a thicket of protesters beneath a Palestinian flag.

“From above, a paraglider seemed to fly in — widely perceived as a deliberate echo of Hamas’s use of paragliders during its assault on Israel last month.

“’We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement,’ the tool kit said, ‘not in solidarity with this movement.’”

A year later – before Khalil’s arrest and when he presumably still was a member of CUAD, The Times reported that the coalition proclaimed “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” and continued

“The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: ‘One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,’ it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a ‘moral, military and political victory’ and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

‘The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,’ the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. ‘It is our duty to fight for our freedom!’”

The INA also defines as deportable any alien engaged in “criminal activity which endangers public safety.” And that’s more bad news for Khalil because, as Columbia’s student newspaper The Spectator reported, CUAD “sought to disrupt major campus events. During Columbia’s annual Tree Lighting celebration, dozens rallied, holding up signs declaring “Joy is Canceled.”

Last April, a group under CUAD’s umbrella led the illegal occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, a move endorsed by CUAD. And just last month, before Khalil’s March 8 arrest, no less than the World Socialist Website reported that the occupation of a building at Barnard College (part of Columbia) “was organized by” CUAD and included vandalism. And neither incident threatened public safety?

Since the latest pro-Palestinian protest wave broke out after October 7, 2023, even though I’m a strong Zionist, I’ve strongly believed that all residents of the United States (even if they’re illegal) have the right to express whatever views they wish on the Middle East conflicts or any other subjects as long as they fall within the bounds of Constitutionally protected speech. I’ve just as strongly believed that falling under this definition are even calls to abolish the State of Israel, along with outright antisemitic invective.

But endorsing or espousing the views of designated terrorist organizations clearly crosses the line. They’re crimes for U.S. citizens and equally so for green card holders. So even if the INA provision giving the Secretary of State such sweeping deportation authority over these legal immigrants suddenly disappeared, opposing his deportation would require acquitting him of involvement in all the aforementioned acts and affiliations. They’re so compelling that it looks like he’d need a Perry Mason-like lawyer, a thoroughly incompetent and/or biased immigration judge, or some combination of both, to avoid getting the boot.

U.S.-based manufacturing output adjusted for inflation climbed by 0.89 percent on month in February – its best such result since last February’s 1.42 percent – when the total economy was advancing at a robust real annual rate of 2.96 percent.

The increase was led by the automotive sector (vehicles and parts combined), which raised after-inflation production by 8.49 percent – its best such performance since last August’s scorching 14.84 percent. To be sure, the automotive numbers bounce around a lot. February’s surge, for example, followed a January monthly drop of 7.74 percent.

Even so, stripping out the volatile automotive industry, price-adjusted domestic manufacturing production increased sequentially in February by a perfectly acceptable 0.34 percent, an improvement completely within the range of monthly results over the last (non-recessionary) year.

Other than automotive, the February biggest manufacturing output winners in the broad categories used by the Fed were:

>the small wood products sector. It’s February month-on-month inflation-adjusted growth clocked in at 2.66 percent, its biggest spurt since last February’s 3.02 percent;

>the aerospace and miscellaneous transportation equipment industries, where February sequential output expanded by 2.13 percent. That was these companies’ fourth consecutive strong monthly increase;

>the electrical equipment, appliance, and component complex, which boosted production in real terms by 1.98 percent. That was the fastest pace since last September’s 2.40 percent; and

>the long-beleaguered textiles and products industries, whose inflation-adjusted output climbed by 0.93 percent. That monthly growth was its best since last September’s 1.28 percent.

February’s biggest manufacturing losers among the broadest Fed categories were:

>the huge food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing sectors, whose constant dollar production shrank by 0.70 percent – its worst such performance since last October’s 1.28 percent drop;

>petroleum and coal products companies, where real production sagged by 0.40 percent. That was its biggest falloff since last November’s 3.18 percent plunge;

>primary metals, where February after-inflation output was off by 0.33 percent on month. That decrease was the second straight of that magnitude, but came after a 2.50 percent December surge that was its fastest since last May’s 3.32 percent;

>and the catch-all “other manufacturing” grouping, where February price-adjusted production dipped by 0.08 percent sequentially – a typically weak reading for this catchall category over the last year.

Results for two other big manufacturing sectors:

>Machinery’s real production inched up 0.09 percent between January and February – another typical result for this varied, important group of companies over the last year; and

>The chemicals sector boosted its constant of dollar production by 0.98 percent sequentially in February, its biggest rise since the 1.62 percent recorded last October.

Regarding sectors prominent in the news lately, semiconductors and electronic components (the objects of major Biden administration subsidies that President Trump has opposed but so far left in place) registered 1.41 monthly growth in February. And that upswing followed a 4.94 percent advance in January. You’d have to go back to March, 2010 to find a percentage increase bigger (5.06) – and that was early during the recovery from the Great Recession, at a time when much lower absolute levels of output in the sector made big relative gains much easier to achieve.

In the newly re-tariffed metals sector, February real monthly output of iron and steel products was down 0.14 percent, after decreasing by 0.17 percent in January. But in December, it was soared by 5.09 percent – its best such performance since the 8.35 percent of September, 2020. And that came during the rapid economy-wide recovery from the deep but short-lived pandemic-induced downturn.

Finally, in the alumina and aluminum production and processing sectors, after-inflation production was up a strong 0.77 percent in February. But constant dollar output here has been especially volatile. For example, that February advance followed a January increase of 2.14 percent that was the biggest improvement since last August’s torrid 13.74 percent. Yet that increase came soon after a 12.79 percent nosedive in June.

Moreover, despite the good February results, America’s manufacturing output in inflation-adjusted terms remains 5.44 percent below its peak – hit more than 17 years ago, in December, 2007. A real manufacturing renaissance in this country, in other words, is still in early stages at best.

Headlined, “Trade War Retaliation Will Hit Trump Voters Hardest,” the article by Times trade correspondent Ana Swanson and graphics editor Lazaro Gamio aims to show, as indicated, that voters for the president could face a ton of buyers’ remorse because “Nearly 8 million Americans work in industries targeted by the [foreign counter-] levies and the majority are Trump voters….”

That’s a perfectly reasonable subject to examine, and that’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion to reach – even though we’re just scant weeks into Trump 2.0, and largely as a result, no one can possibly know exactly what industries will face foreign retaliation, whether or not all their products will be hit, what the retaliation level will be and by which countries, how long the counter-measures will last, and whether the president’s policies will produce lower foreign trade barriers that will eventually boost exports and sales.

In other words, virtually nothing is known about the domestic economic impact of the president’s policies. I always thought that the paramount purpose of journalism is presenting facts, not engaging in speculation (even when it’s labeled as such, if you read the article – very – carefully).

