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Trump administration trade policies have changed minds

Posted on August 12, 2026August 12, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Trump administration trade policies have changed minds

THE NUMBERS: Two polls, a decade apart –

July 2026, The Argument: “[Do you] support or oppose free trade agreements with other countries?”

	Support	Oppose	Unsure
All respondents	71%	16%	13%
Self-identified Democrats	81%	7%	12%

June 2015, Pew Research Center: “Would the Trans-Pacific Partnership be a good thing or a bad thing for our country?

	Support	Oppose	Unsure
All respondents	49%	29%	21%
Self-identified Democrats	51%	26%	22%

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Surveying trade findings in The Argument’s most recent poll, Center for New Liberalism co-founder Jeremiah Johnson finds a sea-change:

“[T]he political momentum that led to increased support for protectionism has stopped. Trump’s use of tariffs has been so lawless, so haphazardly implemented, and so offensive to so many of America’s traditional allies that the public has clearly turned against tariffs and back toward free trade.”

Some background on the last decade’s shifting tide to put The Argument’s survey in perspective –

Our early-2025 Trade Fact look at polling found about 60% of Americans disliking the Trump administration’s “IEEPA” tariff decrees on sight, while about 38% liked them. A second look last February, as the Supreme Court prepared to scrap that round of decrees, found about the same. The trade polls released this summer (though a bit fewer in number than last year’s) suggest a somewhat worse opinion. (Cross-tabs: Democrats overwhelmingly negative throughout; early Republican support weakened a bit; political independents moving from generally negative with a lot of ‘uncertains’” to very negative.) Two samples:

CBS	“Approve” of tariffs	“Disapprove” of tariffs
July 2026	36%	64%
April 2025	42%	58%

Economist	“Approve” of tariffs	“Disapprove” of tariffs
July 2026	29%	58%
April 2025	38%	54%

The Argument’s poll adds something new to these findings, since it asks not only about tariffs but about a hypothetical alternative — “Do [you] support or oppose free trade agreements with other countries?” — and finds a significant change.

The last time the U.S. government engaged in that sort of thing — trade liberalization, lower trade barriers — was about a decade ago. Rowing back across the waters to the polling of that era, opinion on trade agreements was generally positive but mixed. The Pew Center’s June 2015 survey of attitudes towards the Obama administration’s Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, for example, got this result:

For the U.S., TPP would be good/bad …	Good	Bad	Unsure/Don’t Know
Total	49%	29%	21%
Democrats	51%	26%	22%
Independents	50%	30%	19%
Republicans	43%	34%	23%

So among the Americans of 2015, opposition to TPP was a minority position nationally, especially among self-identified Democrats. But it wasn’t a tiny minority, and influential interest groups and NGOs magnified its concerns (or errors) within the political system.

The Americans of 2026, by contrast, have a decade’s experience with elevated tariffs and “postneoliberalism,” and 18 months’ experience with the Depression-style protectionism of Mr. Trump’s second-term tariff decrees. So they have enough to evaluate these policies’ real-world results, and weigh rising prices against the relatively modest Biden-era claims of supply-chain resilience and manufacturing growth through selected “industrial strategies,” and the Trump administration’s more recent, extravagantly hollow promises of “millions and millions” of assembly-line factory jobs, 6% GDP growth, and a “new golden age.” The experience, at least in The Argument’s poll, seems not only to have turned the public against tariffs but dried up opposition to Obama-style trade liberalization:

“I support/oppose new free trade agreements”	Support	Oppose	Unsure
All respondents	71%	16%	13%
Democrats	81%	7%	12%
Independents	66%	12%	22%
Republicans	65%	20%	15%

One obvious qualifier on this: TPP was a real thing with lots of specific features to ponder. (And still is, having gone live in 2018 as the “Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement” for 11 Asia-Pacific countries, and added the United Kingdom in 2024.) The Argument’s question, by contrast, is about hypothetical future FTA possibilities without elaboration. So actual FTAs might elicit some more opposition than this polling shows.

But overall, real-world “lived experience” with tariffs and trade barriers, or more jargon-ishly “postneoliberalism” and “economic nationalism”, seems to have had a powerful effect on public opinion. To the extent there was a modest tide of anti-FTA feeling in the 2010s, it seems to have gone out, leaving a few tidepools but no significant opinion reservoirs. The 2015 plurality support for TPP, meanwhile, now looks close to consensus, with Democratic opposition to trade liberalization nearly evaporated and Republican opposition sharply diminished. And the public generally seems to want something very different from what it’s been getting these last few years.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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Manno for Workshift: The Rules Are Changing for Getting Entry-Level Jobs. But Individual Grit Won’t Fix A Structural Gap

Posted on August 12, 2026August 13, 2026 by Alex Terr

“If you can’t get a job today, it’s your fault,” writes Auren Hoffman, a prominent Silicon Valley investor.

He argues that the job market is fine. Unemployment sits near a 50-year low. Companies are hiring and spending more on talent than ever. What changed is what “qualified” means. The problem is young job-seekers haven’t adjusted.

The old credential signal, built on college brand and GPA, has collapsed. Employers want demonstrated competence, examples of something built, run, or reliably finished. If you’re still sending the same resume into the same void, Hoffman says, that’s on you.

He’s more right than critics want to admit. The credential signal is collapsing. Grade inflation is killing the transcript as a screening tool. AI is making knowledge access essentially free, so the college you attended no longer signals that you had access to learning. Only what you did with that knowledge matters.

Hoffman describes three archetypes of the newly hired: the builder, the operator, and the closer. They’re defined by self-directed action, not pedigree. That’s a real shift. Young people who ignore this do so at their peril.

Ritz for The Wall Street Journal: Geriatric Democrat Loses to a Moderate

Posted on August 12, 2026August 13, 2026 by Alex Terr

Democrats in Washington have vowed for years to expand Social Security, despite its fast-deteriorating finances.

Leading the charge in the House has been Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, who has spent most of the past decade as the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security. From this perch, he dictated the party’s agenda, championing a no-compromises vision of benefit increases paid for by large tax hikes.

His reign came to an end on Tuesday night, when the 78-year-old 14-term lawmaker was unseated in a primary by former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, 47, a moderate Mr. Larson and his allies derided as a puppet of billionaires who want to privatize Social Security.

Mr. Larson’s loss should spur Democrats to rethink the politics of Social Security. Most incumbents ousted in Democratic primaries this cycle have been felled by someone from the left. One major reason is that candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America have been willing to challenge a sclerotic Democratic establishment whose failures precipitated a cost-of-living crisis and paved the way for Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Mr. Bronin has shown that moderates can also harness the frustration with geriatric party leaders who can’t deliver.

Tracking a Tariff

Posted on August 11, 2026August 11, 2026 by Alex Terr

On the coast of Connecticut sits the port city of New Haven, sustaining 366 acres of waterfront land regularly engaged in international trade. President Trump’s tariffs spell devastating consequences for the port economy and the many New Haven businesses dependent on it. Mr. Trump’s trade policy has contributed to rising costs, a slowing job market, and supply-chain issues in the town along with communities all across the country. This paper will examine how tariffs are implemented, where they take effect, and who pays the price at the local level.

As of summer 2026, though the Trump administration’s IEEPA tariffs have been repealed by the courts and refunds by the CBP are reimbursing importers (without helping consumers), U.S. tariff rates remain far above normal. Nearly all countries have seen baseline rates of 10%, with higher tariff rates on key trading partners. Of the administration’s three remaining tariff authorities, his first invoked section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which expired by statute on July 24, 2026. His remaining authorities, sections 232 and 301 of the Trade Act, persist, though the newest “301” tariffs are already facing legal challenges. The 232 decrees impose tariffs on steel at 50%, aluminum 50%, copper 50%, automobiles 25% (EU-origin capped at 15% under a new trade deal), semiconductors 25%, lumber 10%; those under “Section 301” cover most remaining U.S. imports, at 12.5% duty on goods from 46 countries and 10% on another 14, plus additional penalties on Chinese, India, Brazilian, and Canadian goods. These tariffs will tax New Haven residents and average Americans alike.

A look at New Haven:

With an estimated population of ~140,000, New Haven is primarily a college town for Yale University, which employs 7,000 residents. But the city also functions as one of Connecticut’s three deepwater ports (Bridgeport, New London, and New Haven). Of the three, the Port of New Haven sees the most domestic and international commodity traffic in the state. The port consists of seven privately owned terminals, six of which are exclusively used for petroleum products. At 35ft of depth, the port can accommodate ships weighing between 20,000 and 40,000 deadweight tons. The maritime sector creates thousands of jobs in the New Haven metropolitan area, with hundreds of workers at the Terminals in longshore jobs and similar work, and many more indirectly through restaurants, repair shops, and other small enterprises reliant on port business. Additionally, because the port holds a Foreign Trade Zone designation, the local community is susceptible to the current administration’s trade policy.

The Port of New Haven hosts about 200 vessel calls a year — bulk carriers, general cargo vessels, oil tankers – with petroleum imports comprising 81% of all traffic at approximately $1.75 billion a year. These imports arrive as they usually do, with minimal tariffs – hoping to curb rising energy prices across the country, Mr. Trump exempted petroleum-related products from his tariffs. The port’s dry goods importers, bringing in over 600,000 tons in cargo annually that contribute to roughly $250 million across CT ports (largely industrial metals, wood, and consumer products), still incur duties. So the port’s customers are paying more for their metals and wood, and they aren’t alone.