But The Times has the right to publish whatever it likes as long as the material represents Constitutionally-protected speech (and even the wildest speculation does).

What no news outfit should do, though, is ignore the need for transparency (although that’s legal, too). And this foundation of journalistic ethics – not to mention intellectual honesty – was completely ignored by The Times.

As the piece explains at the end, in fine digital print, its “analysis was based on an analytical technique used by the Brookings Institution to examine the first round of Chinese retaliatory tariffs.”

Well, that’s pretty transparent and clear, isn’t it? Actually, not even close. For although other sources of information are used and mentioned as well (including the U.S. Government’s Census Bureau), The Times said nothing about that Brookings Institution whose methodology anchored the whole exercise. And there’s lots to say == specifically, Brookings relies heavily for funding numerous U.S. And foreign interests that benefit tremendously from exporting to the American market, and therefore have a huge stake in opposing U.S. Tariffs. These interests even include foreign governments.

How do know this? Brookings at least is pretty transparent about its donors’ identities. Indeed, according to its latest annual report, Brookings receives funding from the following foreign governments and foreign government agencies:

The Korea Foundation

Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office of the United States

Embassy of Denmark in the United States

Japan Bank for International Cooperation

Korea Development Institute

UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy

Embassy of France to the United States

United Nations Foundation

Japan Air Self Defense Force

Japan Economic Foundation

Japan International Cooperation Agency

British Asian Trust

Japan Productivity Center

Korea International Trade Association

German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Municipality of The Hague

Brookings’ funders in the ranks of foreign multinational companies and related entities:

BHP Foundation

LEGO Foundation

Deutsche Bank AG

Kone Corporation

SK Inc.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

BP Plc

Mitsubishi Corporation

Nikkei Inc.

Youngone Corporation

Toyota Motor Corporation

Hitachi, Ltd.

NEC Corporation

Nomura Foundation

Sony Corporation of America

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

Total Energies SE

UBS AG

ITOCHU International Inc.

Mitsui Group

NTT Corporation

Sojitz Corporation of America

Sumitomo Corporation of the Americas

Tata Sons, Ltd.

Toshiba America, Inc.

Don’t forget the U.S.-owned corporations or their chiefs that have offshored manufacturing largely in order to sell back to the United States. They include at least the following.

Phil Knight (Nike founder)

John White (Taco)

Northrup Grumman

Qualcomm

Walton Family Foundation (WalMart)

Kimberly-Clark

Microsoft

Nvidia

IBM

National Electronics Manufacturers Association

Pfizer

The Greenbrier Companies

In addition, Brookings is bankrolled by numerous Wall Street and other Big Finance firms whose search for short-term profits has prompted so much American corporate offshoring. They include

HSBC

Bank of America

JPMorgan Chase

Morgan Stanley

BlackRock

Citadel

Citi

Jefferies

Tudor

Wells Fargo

Evercore Partners

Not all of these donors are giving megabucks. But lots are. And here’s where Brookings’ transparency starts fraying at the edges. For example, all we know about Phil “Nike” Knight’s contribution is that it was greater than $2 million. But there’s no info on how much greater. Ditto for the LEGO Foundation.

All we learn about HSBC is that it gave between $500,000 and $999,999. As for Bank of America, the Korea Foundation, the Swedish and Norwegian foreign ministries, Qualcomm, the Taiwan Economic and Cultural office, and the Walton Family Foundation is that they each provided between $250,000 and $499,999.

Further, quite a few big Brookings donors have remained anonymous. Specifically, there’s one each in the $1 million to $1,999,999 category and $500,000 to $999,999 group, and two in the $250,000 to $499,999 grouping. Maybe some are simply modest. But all, or even most of them?

And don't kid yourself: This money is extremely important to Brookings. That's the case when you realize that the think tank's entie 2024 budget was just north of $100 million. And it's even more the case when you realize that these contributions are even bigger shares of the two Brookings programs most diretly related to trade -- "Global Economy and Development" (a little over $20 million) and "Economic Studies" (just under $21.3 million).

All reporter Swanson and graphics editor Gamio needed to do to serve their readers adequately was to note the largely anti-tariff nature of Brookings’ funding base. Nor did they even need to do their own primary source research – especially when it comes to foreign government funding. They could have easily found this report, concentrating on Brookings, finding that

“Think tanks, which position themselves as “universities without students,” have power in government policy debates because they are seen as researchers independent of moneyed interests. But in the chase for funds, think tanks are pushing agendas important to corporate donors, at times blurring the line between researchers and lobbyists. And they are doing so while reaping the benefits of their tax-exempt status, sometimes without disclosing their connections to corporate interests.”

It was published just six years ago in The New York Times.

And yet, as shown by the official consumer price index (CPI) data released this morning, nothing of the kind took place. Quite the contrary – price increases for families and individuals actually slowed down over January’s rate.

Moreover, regarding products that should be panic-buying poster children, the same trend held.

In February, headline CPI was up month-to-month 0.22 percent – less than half the pace of January’s 0.47 percent pace. In fact, that was the weakest monthly consumer inflation result since last August’s 0.18 percent.

Core CPI – which strips out food (including eggs!) and energy prices because they’re supposedly volatile for reasons largely unrelated to the economy’s underlying vulnerability to inflation – rose by 0.23 percent. That was also lower than February’s 0.45 rate and one of the lower monthly core CPI reads over the last year.

For new cars, January prices rose month-to-month by 0.19 percent. In February, they were up just 0.10 percent.

For auto parts, January prices were up 0.79 percent. In February, they were down by 0.47 percent.

For televisions, in January, prices dropped by 2.10 percent. In February, they were down another 1.85 percent.

For major appliances, in January, they sank by 1.08 percent. In February, they increased by 1.39 percent.

For furniture and bedding, they dipped by 0.21 percent in January, and then by another 0.12 percent in February.

For smartphones, they dropped by 0.50 percent in January, then nosedived by 1.70 percent in February.

And for computers and parts, they advanced by 0.87 percent in January, and then by 0.70 percent in February.

The only sign of anything like panic-buying I can see is in major appliances.

But maybe there’s so little panic-buying and so few resulting price jumps because consumers are now scared stiff that a recession is coming soon? Or maybe we’re headed for 1970s-style stagflation, in which prices soar while economic growth flounders? As I reported yesterday, that’s anything but what the official data say so far.

In fact, the only discouraging government statistics that have come out recently were those reporting on inflation-adjusted wages. For the month of February, measured on a weekly basis, they inched up by a bare 0.06 percent on month, and by 0.12 percent for production and nonsupervisory (blue-collar) workers.

But even here, there’s a modest silver lining. In January, they fell by 0.34 percent and 0.39 percent, respectively.

No reasonable person could conclude that a month’s worth of data – or even two – are reliable signs that a widely predicted tariff-mageddon will never arrive during President Trump’s second term. But until it does, when you read or hear about such doomsaying, ask yourself: Are the sources so downbeat because they’re really calling economic balls and strikes as they see them? Or because for whatever reasons, they loathe either the idea of trade levies, or Mr. Trump, or both?

Take today’s JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Force Turnover) report from the Labor Department for January. This monthly survey measures, among other developments, how many employment vacancies businesses say they can fill, and how many workers they’re hiring. The latest results? Private sector job openings hit their second highest level (6.860 million) since last March. That’s still far below the peak (11.105 million in March, 2022). But that nearly three-year old number came at a much earlier stage in the current economic expansion, and it’s been falling steadily since then.

In addition, leaving aside the sudden, sharp pandemic-induced downturn of 2020, just before the last two recessions, the job openings rates (which adjust for the growth of the workforce) were 3.4 (in December, 2007) and 3.7 (in March, 2001). As of this morning, it was 4.8. (See this chart. These data only go back to 2000).

As for hirings in the private sector, January’s 5.016 million amounted to the second straight sequential increase – a short winning streak to be sure, but one that hasn’t happened since March through May of 2023. Again, that’s far below the recent peak of 6.417 million in November, 2021, but that result, too, came much earlier in the current recovery – and was still reflecting the unusually strong rebound from the unusually deep pandemic slump.

The latest official monthly jobs report (for February) didn’t look very recession-y, either. It showed the headline unemployment rate at 4.1 percent. Just before the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession, it was five percent. Just before the early 2000s downturn it was 4.3 percent. Just before the 1990 recession it was 5.5 percent. Before the 1981 recession, it was 7.2 percent. Before the 1980 recession it was 6.3 percent. In fact, you’d have to go back to the 1969 recession to find an immediate pre-slump unemployment rate lower (3.9 percent) than it is now. (See this chart.)

Another shot of economic pessimism was delivered March 6 by the Atlanta branch of the Federal Reserve. Every few days, the Atlanta Fed issues a “GDP Now” assessment of economic growth for the current quarter, and it’s taken seriously because it incorporates data other than (and timelier) than the figures put out by the federal government. And its edition five days ago claimed that at that point, the gross domestic product (GDP) was actually shrinking in inflation-adjusted terms at an annual rate of 2.4 percent.

Again, leaving aside the Covid slump of 2020, if that figure holds for the official data we’ll be seeing shortly, it would represent the worst quarter of economic performance since the first three months of 2009 as the Great Recession was ending (when inflation-adjusted GDP sank by 4.5 percent annualized).

But if you look closely at this latest “GDP Now” release, you see that it claims that “real personal consumption expenditures growth and real gross private domestic investment growth increased from 0.0 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively, to 0.4 percent and 4.8 percent” since the previous edition three days earlier (which also showed a slightly larger GDP drop). It’s rightly tough to make the case that the economy is dramatically worsening when personal spending and business investment (which make up the great majority of the GDP calculation) are speeding up.

So what’s the problem? According to the Atlanta Fed, it’s the monthly surge in the trade deficit recorded in January. And that’s completely weird for two reasons. First, as I reported last week, most of that increase stemmed from a boom in imports in a single category – finished metal shapes. Second, and weirdest of all, as virtually every mainstream economist will tell you, a worsening of the nation’s trade balance has no impact on growth. It’s simply an accounting fiction.

Now it’s true that the official means of calculating GDP and its changes views any deterioration in the trade balance (even if it amounts to a decrease in a surplus) as a drag on economic growth. It’s also true that the “GDP Now” forecast only assesses changes in the official GDP and whether its expanding or contracting.

But since the “GDP Now” series is meant to provide useful information to all observers of the economy, both inside and outside of government, does this mean that its authors really do believe in the growth-slowing effects of a worsening trade balance? And if they don’t, why don’t they include in their reports some reference to their skepticism? (For a detailed discussion of these issues, see this post of mine.)

In a welcome moment of humility, the late Paul Samuelson, a giant in the field of macroeconomics, once cracked that “Economists have predicted nine of the last five recessions.” So far, at least, it looks like they’re erring on the side of pessimism again.

Total American employment (called non-farm payrolls by the U.S. Labor Department, which tracks these figures) rose on month in February by 151,000. That was better than January’s 125,000 but less than half the rate of December’s 323,000. The revisions for January and December in all were down slightly – by 2,000.

The number of manufacturing workers was up by 10,000 month-to-month in February – an improvement on declines of 5,000 in January and 10,000 in December. The revisions brought the January results down from a 3,000 gain, and the December numbers up from a 12,000 loss.

The automotive sector (vehicles and parts) generated fully 89 percent of the February monthly jobs gains. Other significant winners were the big machinery sector (up 3,600), nonmetallic mineral products (up 2,000), and paper manufacturing (up 1,900).

The biggest losers were the broad computer and electronics manufacturing grouping – where headcount fell by 2,700. And 2,500 of these came in semiconductors and other electronic components – which has received such massive subsidies during the Biden administration. What’s left (not much) of the apparel industry lost 1,200 jobs, and plastics and rubber manufacturing companies shed 1,000 workers.

As regular readers know, I’ve been following job quality for many years, and payrolls in government at all levels advanced by just 11,000 sequentially. That was the public sector’s worst showing since its 11,000 decrease last April.

And in a likely sign of things to come due to the Trump administration’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency)-spurred shrinkage efforts to shrink, the federal workforce slumped by 10,000 sequentially in February. That was the first decline since the 2,000 dip last April.

Another measure of job quality is the share of total employment changes generated by what I call the Subsidized Private Sector (SPS) – industries like healthcare services in particular where payroll levels depend mainly on politicians’ decisions instead of market forces. Once again, the February jobs report can only justify the conclusion “Too soon to tell.”

Those results show that 48.34 percent of all the month’s employment gains came in this portion of the economy. That was a bit lower than January’s 52.80 percent, but much higher than December’s 25.70 percent and November’s 27.97 percent. Looking back longer, the February share is only fractionally below the January-to-January monthly average of 49.83 percent. Developments on this front, too, will bear heavily on the administration’s goal of (to quote Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent), “detoxing” the economy from its “addiction” to government spending.

Today’s ho hum jobs report is surely disappointing both the hardcore MAGA types who believed the President’s boasts that he’d strengthen the economy quickly, and the Never Trump-ers who expected doomsday to arrive just as promptly. I’m optimistic about the potential of the president’s agenda, but clearly we’ll all have to wait a while longer for major results of any kind to emerge — as everyone should have known all along.