Tariffs on dry-bulk goods and consumer imports hardly go unnoticed. Most obviously, more tariffs over time mean less cargo — thus, less business for the port and weakened job opportunities — and also more costs. On Grand Avenue, Vinnie’s Italia Importing owner Mike DiVirgilio has to pay an additional 15% on Italian pasta, sausage, wine, and sauce. He’s already raised prices on pasta from Rummo, Barilla, La Molisana, and Garofalo, passing costs to roughly 50 Southern Connecticut restaurant clients, including Adriana’s, Goodfellas, and Consiglio’s, and has observed customers cutting back on meat purchases as prices climb. In Ninth Square, Elm City Games raised the price of the German-made board game Horrified — also covered by the 15% tariff — from $20 to $28, an increase New Haven Rep. Rosa DeLauro cited alongside a LendingTree estimate that tariffs cost shoppers $132 more during the prior holiday season. In North Haven, the 10% tariffs on Canadian lumber and the 50% rates on steel and aluminum added an average of $10,900 to the price of a new home, according to T&M Homes president Greg Ugalde. A local realtor, meanwhile, said tariffs — spiking above 150% on Chinese consumer goods last year, and at 20% for Vietnamese or Malaysian substitutes — have doubled or tripled many appliance costs.

These individual price hikes sit inside a much larger cost shock moving through New Haven’s trade infrastructure, along with those of Connecticut and the rest of the country. Tariffs are a tax collected at the port of entry (e.g., seaport, airport, border crossing), usually as a percentage of cargo value. The importer of record—typically a U.S. company—pays Customs and Border Protection (CBP) directly. This payment is due within ten days of cargo being released on all shipments of $2,500 or more. Additionally, CBP requires a customs bond to ensure payment in case the importer defaults on their payment. The bond is sourced by a third-party surety company, which collects a premium annually. Although the bond is a small percentage of the duty owed, insurance payments create an additional worry for importers. Tariffs have increased these costs by as much as 200% to 500% and up to $450 million for large importers. This table is a helpful example of how tariffs not only raise costs but add financial risk:

Good	Tariff Rate	Annual Goods Value	Annual Tariff	Bond (10%)	Premium (~1% of bond)	Premium as % of Goods Value
Steel (Section 232)	50%	$12M	$6M	$600,000	~$6,000	~0.05%
Italian pasta (EU tariff)	15%	$12M	$1.8M	$180,000	~$1,800	~0.015%

Businesses relying on foreign imports have now faced several price hikes and are offered limited options. Many U.S. retailers receive invoices with explicit “duty recovery” line items from distributors, making the cost of Mr. Trump’s tariffs impossible to go unnoticed by sellers. Eventually, companies can no longer circumvent the costs, and they raise their prices. Over nearly 10 months, the time it took for the Supreme Court to strike down the Trump administration’s first of four distinct tariff efforts, consumers had already begun to bear the brunt of the cost. A study by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy found that 96% of all tariff costs are passed through to U.S. buyers. That is what shoppers and restaurant-goers on Grand Avenue are seeing.

The link between Mr. Trump’s trade regime and the sharp rise in New Haven’s costs is clear. After the signing ceremony at the Rose Garden, the handing off of the physical copy, and the tradition of giving out the signing pens as souvenirs, Mr. Trump’s Executive Order 14257 — the largest of the administration’s dozens of tariff decrees, termed “Liberation Day” — officially took effect on April 2, 2025. While the Supreme Court struck it down roughly a year later, the administration has tried to supplant it with similar levies, and the tariffs’ effects had already proliferated.

Overall, Connecticut’s cost of imported goods rose by at least $3.16 billion in the tariffs’ first year, a 14% increase over 2024. Statewide, manufacturers stomached roughly $600 million in exposure from Mr. Trump’s Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports alone, costs that flow directly through Gateway Terminal, the Port of New Haven’s only dry-bulk facility. Nationally, ferrous scrap exports — Connecticut’s largest single export commodity by weight, with much of it moving through New Haven — are on pace to fall 15% in 2025 to their lowest levels annually since 2004, even as domestic scrap prices run 15 to 20 percent above global rates. Storefronts and port terminals tell two different sides of the same story: New Haven has become just one of many municipalities across the country that have bled profusely due to a concerted effort by the Trump administration to sidestep the legislative process and abuse executive authority.

The decisions to raise costs, whether by the importer, distributor, or retailer, all operate as part of an unforgiving apparatus that distributes blame and obfuscates the simple economics of a tariff — a tax on foreign goods.

How do residents feel about all this? A UNH poll taken after Mr. Trump’s initial round of tariffs found that almost two-thirds of Connecticut residents believed tariffs would harm the economy, and a plurality believed they would be personally worse off in a year. Mr. Trump’s tariffs have and will continue to see diminishing popularity as prices rise, and more Americans will begin to point blame. New Haven residents are not unusual; hundreds of municipalities face rising costs due to unrelenting tariffs. GDP growth is expected to slow, and the posited benefits have yet to be seen at the scale promised by the Trump administration. New Haven’s experience is not the exception, but rather the expected result of the Trump administration’s tariff hikes.

Guenther and Ware for Real Clear Science: The Trump Administration’s Most Dangerous Attack on Science Yet

Posted on August 11, 2026 by Alex Terr

Donald Trump’s assault on the American scientific enterprise has been death by a thousand cuts. But the latest push from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) may just be the kill shot.

OMB proposed a rule to “improve government-wide policies and requirements related to the management of grants, cooperative agreements, and other forms of assistance.” This rule will impact funding to over 40 different federal agencies, ranging from NASA and HHS to the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities to the Peace Corps by – among other things – giving political appointees veto power over grant funding applications both when they are initially considered and once the grant period has commenced. The final rule is expected to be published any day now to tee it up to go into effect on October 1.