Or does it?

In the first place, it’s still entirely possible that the surge of imports shown in today’s release from the Census Bureau is a one-off. But there’s much stronger evidence that the aforementioned tariff-mageddon-y predictions continue to be offbase. In particular, they’ve been concentrated lately in a single import category – which Census calls “finished metal shapes” – as opposed to being widespread.

First, the 30,000-foot figures that seem to prove that I’ve been wrong.

According to Census, January total imports jumped 10.13 percent on month, to $401.20 billion. Both the rate of increase and the absolute number are new all time highs. The previous monthly total import record was December’s $364.58 billion, and the fastest sequential increase was 10.63 percent, recorded back during the first-wave pandemic recovery of July, 2020 (10.63 percent).

When it comes to goods, the focus of the Trump tariffs and tariff threats, the absolute monthly level of $329.55 billion and the rate of increase (12.34 percent) were both new records, too. The previous highest monthly total also came in December ($293.56 billion) and the previous strongest increase also came in July, 2020 – 12 percent even.

Yet the makeup of the January imports surge doesn’t square with economy-wide panic-buying at all. Fully 63.84 percent of the sequential rise came in the industrial supplies super-category, and a whopping 88.67 percent of this increase – and 56.60 percent of the total – came in finished metal shapes.

OK, so today’s official U.S. monthly trade report (for January) finally seems to confirm that President Trump’s tariff and tariff threats are indeed setting off a burst of importing and associated panic-buying by businesses and consumers that will drive already excessive inflation higher. And it seems to undercut my deep skepticism that little or nothing of the kind is likely. (See, e.g., here.)

Or does it?

In the first place, it’s still entirely possible that the surge of imports shown in today’s release from the Census Bureau is a one-off. But there’s much stronger evidence that the aforementioned tariff-mageddon-y predictions continue to be offbase. In particular, they’ve been concentrated lately in a single import category – which Census calls “finished metal shapes” – as opposed to being widespread.

First, the 30,000-foot figures that seem to prove that I’ve been wrong.

According to Census, January total imports jumped 10.13 percent on month, to $401.20 billion. Both the rate of increase and the absolute number are new all time highs. The previous monthly total import record was December’s $364.58 billion, and the fastest sequential increase was 10.63 percent, recorded back during the first-wave pandemic recovery of July, 2020 (10.63 percent).

When it comes to goods, the focus of the Trump tariffs and tariff threats, the absolute monthly level of $329.55 billion and the rate of increase (12.34 percent) were both new records, too. The previous highest monthly total also came in December ($293.56 billion) and the previous strongest increase also came in July, 2020 – 12 percent even.

Yet the makeup of the January imports surge doesn’t square with economy-wide panic-buying at all. Fully 63.84 percent of the sequential rise came in the industrial supplies super-category, and a whopping 88.67 percent of this increase – and 56.60 percent of the total – came in finished metal shapes.

– Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 4, 2025

U.S. total fiscal deficit, 2024: 4.8% of GDP*

U.S. global trade balance, 2024: -$982 billion

China total government deficit, 2024: 7.2% of GDP**

China global trade balance, 2024: +$990 billion

* Includes federal deficit of $1.83 trillion minus state surpluses of $473 billion.

** Includes national deficit plus “special government bonds managed under the Government Funds Budget, which is dominated by local governments….”

(Sources: “The economic costs of Trump’s assault on the global order,” by Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 4, 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/2389b7f1-e38e-43d9-ba95-b39b5ea7d5e6 ; calculated from “What is the national deficit,” Fiscal data, National Deficit | U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data and “Summary: Fall 2024 Fiscal Survey of States,” National Association of State Budget Officers, December 18, 2024, Fall_2024_Fiscal_Survey_Summary.pdf and “Gross Domestic Product, 4th Quarter and Year 2024 (Second Estimate),” U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, February 27, 2024, Gross Domestic Product, 4th Quarter and Year 2024 (Second Estimate) | U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and “Monthly U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, December 2024, U.S. Bureau of the Census, February 5, 2024, Foreign Trade Press Release Page; “China’s official deficit is no longer a meaningful measure as its budget system evolves,” by Tianlei Huang, Peterson Institute for International Economics, March 19,, 2024, https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-official-deficit-no-longer-meaningful-measure-its-budget-system; and “China’s Trade Surplus Reaches a Record of Nearly $1 Trillion,” by Keith Bradsher, The New York Times, January 12, 2025,https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/business/china-trade-surplus.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1U4.gok-.AUR9n1FyhavX&smid=url-share)

Macron’s words are stunning because they represent a total reversal of Europe’s decades-long stance on the value of the nuclear deterrent the United States has provided. And they could make America much safer by greatly reducing the risk that Russian aggression would draw the nation into an all-out nuclear war.

Here’s what Macron specifically said the day after President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky locked horns verbally in the White House: “We have a shield, they [other European countries aside from the United Kingdom] don’t. And they can no longer depend on the American nuclear deterrent. We need a strategic dialogue with those who don’t have it, and that would make France stronger.” He further stated that “I am available to open this discussion…if it allows [us] to build a European force. There has always been a European dimension to France’s vital interests within its nuclear doctrine.”

If the Europeans do actually decide to use their own nuclear weapons to replace their reliance on America’s, the continent’s approach to its security would literally be turned on its head. And the United States would benefit immensely.

After all, the Europeans have always viewed that American nuclear shield as the ultimate, and ideal, guarantee of protection against Soviet (and now Russian) aggression. Ultimate because what could cow the Soviets more effectively than the likelihood that any attack they launched with their own vastly superior conventional forces would result in their own nuclear destruction? And ideal because reliance on the United States relieved the allies of the expensive burden of fielding comparable conventional forces of their own.

The big problem from the American standpoint, however, was that a combination of this “extended” (beyond the U.S. homeland) nuclear deterrence and significant U.S. conventional forces on the continent (many of them guarding the likeliest Soviet invasion routes) was a formula for denying American presidents any real choice of avoiding all-out war with the Soviets if the worst came to pass.

The reason? Although the U.S. troop contingents wouldn’t be big enough to thwart an assault by themselves (or in tandem with whatever units the allies mustered), they’d be plenty big enough to take major casualties, and force American leaders to either use their nukes to save them, and possibly bring on Armageddon, or lose these soldiers and at the least take unbearable political heat. As strategists put it, they serve as a tripwire.

Of course, deterrence theory held that this very prospect would prevent the Soviets from attacking in the first place. And extended deterrence has worked so far. But failure just once would be nothing less than catastrophic for Americans.