The rule’s stated goals are to enhance accountability, transparency, and oversight of federally funded scientific research, which sound innocuous. In reality, it does the opposite by pushing the grantmaking process behind closed doors and politicizing practically every element of American research — not to mention implementing requirements that go against the law in a host of different ways. Just to provide one example, as the American Association of Universities put it, “Congress has repeatedly directed federal agencies to fund university research in ways that explicitly require the kind of demographic-conscious program design the proposed rule would prohibit.”

To put the importance of the scientific enterprise in context, according to economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “government-funded [research and development] (R&D) accounts for roughly one quarter of all business sector productivity growth since World War II.” Concerns about this rule aren’t centered on protecting the Ivory Tower — they’re about the economy, competitiveness with China, and, as the Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee highlighted, Americans having access to groundbreaking medical treatments first.

Michigan Democrats Boost Republican Midterm Hopes

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (August 5, 2026) — Today, Will Marshall, President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement on Tuesday’s Michigan primary elections:

“Abdul El-Sayed’s narrower-than-expected victory in yesterday’s Michigan Democratic primary contest for U.S. Senate highlights the risks posed by left-wing ideologues to the party’s midterm election prospects. It likely will compound the party’s already difficult challenge of winning back the Senate this fall.

“At this writing, a complete demographic breakdown of the vote isn’t available. But a look at the electoral map suggests that El-Sayed — like other far-left and democratic socialist candidates that recently won primaries in blue cities — did much better among white college graduates than working-class voters, white and non-white.

“For example, Rep. Haley Stevens, a solidly liberal Democrat with strong union backing, carried six counties that combine large working-class and Black populations. She carried Oakland County (51.9%), Macomb County (51.8%), and Saginaw County (56.5%). She also won Black precincts in Detroit and other parts of the state. El Sayed’s poor showing among these rank-and-file Democrats could make him a weaker general election opponent against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers.

“In recent elections, Michigan Democrats have held a U.S. Senate seat and the governorship by building a broad coalition of persuadable voters, not just ‘energized’ young activists. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won two terms running as a tough-minded pragmatist. Sen. Elissa Slotkin held her Senate seat in 2024 by a third of a point, in a state where enough voters split their tickets between Trump and Slotkin to decide the race. That’s the model Michigan Democrats have used to stave off Trumpism in a critical battleground state.

“It’s possible that Trump’s cratering popularity and the unraveling of his 2024 coalition will generate a Blue Wave in November big enough to propel even left-wing candidates with intense but narrow support into office.

“But the socialist surge is more likely to prove a burden than a benefit to Democrats trying to win working-class voters in competitive races. It’s another reason why Democrats should move to ranked choice voting, which requires primary candidates to amass a majority to win the party’s nomination.

“Requiring a majority to win might also have changed the outcome of the two House primaries in Michigan, which were also won by democratic socialists. William Lawrence, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, which cooked up the now moribund Green New Deal, defeated more moderate Democrats for their party’s nomination for the 7th Congressional District, a swing district that includes Lansing. He faces incumbent Tom Barrett.

“In the 13th District, Rep. Shri Thanedar, another Democratic incumbent to face a serious primary challenge from the left, lost to Donavan McKinney, a democratic socialist.

“If Democrats want to win, they should stop allowing ideologically polarizing candidates to win the party’s nomination on the basis of narrow pluralities.”

Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us at @ppi.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

American young people are exceptionally unhappy

Posted on August 5, 2026August 5, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: American young people are exceptionally unhappy.

THE NUMBERS: Americans’ “happiness” ranking, relative to 146 other countries, 2023-2025.*

All Americans 23rd
Americans under 30 60th

* World Happiness Survey 2026

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Summary paragraph from the Kennedy School’s grim 2026 poll of Americans under 30:

“For many 18- to 29-year-olds, the cost of living — especially inflation and housing — defines what they see as a true crisis, while trust in government, elections, and national leadership remains strikingly low. … A pervasive sense of threat is defining everyday life for young Americans, and they are increasingly losing faith. Young people have consistently felt unheard; now they feel unheard and actively in crisis.”

K-School pollsters aren’t alone. UN and Oxford U. researchers tasked with assessing “happiness” find the same thing. Their “World Happiness Survey 2026” (whose figures cover the years 2023-2025) ranks Americans “23rd most happy” among the 147 countries in the survey. At face value, a boring and mediocre ranking — but it gains some texture when the researchers separate their responses by age: young Americans placed a dismal 60th in the world. The 2024 WHR, though slightly dated, provides more detail. Boomers seem very contented in their retirement (or in some cases near-retirement), while their “Gen Z” children and “Gen Alpha” grandchildren are unhappy. The intervening “millennials” and “Gen-Xers” are in between:

“Boomers,” over 65 10th
“Gen-X,” 45-59 17th
Overall 23rd
“Millennials,” 30-40 42nd
“Gen-Z,” under 30 62nd