And now, ostensibly because President Trump looks like he’ll abandon Europe’s defense, Macron is talking about steps that would obviate the continent’s need for any U.S. role in its defense at all – and the need for the United State to play such a role and incur its risks.

Great skepticism is still warranted. Decades of free-riding will be a tough habit to break, and the more so politically, since it’s so conveniently let the allies fund their generous welfare states so generously.

But it’s mind-blowing, to say the least, that such a prominent European voice (albeit one from France, which has never completely trusted that a U.S. leader would “trade New York for Paris,” as its President Charles de Gaulle famously told his American counterpart, John F. Kennedy, in 1961) is even mentioning this possibility. At the same time, not only do the French and British possess extremely capable nuclear arsenals. They can amply afford to build more, and this project is just as affordable for the rest of Europe.

And if Macron’s project does come to pass, the boost to American national security would be epochal. Washington could still maintain a nuclear commitment to Europe’s defense, but actually following through, crucially, and risking nuclear strikes on U.S. soil, would become a matter of choice, not necessity, because the need to station tripwire conventional forces in Europe would be gone.

Moreover, the United States would have the option to shift military resources to the IndoPacific region, to counter China’s threat to Taiwan – which is a genuine vital security interest because of the island’s matchless prowess in manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors. Although American influence over Europe will certainly diminish, thanks to the U.S. role as a big export market for the continent, it will hardly vanish entirely. And given that the payoff would be extricating the United States from potential suicide, that sounds like a heck of a bargain to me.

So although such transformation may be a remote possibility, Washington should applaud Macron-type thinking and do everything possible to make it a reality. In other words, just say “Oui” to France’s nuclear ambitions.

More specifically, either the United States or Ukraine or maybe both did a lousy job of prepping for the summit. I don’t know which was the case. But I do know that, since President Trump was absolutely right in telling his counterpart from Kyiv that “You don’t have the cards,” it was on Zelensky to make sure before coming to Washington that he was on the same page (or close enough) with Mr. Trump on ending the war – and particularly on what kinds of post-war security guarantees would be needed.

Both sides have publicly described this split in the same way. Instead of U.S. troops on the ground to make sure that Russia didn’t attack Ukraine at the first opportunity after some kind of peace agreement was reached, Mr. Trump offered a novel substitute: an economic cooperation agreement that would create an American presence in Ukraine big enough to secure lots of rare earth minerals and other important commodities for the United States, to spur Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction, and to inhibit Russian dictator Vladimir Putin from attacking again at the first opportunity.

In essence, rather than placing on the ground an American military tripwire force aimed at convincing Putin that a renewed assault on Ukraine would bloody U.S. units enough to practically ensure an American nuclear response and therefore World War III (Washington’s alliance strategy for decades), the president had proposed creating an American economic and business tripwire. In his words at a Cabinet meeting last Wednesday,

“It’s a great deal for Ukraine, too, because they get us over there. We’re going to be working over there. We’ll be on the land. And you know, that way it’s this sort of automatic security, because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”

He restated this argument at the start of his meeting yesterday with Zelensky, too:

“We look forward to getting in and digging, digging, digging, and working and getting some of the raw earth [sic], but it means we’re going to be inside and it’s a big commitment from the United States….” He later added, that in addition to the military forces other countries have said they’d provide (and, surprisingly, not ruling out deploying some American counterparts), “ You know, we have security in a different form. We’ll have workers there, digging, digging, digging, taking the raw earth….”

That’s exactly why I’m personally so unhappy with the idea. As I’ve repeatedly written, Ukraine has never been seen as a remotely vital interest by American leaders even during the scariest days of the Cold War. Therefore its security and independence have never been seen as remotely worth creating the risk of a nuclear attack on the U.S. Homeland. So the nature of the tripwire doesn’t matter to me. And as I’ve recently reported, Ukraine doesn’t seem to have much in the way of those rare earths for the United States to secure.

But even if I did back the idea, it was clear that before the two leaders met yesterday precisely in order to sign the agreement concerning rare earths and other minerals (like lithium, an essential material for most electric vehicle batteries), that there was no agreement between them on this subject in any respect.

As Zelensky told Fox News last night,

“President Trump shared [before yesterday’s public session] that I think that if we will be there in some production and etc in minerals that Putin will never come on these territories where we are. And I said to him, ‘Don’t trust Putin.’ Why? I said because it’s not…we respect and we believe in strongness of the United States. But I said to him, ‘We had more than twenty American companies, big companies, on the territory of Ukraine. And we had offices, even on temporarily occupied territories. For Putin, it doesn’t matter, if American or European company or Ukrainian. It doesn’t matter. He just came and occupied it. That’s what I said. I think this is great idea how to strengthen Ukraine, how to make business between two countries, how to make additional jobs for two countries. But it’s not, just this, will not save us.”

And after they went before the cameras, he reiterated, “These [economic] documents are not enough. Strong army is enough.” And commenting on the indications from various European governments that they would supply military contingents to help protect Ukraine after a ceasefire or a treaty, he emphasized that these units “need USA backstop.” (He made the same points in a post on X.com yesterday.)

Moreover, these pre-meeting differences were confirmed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview Friday with CNN: The Russians, he said, understand that

“this agreement that was supposed to be signed today was supposed to be an agreement that binds America economically to Ukraine, which to me, as I’ve explained it – and I think the president alluded to today – is a security guarantee in its own way, ’cause it’s now us, it’s our interests. That was all explained. That was all understood. And nonetheless, for the last ten days, every engagement we’ve had with the Ukrainians, there’s been complications in getting that point across, including the public statements that President Zelensky has made.”

The Friday clash, however, can only be evidence that the point wasn’t gotten across. And for ten days. That’s some failure to communicate. It doesn’t speak real well about the diplomatic skills of anyone in the Trump administration involved in those preliminary dealings. Ukraine, however, is the demandeur. It’s the one with vital interests on the line, not the United States. So its failure to recognize, or process, what it was hearing from Washington is just inexcusable.

And don’t forget the kicker: Rubio’s allegation that, after the ten days of talking past each other about the minerals deal, the Ukrainians “insisted on coming to DC.” What on earth was going on inside their heads? Certainly nothing that deserves the label “thought.”

As a result, relations between the two countries have gotten so bad that Rubio suggested that “maybe Zelensky doesn’t want a peace deal” and that the Ukrainian leader was even involved in “active, open, undermining of efforts to bring about peace….” Then he advised Zelensky to “apologize for wasting our time for a meeting that was going to end the way it did.”

That kind of mea culpa from Kyiv might begin a process of reconciliation. But if it’s not accompanied by a steep learning curve on how to win friends and influence people (apologies to Dale Carnegie here), President Trump words are likely to look awfully prophetic: “…you’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty….”

And put together, they make harder than ever to justify the still proliferating claims that the prospect of tariffs has ignited a burst of importing and panic-buying throughout the economy – which will supercharge inflation that’s still overly high.

That headline overall inflation measure (known as the Price Index for Personal Consumption Expenditures, or PCE) rose in January on a monthly basis by 0.33 percent. That’s up from 0.29 percent in December – but not that much higher. Moreover, it’s significantly lower than the 0.42 percent increase reported for January, 2024 – when no one observed any kind of tariff freakout. Moreover, year-on-year, headline PCE rose by 2.51 percent in January – lower than December’s 2.60 percent rate.

Core PCE, which strips out food and energy prices supposedly because they’re volatile for reasons unrelated to the economy’s overall inflation prone-ness, climbed by 0.28 percent on month in January. That’s definitely up from December’s read of 0.21 percent. But it’s much lower than the 0.50 percent increase of last January.

And on an annual basis, core PCE inflation in January advanced by 2.65 percent – a bit lower than December’s 2.68 percent results. None of these figures screams “panic buying.”

When it comes to the kind of big-ticket items with big shares of imports, motor vehicles and parts prices jumped 0.85 percent month-to-month in January, according to the PCE release – the fastest rate since April, 2023’s 1.05 percent. But year-on-year, January prices in these categories have actually dipped – by 0.10 percent. That’s strikingly different from December’s 1.75 percent increase. But it was a drop nonetheless.

For another big-ticket item that’s import-heavy – furnishings and durable household equipment – January PCE inflation inched up only 0.09 percent sequentially. These prices decreased on month by 0.90 percent – a big reversal in relative terms but hardly one on absolute terms.

And year-on-year, prices in these categories sank by 2.55 percent in January. That was faster even than December’s 2.18 percent fall-off. The January advance retail sales data for furniture and home furnishings (a category that’s overlapping but not identical) tell a similar story. They were off by 1.73 percent in January, the biggest monthly decline since last March’s 2.05 percent. Maybe there’s been panic selling?

Now check out the personal consumption spending data also put out today. For motor vehicles and parts, it was down fully 5.19 percent on month in January. That was the biggest swoon since June, 2021’s 5.52 percent.

Now it’s true that the January drop came after a healthy December monthly increase of 2.64 percent and a scorching 6.33 percent upswing in November. In addition, on an annual basis, these purchases were 6.63 percent higher in January and 7.42 percent higher in December. But why was there any kind of January monthly drop at all? Isn’t panic buying supposed to feed on itself, especially as some tariffs have already been imposed and President Trump keeps saying more are in the offing?

When it comes to furnishings and durable household equipment, January personal spending was down sequentially, too in January – by 1.42 percent. That decrease followed a December monthly increase, but one of just 0.85 percent.

Measured yearly, January furnishings and durable household equipment rose by 2.44 percent in Janary – a considerably slower pace than December’s 3.74 percent. Good luck finding tariff-induced panic buying in those figures as well.

Today’s advance goods trade figures for January did show a huge 11.90 percent monthly increase in overall imports. If it holds, it would be the fastest increase since the 11.96 percent recorded in July, 2020 – when the economy was recovering quickly from the pandemic-induced depression. Further, in the advance trade report, consumer goods purchases from abroad were 8.26 percent higher in January than in December. Yet the final December monthly trade report showed a decline of 8.47 percent. Meanwhile, automotive imports rose by just 2.30 percent month-to-month in January – after tumbling by 6.68 percent in December.

And in all more than fully 63.56 percent of the monthly goods imports in January came in industrial supplies, a grouping dominated by energy products. This industrial supplies increase came to 32.67 percent. Yet according to the PCE inflation report, the prices of energy goods and services advanced by 1.29 percent in January. Obviously there are lags between import price changes and consumer price changes, but that’s one heckuva disparity.

And here’s the kicker: The new report containing the PCE inflation figures also shows that the personal savings rate soared on month from 3.5 percent in December to 4.6 percent in January. That’s the highest level since last June’s 4.8 percent and the greatest sequential jump since the rise of 2.0 percent to 3.1 percent between June and July, 2023. So maybe we’re dealing with panic savings, rather than panic buying? Whatever the case, none of these figures can be remotely squared with the claim that consumers are snapping up and hoarding goods for fear that impending tariffs will drive their prices higher.

Bezos, the Amazon.com founder who also owns the Post has announced on X.com that on the opinion pages, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”

His reasoning: “There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”

Bezos added “I also believe these viewpoints [supporting “personal liberties and free markets”] are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.”

But his remarks still leave me scratching my head. First, though, let me get three points out of the way. One, Bezos owns the paper, so he has every right to do whatever he wants with it. That doesn’t mean that all – or any – decisions he makes regarding its fate will be wise decisions. But they’re indisputably his prerogative.

Two, there’s no question that among the once-Mainstream Media, staunch backing for free markets and personal liberties has fallen out of favor. Three, as I argued today on X.com, for decades the Post‘s opinion pages, regarding both its unsigned edits and its regular columnists, have “uniformly and slavishly [parroted] the Swamp/establishment/globalist line. (Actually, that’s a slight overstatement. Sometimes the paper as a whole and its pundit crew have deviated from that aforementioned ideology. But these deviations have been pretty rare.)

So I’m inclined to favor a thorough overhaul in this section of the Post, including booting most of the individual columnists, who have indeed become such instinctive defenders of a single perspective, and therefore so drearily predictable, that they’re no longer worth following for thinking readers (except for the sheer entertainment value they occasionally offer).

Having said that, though, I would much rather the Post (and all major newspapers) publish writers expressing a wide range of views. The unsigned editorials represent a publication’s or news site’s institutional positions, so no problem with these being consistent. But if the regular contributors are limited to those coming from a single vantage point, or group of vantage points, then the whole operation can easily become…drearily predictable and no longer worth following.

More important, I’m also a “marketplace of ideas” type (to use former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous phrase). That’s because I believe that major media serving as public squares in which many different views can vie for public support are essential bulwarks of democracy. And yes, the internet and new media have greatly (and on the whole positively) supercharged the numbers of these squares. But the more the merrier.

Big questions also arise from Bezos’ terms “free markets” and “personal liberties” – and especially the former. For example, will he only approve pundits who seek to get rid of all regulations? All taxes? All trade barriers? All national borders? Most of these? They’re certainly impediments to free markets. And what does a “free markets”-shaped foreign policy look like? Is it largely interventionist? Isolationist? Globalist? America First-y?