America’s unhappy youth aren’t wholly unique. Similar generation gaps, borrowing a boomer term, show up in most high-income countries, especially though not exclusively English-speaking ones. Canadians, for example, rank 25th for happiness; younger Canadians, though, are a dismal 71st. Much the same in the UK, where Brits in general place 29th, but young Brits only 64th; and while New Zealanders are a cheerful 11th in general, young Kiwis place 54th. Elsewhere, the French rankings are 35th and 65th, Swiss 10th and 44th, and Singaporeans 36th and 69th. So to some extent, youth discontent seems widespread. Three possible explanations, none mutually exclusive:

Technology? The WHR researchers, noting a general decline in young people’s happiness since their survey’s early years, assign a lot of blame to intensive social media use. This view is widely shared, but can’t be the whole story since young people seem happier in some tech-heavy locales. In very-online Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, WHR’s happiness ratings are about the same for young and old. And in Central and Eastern Europe, young people are usually happier than their elders and peers. Croatians rank 70th for happiness overall, but 11th in the 25-and-younger tier, and similar “relative happiness” among young people turns up in Montenegro, Albania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine.

Demographics and aging costs? Another explanation, focused on wealthy countries, lies in demographics. Since 2000, the count of Americans 65 and up has nearly doubled from 35 million to 66 million. The under-30 count, meanwhile, is up from 119 million to 126 million — only 7 million in total. Graying is faster still in Europe and Asia. As countries age, well-intentioned and objectively necessary public policies become increasingly powerful engines for shifting income from young to old: Social Security, government pensions, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, etc., must all serve a growing army of older people, while relying on relatively static younger brigades for the finance. This isn’t a problem with an obvious solution — if governments don’t assume health and pension costs, families will have to pick up the cost instead — but it nonetheless places steadily rising financial pressure on the young.

U.S. choices: Specific U.S. peculiarities and decisions amplify all these problems. At local levels, high housing costs and organized NIMBY-ism make it harder for young people to build wealth. At the national level, rapid federal government debt buildup means young people can expect relatively more taxation and fewer services in the future. More immediately, the post-2016 and post-2024 tariff increases, as policies designed to raise goods prices, gnaw away more of a young person’s income than anyone else’s. (Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, young Gen Z-ers spend about 28.8% of their income on physical goods, prime earning-age Gen-X 19.8%, and retirement-age boomers 26.2%.) A blunt comment from newly formed activist group Students for Abundance draws on housing, transit, education, and power costs to conclude that policy seems designed “to make life harder for those starting out and easier for those already at the top.”

In sum, as the fall’s election season approaches, America’s young people aren’t happy. And they aren’t wrong to see a system tilting against them. The K-School poll’s political findings — young Americans sharply opposed to Trumpism, but with little faith that other politicians are likely to make their problems and concerns a priority — are a challenge the political world has yet to answer.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

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New Playbook Gives Governors and Mayors a Blueprint for Winning the $1.8 Trillion Space Race with China

Posted on August 5, 2026 by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (August 5, 2026) — As the global space economy races toward a projected $1.8 trillion by 2035, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) argues that governors and mayors will play a critical role in American space leadership. In “Leading in the Space Economy: A Strategic Playbook for Governors and Mayors,” PPI Head of Space Policy Mary Guenther lays out the tactics state and local governments are using to attract and retain space companies, and warns leaders away from a subsidy race to the bottom.

Last year, the space economy was worth $626.4 billion globally, with the United States producing roughly half of that value as of 2023. Jobs in the sector pay above-average wages for workers at every education level, from high school graduates to PhDs, a combination that has touched off intense competition among states and localities.

“Governors and mayors have more leverage over the space economy than most of them realize,” said Guenther. “State and local dollars can’t replace federal space investment, but they can multiply it. The states that are best positioned right now are the ones with a holistic approach that amplify their local strengths by marrying various kinds of incentives, political attention, partnership with federal stakeholders, and initiatives building a workforce those companies can hire.”

Drawing on interviews with space industry representatives and startup founders, the report identifies four tactics that appear repeatedly in successful state and local strategies:

Financial support, either in the form of tax breaks, grant funding, or non-liquid forms of support like incubator space
Access to and attention from state and local political leaders
Proximity to federal facilities that purchase space goods and services
A strong workforce pipeline, such as a strong educational climate or sector-specific workforce programs

Guenther also documents an intensifying workforce crunch across educational levels. The report notes that 95% of space organizations face skills-related problems, with three-quarters struggling to recruit staff with the necessary skills. Because most space companies handle export-controlled technology or contract with the Department of Defense, employees generally must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, a restriction that puts a substantial share of the STEM talent pool out of reach and makes homegrown pipelines essential. Washington state, Florida, Oklahoma, and Colorado offer models that run from K-12 programming through apprenticeships, community college credentials, and university-industry partnerships.

The report draws a pointed contrast with China, where provincial and municipal governments compete aggressively to build out local space capacity, an approach that has produced growth alongside waste, duplication, and excessive debt. American leaders, Guenther argues, should take the lesson without the liabilities.