Overall, as indicated above, I’m so down on the Post‘s opinion pages (and especially most of its columnists) that I strongly suspect that any major changes will be a net positive. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure what to think. Bezos may not, either – hopefully a sign that he’s fairly open-minded and still thinking this process through.

Look at it this way. (All the figures in this post come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). The 1.65 percent annual increase in the total federal headcount that took place in 2024 was the second biggest since 2009’s 2.02 percent. Yet the nation’s population inched up by just 0.53 percent last year. Why the roughly three-to-one disparity? In principle, you could point to the increasingly dangerous international environment. Yet the Pentagon’s civilian workforce rose by only 0.59 percent.

Moreover, the 2024 annual growth in the federal workforce came on the heels of a 3.24 percent jump in 2023. That was the fastest such increase since the 3.28 percent in 1965. The U.S. population increase in 2023 (0.50 percent) was even slower than in 2024, and much slower than in 1965 (1.30 percent). Even stranger: Despite threatening situations in Ukraine and Taiwan, the Defense Department’s civilian workforce again was anything but the main reason. It was up just 1.30 percent in 2023. At least in 1965, when that payroll grew by 3.31 percent, the Cold War was in full swing and the Vietnam War military buildup was beginning.

In fact, the two-year increase in the numbers of federal workers from 2022 to 2024 (4.94 percent) was the fastest such increase since the 1964-66 stretch (13.46 percent). That’s important because over the decades, federal workforce headcounts have often oscillated annually. In the last two years, however, a very strong hiring year came right after historically strong hiring the year before.

It’s true that between 2022 and 2024, the Pentagon civilian workforce expanded at a 1.90 percent clip – nearly twice as fast as the U.S. population’s 1.04 percent. But such national security-related hiring still was much slower than total 4.94 percent federal hiring.

By contrast, the 13.46 percent surge in federal hiring between 1964 and 1966 was led by the 17.05 rise in Defense hiring. As for the rest of the federal headcount, the national population also grew by 2.43 percent – nearly 150 percent faster than in 2022-24.

It may or may not be unreasonable for Musk to want to know what every single federal employee has done on the job over the last week. But it’s unmistakably reasonable to want to know why there’s been a recent federal hiring surge the likes of which haven’t been seen literally in decades when the circumstances seem to have warranted nothing of the

I’m old enough to remember that January was the month when the Trump presidency began, so you’d think from the aforementioned articles that the panic-buying was particularly panicky. Instead, according to the latest Census Bureau report, retail sales actually fell sequentially in most key categories readily identifiable with goods likely to be tariffed.

For example, total advance retail sales dropped month-to-month by 1.15 percent – the biggest such decline since March, 2023’s 1.28 percent. It’s true that the latest fall off followed strong 0.82 percent rises in December, 0.67 percent in November, and 0.51 percent in October. So maybe even supposedly panic-stricken consumers needed a break last month?

But in September, when the election odds of avowedly anti-tariff Democrat Kamala Harris looked pretty good, these sales climbed by 0.91 percent. And until then, 2024 was an overall solid period for retail sales growth, with the figure advancing 3.15 percent cumulatively since January.

Of course, the retail sales total includes many consumer purchases that will be largely unaffected by tariffs – like restaurant meals. And yet, retail sales also sank for numerous categories presumably very prone to tariff increases, and therefore panic-buying.

The January monthly decrease for motor vehicle sales was 2.99 percent – the great such slump since last June’s 4.03 percent. And the January decline followed a much smaller 0.91 percent increase in December. That was a change completely in line with other monthly improvements in what was a somewhat volatile year for the vehicle industry.

Furniture (in a category that also includes home furnishings) is another big ticket item likely facing tariff hikes. But retail sales here fell 1.73 percent on month in January – the biggest drop since last March’s 2.05 percent. They’d been up nicely, too, during last fall’s presidential campaign, and surged by 1.94 percent in December. Again, however, in September, when Harris enthusiasm arguably peaked, they also increased – by a healthy 1.08 percent sequentially.

Finally, for electronics and appliance stores, sales also dipped month-to-month in January, by 0.70 percent. And in December, they’d inched up by just 0.14 percent. In October, when Harris’ momentum had begun to fade, electronics and appliance sales did jump – by 3.03 percent. But that increase came after a 2.87 percent monthly plunge in September, when her fortunes seemed brighter. Were consumers really following the polls that closely? Or do these figures just tend to bounce around a lot?

There is another possible explanation for all the January sales decreases described above: These transactions naturally tend to drop after the Christmas shopping season. But that notion is of course hard to square with the claims of panic-buying. In the above categories, January sales have gone up more than they’ve gone down lately – and often gone up considerably.

In retail sales overall, for example, the monthly changes for the previous few Januarys have been -0.66 percent in 2024, +3.74 percent in 2023, and +2.36 percent in 2022. (Go back beyond that, and Covid-related distortions start kicking in, so no sense bothering to present those data.)

For motor vehicles, they retreated sequentially by 1.22 percent in January, 2024, soared by 10.20 percent in 2023, and rose by 6.53 percent in 2022.

For furniture and home furnishing sales, the last few January changes were +2.01 percent in 2024, +12.70 percent I 2024, and +2.60 percent in 2022.

For electronics and appliance sales, the comparable changes were +4.75 percent, +13.33 percent, and +0.59 percent.

It’s entirely possible that the final January retail sales figures will revise all these results substantially. But unless they do, it’s clear that reports of tariff- and inflation-induced panic buying in America should be seen as speculation, not news. And they should at least be clearly described as such.

Weirder still, though, the stakes perceived by the president – privileged American access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare earth minerals – are anything but worth the dangers that a prolonged Ukraine-Russia conflict keeps presenting. In other words, if he continues down this track, the supposed master of the art of the deal in the White House would strap the nation with a lousy deal

Rare earths are such important ingredients for manufacturing so many electronics and other industrial products (including for the high tech weapons systems vital for victory on future battlefields), and current dependence on China for these substances is so high, that on paper, securing Ukraine’s supplies sure looks pretty crucial – and therefore certainly worth expending some resources and running some risks.

The trouble is that geologically speaking, rare earths aren’t really all that rare (although they’re very thinly spread). What are relatively rare are the mines that actually extract the ore, and facilities then turn the deposits therein into usable forms and turn them into the specific products used in all the above applications. It’s in those activities where the most troubling Chinese lead is found.