Read and download the report here.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Leading in the Space Economy: A Strategic Playbook for Governors and Mayors

Posted on August 5, 2026September 28, 2026 by Alex Terr

The space economy is rapidly growing — last year, it was worth $626.4 billion globally, and projections estimate it will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035. The United States produces approximately half of that value as of 2023. This includes everything from rocket launches to satellite broadband subscriptions to images of Earth used to monitor deforestation or inform military action.

Beyond GDP growth, jobs in this sector tend to have above-average salaries for workers, whether they have a high school diploma or an advanced degree. This has led to strong competition between states and localities to retain and grow the space industry’s presence in their backyard.

This engagement from states and localities is good for the nation’s space competitiveness. The benefits of intracountry competition extend beyond the borders of the United States — it’s actually our biggest geopolitical competitor’s secret weapon in their space program. Chinese provinces and municipalities compete to develop the strongest technologies, leading to massive investment beyond the central government. For example, the Shanghai municipal government recently announced a 300 million yuan (roughly $4.4 million) package of investments for its local space industry — from subsidies to industrial park infrastructure to favorable loan terms. Beijing is a strong competitor for Shanghai, with both producing satellite broadband constellations that compete with American services like Starlink.

The United States should not emulate China — there is a reason the U.S. is the global space leader — but as geopolitical competition heats up, the nation should glean insights about what’s working abroad and apply them to the American context while avoiding the pitfalls of foreign approaches, such as excessive debt and waste. In this case, it points to the increased role governors and mayors across the country can take to develop their space industry in a fiscally sustainable manner. State and local investment cannot replace federal space spending, but it is highly complementary.

There are strongholds across the country for this industry, which has a presence of some kind in just about every state. States and cities have used different playbooks to retain and attract this industry, but there are key tactics that pop up repeatedly. This includes:

Financial support, either in the form of tax breaks, grant funding, or non-liquid forms of support like incubator space
Access to and attention from state and local political leaders
Proximity to federal facilities that purchase space goods and services
Workforce, such as a strong educational climate or sector-specific workforce programs

This report examines the strategies of states and localities across the nation to inform states and cities thinking about how they can retain and grow their space industry.

Read the full report

Manno for Daita K12: Texas Shows What Coherent College and Career Advising Looks Like

Posted on August 4, 2026September 9, 2026 by Max Sherrill

For many of America’s schools, advising means a single overworked counselor, a stack of course catalogs, and a handful of rushed conversations in junior and senior year. Students are left to piece together how their classes, their interests, and their post-graduation options actually connect.

Texas has spent the past five years testing a different model. The early results are worth the attention of state and local K-12 leaders.

Working with the nonprofit TNTP, the Texas Education Agency built the Effective Advising Framework, or EAF. The idea is simple to state and hard to execute. Instead of treating postsecondary planning as an event that happens near graduation, make sure it happens across a student’s entire K-12 experience.

The first part of this approach involved TNTP and the state agency mapping grade-level expectations from kindergarten through 12th grade across four areas: career development, academic development, financial literacy and aid, and personal and social development. Districts then adapted those expectations to their students and communities, giving every campus a common vision of what advising should look like at every age, leaving room for local judgment about how to deliver it.

Manno for Philanthropy Daily: The Credential Marketplace Is Growing

Posted on August 3, 2026 by Alex Terr

Donors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into education and workforce training programs. Some of that money has funded credentials that helped workers move to better jobs and higher wages. Some has funded credentials that look good on paper but deliver little in the labor market.

There’s often no straightforward, reliable way to tell the difference between useful and useless credentials. But that’s changing. Two new tools can help donors tell the difference and decide what to support.

The Credential Value Index, from the Burning Glass Institute, gives funders first-time access to independent, outcome-based data on more than 23,000 non-degree credentials like certifications, licenses, and apprenticeships. The index is built from a database of more than 65 million career histories and tracks what actually happened to workers’ wages and career trajectories after they earned a given credential, rather than relying on what institutions report about themselves. It reports outcomes side by side on topics such as wage gains, new jobs, career advancement, and skill growth, so funders can see what kind of value a credential delivers.

Alongside it, the HEA Group and Open Campus have developed the Certificate Earnings Explorer, covering undergraduate, credit-bearing certificate programs at colleges short of a full degree. It uses federal financial-aid records matched to Internal Revenue Service earnings data, providing program-level earnings data on more than 5,500 such programs across all fifty states.

Jacoby on WCPT: An Update on Ukraine

Posted on August 1, 2026August 3, 2026 by Alex Terr

Edwin Eisendrath is joined by Tamar Jacoby , director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and contributor to Washington Monthly; her latest article is “Could the Tide Be Turning Ukraine?” (The interview was recorded July 30 and aired August 1.)

Marshall for The Hill: Don’t Panic over Data Centers — Support a Better Path Forward

Posted on July 31, 2026 by Alex Terr

Less than a year ago, local and state leaders were bragging about the jobs and tax revenue that data centers had brought to their communities. Now, amid a public backlash, many are running from them like scalded dogs.