As for Ukraine, in most cases it has relatively modest deposits (at best) and no refining operations. In fact, 2024 figures from the U.S. Geological Service (USGS), don’t even mention the country as among the world’s top reserves locations. (Ukraine’s government claims are higher. But how reliable are they?) China’s the behemoth here, too, with 44 million metric tons (of a global total of 90 million). But estimated deposits are also impressive in Brazil (21 million), India (6.9 million), and Australia (5.7 million), among others. USGS estimates U.S. reserves at 1.9 million. (Within all these totals, data for individual rare earths can vary widely.)

As for the aforementioned downstream activities, USGS reports that China accounted for 69 percent of all the rare earths mined last year. The United States was in second place, but far behind, at just 45,000. And Ukraine? Not on the screen again. And further downstream, according to the consulting firm MarshMcLennan, as of 2022 Chinese facilities were responsible for 85 percent of the world’s rare earths processing capacity. I’ve yet to find a mention of any Ukrainian processing activity.

At least the possibility of controlling Ukrainian rare earths is a much saner rationale for “standing with Ukraine,” than such high falutin’ bilge as “maintaining the rules-based global order,” or “defending freedom worldwide versus the forces of global dictatorship, or even preventing Moscow from conquering all of Europe (sending Putin the unmistakable message, of course, that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a pushover). But as the famous twentieth century wit and literary figure once said of her native Oakland, California, “there is no there, there.” So the most America First-y policy toward Ukraine’s would follow Trump’s original instinct – however tragic the situation, it’s not a major U.S. concern.

The inflation-adjusted wage data leave out government employees (because their pay is determined largely by politicians’ decisions, not market forces). The following numbers will concern real weekly wages, which represent the best measure of what workers actually see in their paychecks.

For the entire private sector, between Mr. Biden’s first full month in office (February, 2021) through January, 2024, this pay dropped by 2.89 percent. For blue-collar private sector workers, the results were somewhat better. Their weekly wages dipped by only 0.94 percent.

For comparison’s sake, the private sector overall saw a 3.04 percent after-inflation weekly wage increase during the pre-pandemic period of Trump 1.0, and their blue-collar counterparts saw this pay improve by an even better 3.66 percent. (These wages rose even faster during the pandemic, but that’s because Covid generally led employers to shed their least experienced and lowest-paid workers, not because they suddenly became more generous or because business conditions got better.)

As for manufacturing, average real weekly pay sank by 2.43 percent on Mr. Biden’s watch, and for blue-collar workers in industry, was down 1.43 percent.

The comparable pre-pandemic Trump 1.0 figures? Not at all great, but at least positive. Price-adjusted manufacturing weekly wages inched up by 0.33 percent, and by 1.81 percent for the blue-collar industrial workforce. (The same illusory post-pandemic pay increase took place for both categories of manufacturing workers, too.)

P.S. For anyone still wondering why voters gave Mr. Biden such poor grades on the economy when so many of the chief indicators looked so sterling, please check out this insightful article from Politico. It provides a badly needed reality check.

The headline CPI read rose 0.47 percent sequentially – its biggest rise since August, 2023’s 0.50 percent. On an annual basis (which most students of the economy follow more closely because the longer timeframe smooths out random short-term fluctuations), the January CPI was up three percent. That was its greatest increase since last May’s 3.24 percent.

The core CPI – which strips out food and energy costs allegedly because they’re volatile for reasons unrelated to the economy’s fundamental inflation prone-ness – climbed 0.45 percent on month in January. That was its worst performance since April, 2023, when it advanced by the same figure. And the annual core CPI’s increase of 3.29 percent was its biggest upswing since last October, when it was fractionally greater.

Since today’s CPI data covered the month of January, and since Mr. Trump’s first tariff announcements came February 1, those decisions per se of course could not possibly have influenced living costs. But reports have abounded lately (e.g. here and here) that their perceived likelihood has pushed up prices by leading many Americans to step up their purchases of imports or for goods that compete with imports. That is, demand has been supercharged before any duties kick in.

This notion looks great on paper, but as I’ve documented here, at least through the end of last year (following a presidential campaign in which Mr. Trump made emphatically clear his determination to increase tariffs and/or impose completely new levies), the predicted import surges hadn’t begun. And the new CPI demonstrates that the anticipatory, inflation boosting panic buying hasn’t materialized, either.

In the first place, shelter costs accounted for 30 percent of the overall monthly rise in living costs. But the United States doesn’t import any rental apartments, and only a few prefabricated houses.

Everyone seems aware that egg prices have skyrocketed lately, and therefore some hoarding has naturally occurred. This surge in purchases affects many other foods as well, since eggs are key ingredients in so many products. The United States does import eggs, but they represent less than one percent of the nation’s total consumption. So blame avian flu, not tariffs or likely tariffs, for the recent and ongoing egg-mageddon.

Some other aspects of living costs that became much more expensive in January, but that aren’t imported at all or scarcely imported: newspapers and magazines (1.4 percent), books (three percent), lodging away from home – including motels and hotels (1.7 percent), car and truck rental (1.7 percent), motor vehicle insurance (two percent), parking services (6.4 percent), and tickets for sporting events (4.3 percent).

The Associated Press indicated this morning that consumer electronics dealers are locking in advance orders and receiving numerous calls from anxious customers “asking about price increases and when the tariffs are coming.” Oddly, though, according to the new CPI report, these consumers apparently aren’t buying much more of these items.

Prices for smartphones actually dropped sequentially for the second straight month. And although prices of computers, peripherals, and “smart home assistants” did go up by 0.9 percent on month in January, video and audio equipment prices (which are of course consumer electronics products, too) have also decreased for two straight months. And when it comes to one of the biggest ticket items in the consumer electronics category, TVs, their prices have also fallen in both December and January, and during the latter, sank by fully 2.1 percent.

President Trump has spoken often of juicing tariffs on imported vehicles, and they’re even bigger ticket items than TVs. But in January, new cars became only 0.2 percent more expensive than in December, and that was lower than December’s 0.3 percent monthly price increase.

Home appliances are other big ticket items, and in January, household laundry equipment became 1.6 percent more expensive than in December. They were famously tariffed during Trump 1.0 – so maybe consumers remember that and are stocking up?

If so, they apparently aren’t expecting new tariffs on other major household appliances. Their January prices fell 1.1 percent compared with December. So tariff-induced panic buying in one but not the other? I’m glad I don’t have to make that argument.

Even leaving out the quite possibly deflationary impact of other Trump policies, the relationship between tariffs and inflation is complicated at best, depending on the economy’s overall demand levels (a decisive determinant of all inflation), the availability of domestic substitutes for tariff-ed goods and services, the amount of tariff-ed input in the full range of business and consumer purchases, and numerous other factors and constantly moving parts. Here’s hoping consumers and economic analysts wait for some actual evidence on how these tariff and price interactions play out, and avoid rushing to judgment.