In January, a Politico poll found that Americans were more receptive than opposed to having data centers built nearby. Six months later, a new survey shows the reverse: 41 percent oppose a data center near them, up from 28 percent in January, while support dropped from 37 to 24 percent.

Data center jitters run especially deep among Democrats. But skepticism also has risen among President Trump’s 2024 voters, who are now split on the issue despite his hyperbolic endorsement of data centers as “big, strong, bold … Money Machines.”

If these growing public qualms lead to a more deliberate, community-building approach to data centers, rather than today’s frenzied digital goldrush, so much the better. But if instead they trigger a panicky rush to freeze all new construction, they will weaken U.S. economic innovation and growth and pass the baton of AI leadership to China.

The sudden cratering of public support for data centers stems from a confluence of popular anxieties. Most important are worries about spiking energy and water bills in host communities and the incipient fear that AI robots might be able to do our jobs better than we can.

PPI Presses FTC on Sysco’s $29 Billion Restaurant Depot Deal, Warns of Higher Food Prices

Posted on July 31, 2026 by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (July 31, 2026) — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chair Andrew Ferguson urging the agency to be particularly rigorous in its ongoing antitrust review of Sysco’s proposed $29 billion acquisition of Restaurant Depot. PPI argues that the merger would combine the nation’s largest broadline food distributor with the leading cash-and-carry wholesaler.

PPI’s analysis explains that the Sysco-RD merger would create an enormous food distribution ecosystem with the potential to reduce competition, raise food costs for restaurants, and ultimately increase prices for American consumers for food away from home. Protecting competition throughout the food supply chain is essential for affordable food prices for consumers, who are already besieged by high food price inflation.

The letter unpacks how a Sysco-RD merger would have a foot in two critical markets: broadline and cash-and-carry. The merger could entrench or extend Sysco’s significant market power, weakening competitive constraints that currently benefit independent restaurants and consumers. PPI notes that the 2023 U.S. Department of Justice/Federal Trade Commission Merger Guidelines carefully outline this competitive concern.

The result could be less price discipline across broadline and cash-and-carry, while locking customers into the larger Sysco-RD system. In addition to higher prices, the merger could also reduce innovation and service quality and discourage new entrants in food distribution. PPI urges the FTC to carefully scrutinize the merger and take appropriate action to protect competition and consumers.

Read the full letter here.

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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org

Canada is the top export market for 27 U.S. states

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Canada is the top export market for 27 U.S. states.

THE NUMBERS: Canadian share of U.S. state exports*, 2025 –

Maine	41%
Michigan	39%
Wisconsin	31%

* * U.S. Commerce Department, TradeStats Express database

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Special note: Beginning in August, Trade Facts will be delivered through PPI’s newly launched Substack, “ Radically Pragmatic.” Trade Fact emails will continue as usual, free and with no solicitations.

The Canadian government’s good-neighbor response to last year’s California wildfire crisis:

“Canadians are grateful for the support and solidarity extended to Canada by the United States during our own challenging wildfire season last year. Team Canada stands ready to reciprocate that support during this time of need. Canada has been working with the Provinces and Territories to ready its support. We have left no stone unturned and are exploring all avenues to offer our support to the people of California. Canadian agencies, including the Canadian Armed Forces, the Canadian Coast Guard, Global Affairs Canada, and Natural Resources Canada, are actively engaged in discussions with the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the U.S. National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC), and the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and the City of Los Angeles to determine how best to assist in the response and recovery efforts.”

Canada’s support during the California fires was the normal pattern of northern-border life for the past century, not an anomaly. Here’s then-President Reagan signing the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1988:

“Let the 5,000-mile border between Canada and the United States stand as a symbol for the future. No soldier stands guard to protect it. Barbed wire does not deface it. And no invisible barrier of economic suspicion and fear will extend it. Let it forever be not a point of division but a meeting place between great and true friends.”

In pretty sharp contrast to both Canada’s 2025 fire relief mission and Reagan’s vision of North American community, White House lawyers last week “operationalized” Mr. Trump’s bizarre response to Ontario’s summer fire misfortune — a threat to impose tariffs after smoke drifted south across the border — by exhuming a 1930 trade law (“Section 338”) and using it to threaten 50% tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian-made goods. (Cars, liquor, wood products, motorcycles, hockey and gymnastics equipment, etc.) Reframed by White House lawyers and trade officials as a response to supposed Canadian “discrimination” against American products, and then quietly pitched to reporters as a “negotiating leverage” gambit, this will supposedly go into effect around Labor Day. Given these claims of “discrimination”, here’s a look at Canada as a U.S. customer:

Policy: Canadian trade policy is in a sense “discriminatory,” but mostly in favor of American goods. Per the WTO’s “World Tariff Profiles,” Canada’s normal “trade-weighted” tariff average is 3.6% for goods in general, and 15.1% on farm products. Four generations of trade negotiations and signing ceremonies the 1960s — the Reagan-Mulroney “U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement” of 1988, the Johnson-Pearson “Agreement on Auto Trade” in 1968 a generation earlier, the Bush/Clinton/Mulroney/Salinas “North American Free Trade Agreement” of 1993 and the 2019 revision of NAFTA into the “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement” — do leave a few trade barriers in place. (American trade bureaucrats have snapped lots of pencils and worn holes in many mouse pads over Canadian dairy quotas and movie regulations; to be fair: their Canadian counterparts can call up similar experiences with lumber-subsidy tariffs and “Buy American” purchasing rules.) These arguments, however, have always been financially small pieces of a much larger trade relationship, in which the trade agreements exempt American goods from nearly all Canadian tariffs. Partly mirroring this fact of policy, and partly the pull of geography, Canada matches Mexico as the largest buyer of American goods, and most of the things Canadians buy from abroad are American.

Data: So far this year, StatCanada reports Canadians importing C$357 billion worth of goods, of which C$205 billion, or about 60%, came from American farms, factories, and mines. Or, using American data, Canadians bought $334 billion of last year’s $2.2 trillion in U.S. goods exports — a billion dollars a day, and a seventh of the total.

States: Canadians were the top buyers of goods from 27 U.S. states. This is particularly evident close to the northern border — on top of the Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin stats above, 39% of Idaho’s $4.6 billion in exports go to Canadian buyers, along with 47% of Montana’s $2.2 billion, and a startling 81% of North Dakota’s $9.4 billion. But large figures show up pretty much everywhere, with Canadians also the top buyers of goods from Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Agriculture: Canada was just behind Mexico as last year’s second-largest buyer of American farm goods and seafood — $28.7 billion of U.S. agriculture’s $171.5 billion worldwide export total. That’s, among other things, 160,000 tons of U.S.-grown watermelon and 87,000 tons of strawberries, 3,700 tons of pecans, 45,000 tons of mushrooms, 16,000 tons of lobster, 40,000 tons of sausage, and 194,000 tons of rice.

Manufacturing: Canada is the top market for American factory goods, buying $286 billion of American manufacturers’ $1.77 trillion in worldwide sales. This includes one in every four exported U.S. cars and trucks, 1.26 billion liters of paint — enough to fill 500 Olympic pools, 2.4 million tons of makeup and eyeliner, 146,000 home washing machines, 866,000 wrenches, 12,820 MRI machines, and so on through long lists of tech products, consumer goods, planes, chemicals, medicines, and more.

Set against this, the White House’s not-very-accurately-named “Fact Sheet” points out that American wine, beer, and car sales dropped a lot last year. (“From March 2025 to February 2026, Canadian imports of alcoholic beverages decreased by about 81%, or $582 million, compared to the same period in 2024/2025”; “from April 2025 through May 2026, Canadian imports of U.S. motor vehicles decreased by approximately 25%, or $5.6 billion, compared to the same period in 2024/2025”.) They aren’t wrong about this, but there’s an obvious reason: the lost wine sales and the auto strife, and the falling tourism counts as well, are the direct result of Trump administration policy – wrongly accusing Canada of indifference to fentanyl trafficking and threatening a 25% tariff on Canadian goods in February 2025; then imposing “national security” tariffs of 25% and later 50% on Canadian steel, aluminum, and copper, and 25% on automobiles a few months later – and more generally Mr. Trump’s choice to project not good-neighborliness toward Canada but a mix of disrespect, arrogance, self-pity and other qualities that one guesses would have revolted President Reagan.

Nor was Reagan’s take on northern-border life some sort of odd exception. All modern U.S. administrations — those of Roosevelt and Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon, Clinton, Bush, Obama — were perfectly well aware of the value Americans draw (including in trade, but far from trade only) from a close and trusting relationship with Canada. None had any trouble managing this relationship well. All left it to their successors in good shape. The next president, unfortunately inheriting something quite different, will have lots of repair work to do.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

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Manno for Washington Monthly: The Quiet Redesign of the Bachelor’s Degree

Posted on July 29, 2026 by Max Sherrill

American higher education has a completion problem it doesn’t like to advertise. For decades, the bachelor’s degree came in one shape: four years of typically uninterrupted coursework delivered on one campus. But this model is being dismantled nationwide, with little coordination and even less fanfare, leaving colleges and universities struggling.

The reason is a number that most Americans have never heard. At the start of the 2023-24 academic year, there were 43.1 million individuals who carry some college credit and no credential. This population has grown in every state and the District of Columbia since 2021, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. For decades, the policy answer to this predicament was some version of Try harder, come back.

But that’s changing. State policymakers are quietly rewriting what a bachelor’s degree is, letting community colleges grant them outright, compressing four years into three, and dissolving the line between high school and college altogether. The moves are separate, disconnected, and rarely discussed as a single trend. But together they amount to a wholesale redesign of the undergraduate degree, who provides it, and a real test of whether American higher education can build more than one model for getting a diploma.

Trump administration trade policies have changed minds

FACT: Trump administration trade policies have changed minds

THE NUMBERS: Two polls, a decade apart –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: American young people are exceptionally unhappy.

THE NUMBERS: Americans’ “happiness” ranking, relative to 146 other countries, 2023-2025.*

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Canada is the top export market for 27 U.S. states.

THE NUMBERS: Canadian share of U.S. state exports*, 2025 –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED