On the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Joan Esposito is joined by Tamar Jacoby, Kiev-based director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and contributor to Washington Monthly; her latest article is “Ukraine: Requiem for a Citizen Soldier.”
The broadband marketplace is intensely competitive. Cable is taking wireless market share, wireless is taking cable market share, satellite is nipping at the heels of everyone, and consumers are the winners. Broadband pricing has stayed well below the inflationary jumps that have been seen in many other industries/services.
This obvious competition, paired with low inflation, makes a new report from the Public Advocates Office (PAO) of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) all the more curious. The report, “Broadband Competition and Pricing Strategies in California’s Urban Markets,” was based on an interesting new data set that looked at promotional broadband rates in four CA cities by detailed location, and compared those prices to the number of broadband providers and household income at those locations. The report’s goal, using regression analysis, was to show that fewer gigabit providers lead to higher prices and that providers were engaged in digital discrimination.
We applaud the effort to assemble the data set. However, the analysis makes several fundamental mistakes. First, the pricing analysis left out important variables like population density (which could have easily been added at the census block level). A high-density area is generally cheaper to connect, on a per-household basis. As a result, high-density areas are more likely to attract new providers, as well as leading existing providers to offer lower promotional rates. Conversely, low-density areas will typically have fewer providers and higher promotional rates.
Thus, by leaving out density from their analysis, the report potentially found spurious correlations between fewer providers at a location and higher promotional rates. To put it another way, the first sentence of the executive summary says, “Broadband prices in California’s urban markets vary widely depending on the level and type of competition available to households.” But that’s tautologically true because competition was basically the only independent variable in their regression equation (the one exception was income, which we’ll discuss below). And disturbingly, the report even omitted results that did not show the desired correlation between price and competition. The report appendix notes that “Comcast is excluded from the regression analysis because its pricing strategy reflects large, market-wide discounts followed by secondary geographic variation that do not correspond to local competition intensity.” In other words, the Comcast regression did not show the desired results, so the report did not show it. In addition, the report acknowledges (note 37) that its regression analysis produces inconsistent results for Charter.
The second elementary mistake, related to the first, was the repeated confusion between correlation and causation. For example, the report asserts confidently that “San Diego has the most limited competition, with many neighborhoods served by a monopoly gigabit provider.” But as the table below shows, San Diego has half the population density of the other three cities, as well as being hillier. So it might be more accurate to say that out of the four cities, San Diego is the costliest, on a per-household basis, to lay fiber and cable, leading to fewer providers and higher promotional prices. Causality is very different than correlation.
| San Mateo | Oakland | Los Angeles | San Diego | |
| Population density of city (people/sq mile) | 8710 | 7878 | 8311 | 4256 |
| Population density of surrounding county (people/sq mile) | 1704 | 2280 | 2468 | 784 |
Data: Census Bureau
Third, the report ignores intense competition in sub-gig markets, which many subscribers are intentionally choosing. As a result, the report only focuses on the four top fixed broadband providers, even though satellite providers, such as Starlink, and 5G internet providers, such as T-Mobile and Verizon, are available in many locations covered by the report.
Finally, we come to the impact of income, which is the one non-competition variable in the report’s analysis. On its website, the PAO alleges digital discrimination in the California broadband space. However, the analysis in this report shows “providers do not systematically adjust promotional pricing based on income levels” (p 16). Truthfully, the report could have been entitled “No Digital Discrimination Found in California’s Urban Broadband Markets.”
The CPUC should be careful not to rely on this flawed study to make any policy judgments related to broadband. Rather, we should take comfort that the increasingly competitive marketplace for broadband is benefiting consumers.
WASHINGTON — A new report by Diana Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), warns that proposed state laws capping ticket resale prices and fees could decimate the resale ticket market and undermine federal antitrust enforcement against Live Nation-Ticketmaster. This will deliver a crushing blow to millions of live events fans in the U.S. and to the artists and sports teams that they support.
As the U.S. live music market approaches $20 billion in annual revenue, lawmakers across the country are advancing a wave of ticketing bills. Many of these legislative proposals go well beyond the boundaries of consumer protection to impose invasive economic regulation on the resale ticket market. PPI’s report, “State Regulation of the Resale Ticket Market: Depriving Fans of Choice and Jeopardizing Antitrust Enforcement,” concludes that bills that require transparency in ticket buying and ban deceptive practices will bootstrap competition. In contrast, price controls on resale tickets risk destabilizing the only competitive segment of the ticketing market and harming fans.
PPI’s report explains that that Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s entrenched monopoly is the root cause of dysfunction in the live events ecosystem. The company’s dominance spans control of roughly 75% of concert promotion and exclusive contracts with venues, and about 80% of primary ticketing.
“State legislation to cap resale ticket prices and fees targets the only market with competition, leaving the monopolized and broken primary ticket market to operate unfettered,” said Moss.
The resale market compensates for supply-and-demand imbalances in the primary market that result from underpricing and holding back large swaths of tickets. Imposing state-mandated price and fee caps on resale will only exacerbate Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly power and risks hobbling the only market where live events fans have real choice.
The PPI report comes as the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 40 states and D.C. pursue a critically important, strong monopolization case against Live Nation-Ticketmaster. If successful, the government could seek structural remedies that break up the company to restore competition in primary ticketing. The report emphasizes that nothing short of a fully litigated trial on the merits of the case, and strong remedies, will adequately protect competition and consumers in ticketing.
Moss warns that aggressive state-level resale regulation could complicate that enforcement effort. Government-imposed price caps would distort price discovery, making it more difficult for courts and enforcers to measure monopoly overcharges and consumer harm. State regulation could also trigger a legal doctrine that limits private antitrust damages or constrains federal enforcement.
PPI’s report explains that state legislative proposals overlook the important role of the resale ticket market. Resale allows fans to access tickets that are unavailable in the primary market, recover their costs when plans change, and comparison shop across platforms. While resale ticket prices may rise for high-demand events, they can also fall below face value for lower-demand shows.
State proposals to cap resale prices or fees, the PPI report finds, would create more ticket shortages, increase price volatility, and push ticket buyers back to scammers in the shadow markets that prevailed before the advent of competitive online resale marketplaces. The net result of price cap regulation will steer consumers back to Ticketmaster’s vertically integrated platform, where it can collect monopoly fees on primary and resale ticket purchases.
At the same time, Moss emphasizes that many pending federal and state proposals would meaningfully improve consumer protection and reinforce competition. These include: requiring up-front, all-in pricing throughout the ticket search process; strengthening enforcement against “bots,” speculative tickets, and excessive ticket holdbacks; and protecting ticket transferability so consumers can freely resell their tickets.
“Antitrust enforcement and smart consumer protection should work hand in hand,” said Moss. “Lawmakers should focus on transparency and transferability, not on resale price and fee controls that risk weakening enforcement and depriving fans of competitive alternatives.”
Read and download the report here.
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 @ppi.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Americans’ daily lives have quietly narrowed since the pandemic. We move between home and work but spend far less time in the informal spaces in between. The places where people once lingered, talked, and got to know one another—coffee shops, parks, libraries, recreation centers, diners, church basements, and barbershops—are used less often or have disappeared altogether.
Ray Oldenburg described these settings in his 1989 book The Great Good Place, calling them “third places.” He argued that they are vessels of friendship, citizenship, and the everyday practice of pluralism. They also shape how people connect across income lines, how opportunity travels, and how young people envision their futures.
For foundations and donors focused on opportunity, belonging, and civic health, third places deserve renewed attention, not only as amenities but as essential community infrastructure.
National surveys confirm how much these spaces have shrunk. The American Social Capital Survey conducted by the Survey Center on American Life reports that roughly half of Americans rarely visited a park in the past year. Large majorities seldom go to libraries or community centers, especially in low-income and rural communities. There are simply too few places where people can gather without an invitation or membership.
Declining usage is only part of the story. In many communities, third places have physically disappeared entirely. For example, independent retail and service businesses that often serve as community gathering spots have vanished. Retail analysts projected up to 15,000 U.S. store closures in 2025, with closures far outpacing openings and more than 7,300 brick-and-mortar locations shutting in 2024 alone. Membership in many local civic and fraternal organizations has also waned, with lodges and clubs that once anchored neighborhoods shrinking or closing entirely.
The value of the U.S. live music market is expected to top almost $20 billion in 2026, with ticket sales accounting for 75% of revenues. Live events, which connect fans with beloved musical artists and sports teams through shared experiences, are some of the most exciting for consumers. Yet the Live NationTicketmaster monopoly continues to generate overwhelmingly negative public opinion in the U.S., as fan frustration with a lack of competition in primary ticketing services, sky-high ticket fees, and a dysfunctional primary ticket continues to mount.
This should come as no surprise. Live NationTicketmaster controls the entire live events supply chain. Live Nation commands 75% of the markets for concert promotion and exclusive contracts with venues, and Ticketmaster has an 80% share in ticketing.3 Long overdue attention to Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s anticompetitive conduct in ticketing is, therefore, a welcome development for millions of fans who have paid a high price for the company’s entrenched monopoly power.
This Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) report unpacks the policy tools that are part of federal and state efforts to address competition and consumer protection in ticketing. These developments have the potential to transform the live events ecosystem and will leave an indelible imprint — for better or worse — on consumers, artists, independent venues, and small businesses. For example, the monopolization case filed against Live NationTicketmaster by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 40 states and the District of Columbia could, if successful, lead to a breakup of the company and spur competition in ticketing. This would increase choice, reduce ticket fees, and pressure companies to improve quality.
Another prong of federal-state activity in ticketing is a crop of proposed consumer protection laws designed to increase transparency in ticket pricing and reduce deceptive practices in the primary and secondary (i.e., “resale”) ticket markets. Yet another development is a handful of proposed state laws that seek to impose economic regulation on the resale market while leaving the monopolized primary ticket market to operate free of external controls. These laws would cap prices and fees for tickets resold in the competitive online marketplaces.
Caps on resale ticket prices and fees go well beyond the conventional boundaries of traditional consumer protection. The resale market balances supply and demand for tickets, compensates for inefficiencies in primary ticketing, and provides the only source of competition for millions of music and sports fans. PPI’s report flags the concern that such regulation will significantly disrupt, and even wipe out, the resale market — defeating the goal of promoting competition and protecting fans.
State regulation of the resale ticket market also risks a policy collision with antitrust enforcement. Antitrust is the most effective tool for fixing the Live Nation-Ticketmaster monopoly that is the source of problems in live event ticketing. PPI’s report unpacks the building blocks for understanding these issues and offers four major takeaways for antitrust enforcers and lawmakers.
WASHINGTON — Today, Ed Gresser, Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), issued the following statement on the Supreme Court’s decision deeming President Trump’s IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional:
“A very conservative Supreme Court has done Mr. Trump a favor today, by giving him a chance to quietly liquidate about half of his tariff program. But it has only done part of the job, and Congress now needs to finish it.
“The public’s experience with Mr. Trump’s tariffs hasn’t been a happy one. In January, the administration promised lower prices and industrial growth. Since then, it has used tariffs to deliver higher costs of living to families, factory job loss and lost farm income to industry, and harm to America’s national security and international reputation. It is not a surprise to find such a program deeply unpopular, and the Trump administration should be grateful to the Court for partially scrapping it.
“Today’s decision, though, applies only to tariffs imposed through decrees using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The case did not cover the equally bad-faith ‘national security’ Executive Orders and Proclamations imposing tariffs of 10%, 25%, and 50% on furniture, whipped cream, lumber, gym equipment, metals, and thousands of other products through ‘Section 232’ of U.S. trade law. Barring a future legal challenge, these will remain in place, and so will a problem larger than price increases.
“Like the IEEPA tariffs, the ‘Section 232’ tariffs have no Congressional authorization. So beyond their real-world harm to families and businesses, they usurp Congress’s clear Constitutional authority over the rates of ‘taxes, duties, imposts, and excises,’ and substitute rule by personal decree for rule of law. As such, they represent the same breach of the separation of powers, and the same threat to the Constitution. Congress, in particular Speaker Mike Johnson and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, must now complete the Court’s unfinished work through legislation to terminate the remaining tariff decrees and restore Constitutionally appropriate development of future policy.”
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 @PPI.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Looking back, it should have been obvious—the warning wasn’t subtle. When I texted my friend, the frontline commander I called Fin—I always used his army call sign, not his civilian name—the screen stared back at me ominously: “Last seen January 3, 2026”—at least three weeks earlier. I told myself it was nothing. He’d probably changed his phone number or switched to a different carrier. But my explanations felt thinner and thinner as the hours ticked by. Finally, in the evening, I started texting others who knew him, and the news came the next day from his unit’s press officer: “Code 200. Fin has been killed in action.”
Later that week, still battling shock and grief, I read in the media that Volodymyr Zelensky, long hesitant to reveal casualty figures, had finally gone public with a number. According to the president’s office, 55,000 Ukrainians, volunteers and regular soldiers, have fallen in battle since the Russian invasion in February 2022. This is a tiny fraction of the enemy total. Ukrainian and Western analysts estimate 1.2 million Russians killed, wounded, and missing. But both numbers looked different to me in the stark light of my friend’s sacrifice.
WASHINGTON — In the debate over rising U.S. housing costs, large institutional investors are frequently cast as the primary culprits. Indeed, President Donald Trump is threatening to derail bipartisan legislation unless it includes a ban on institutional investors. Against this backdrop, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) finds that institutional investors — large entities such as pension funds, insurance companies, and private equity firms — account for just 1% of single-family home purchases and recommends that policymakers improve affordability by other means.
The report, titled “Institutional Investment in Single-Family Housing: Separating Fact from Fiction,” shows that while politicians claim that institutional investors are driving the housing crisis, their footprint in the single-family market remains small. Authored by Richard Kahlenberg, PPI’s Director of Housing Policy and the American Identity Project, and Colin Mortimer, PPI’s Senior Director of Partnerships, the report calls on lawmakers to address the real issues impacting the housing crisis, including zoning reform, expanding housing supply, and reducing restrictive “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) barriers.
“Housing is unaffordable because we haven’t built enough homes, not because institutional investors are buying them up and pricing out Americans,” said Kahlenberg. “Blaming Wall Street may be politically convenient, but it distracts from the real problem: decades of restrictive zoning and supply constraints.”
To address the housing crisis effectively, the report recommends lawmakers enact legislation that:
The report also assesses that institutional investors can play a constructive role in expanding housing opportunities for working class families. Unlike many small landlords, institutional investors bring professional management, renovate older homes, and add new single-family rental homes to the market.
“Institutional investors, in their small capacity, provide working Americans opportunities to live in better neighborhoods that they couldn’t access before, including better schools, safer streets, and greater economic opportunity,” said Mortimer. “Lawmakers cannot ignore those very real benefits in favor of political posturing.”
Read and download the report here.
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 @PPI.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Newly released documents from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing by the Housing Policy Council show that in 2022, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were resistant to adding VantageScore 4.0 and skeptical about shifting to a single credit report (because it is less predictive of creditworthiness than requiring two or three).
PPI has long argued that competition in credit scoring is a good thing. But because VantageScore is owned by the three credit reporting agencies, there is potential for a conflict of interest, and these agencies could use their collective influence to the use of a less accurate credit score.
The FOIA requested documents highlight that Fannie and Freddie recommended that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) only approve FICO 10T for use. They also asked that three other FICO scores, as well as VantageScore 4.0, be rejected. Furthermore, the documents indicate that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported that a single-file report was less accurate than a tri- or bi- merge report.
Despite these objections, President Biden’s director of the FFHA chose to ignore the GSE’s recommendation. The Trump administration temporarily halted the rule, but after a delay, FHFA Director Bill Pulte pushed forward with a plan that also contradicts the GSE’s advice — to allow VantageScore 4.0 as an approved model for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans.
If true, the FHFA’s decision is reckless and potentially costly to consumers and should therefore be revisited by the agency. Furthermore, Congress should hold hearings on why the agency would ignore Fannie and Freddie’s warnings.
Imagine a 19-year-old—let’s call her Jasmine—who is neither in school nor working. She left high school after a family health crisis and picked up shifts where she could—in a warehouse, food service, and day labor—but nothing stuck.
She hears the same mixed messages everyone hears. College costs too much. Artificial intelligence is coming for entry-level jobs. Employers want experience that no newcomer can have. Meanwhile, rent is due now, not after a pathway finally pays off. She needs a credential that leads to a real profession, not another dead-end training course with a glossy flyer and a thin job pipeline.
Jasmine is fictional, but the situation is not. America has millions of young people like her.
Often called opportunity youth, these young people, age 16–24, are full of potential but disconnected from the two institutions that typically launch a successful life: education and work. A widely cited estimate puts the number of young people who are neither in school nor working at roughly 5.5 million,1 though this number fails to include young people who are only marginally attached—working a few hours a week or taking a single class.
A RAND Corporation longitudinal analysis that followed middle and high school students into young adulthood found that those who became disconnected showed signs of struggling socially and academically in middle and high school. They reported more symptoms of depression, experienced higher rates of substance use and delinquency, and had weaker social support structures.
To understand why the school-to-work pipeline feels broken—even to teenagers still in school—we should start with opportunity youth. They are the clearest signal that our systems don’t just have leaks. In too many communities, the on-ramp to good jobs is missing altogether. The response can’t be another scatter of short-term programs or one more credential with an unclear payoff.
We need clearer routes from learning to earning: training tied to real demand, paid work-based opportunities that build experience, and practical supports—such as coaching, transportation, childcare, and trusted adults—that keep young people connected long enough to build momentum. In short, preventing disconnection requires rebuilding the pathway itself, so the next step is visible, affordable, and worth taking.
Housing in the United States is too expensive. For most Americans, it is their single biggest expense, and today, it is less affordable than at any time in the last 40 years: The median household needs to devote a whopping 40% of its income to afford the median-priced home.
Policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels have become acutely aware of this crisis. But in their search for solutions, lawmakers across the political spectrum have converged on a politically unsympathetic scapegoat: institutional investors — often described interchangeably as “hedge funds” or “Wall Street.” President Trump recently announced he is “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” promising to call on Congress to codify the measure. Similar legislation has been introduced in at least 28 states over the past two years.
It is worthwhile to take seriously how frustrated Americans are about housing affordability, but it is also necessary to point out how badly targeted this solution would be. Institutional investors — defined as entities owning 1,000 or more properties — own less than 1% of all single-family homes nationwide.5 Even when examining metro areas with the highest concentrations of institutional ownership, there is no evidence that prices have increased more rapidly in these markets compared to areas with minimal institutional presence. This isn’t to say that market concentration can never be an issue in the housing market. But at the present moment, the proposed bans represent a misapplication of political capital, and a fundamental misdiagnosis of the housing crisis.
If policymakers are genuinely concerned about housing costs, they should pursue a diverse set of policies, including loosening exclusionary zoning restrictions and streamlining permitting requirements. Working-class Americans recognize this. A Progressive Policy Institute/YouGov poll of non-college-educated voters in 2024 found that 64% agreed that “we should cut unnecessary zoning regulations so we can build more multifamily housing and drive down the costs of housing for working families.”6 Targeting institutional investors may be politically expedient, but it will do little to address the underlying regulation-induced supply constraints that are the true drivers of housing unaffordability.
Each February, National Career and Technical Education Month spotlights the growing reality of Americans rethinking the connection between education and work. The old education-to-opportunity pipeline is increasingly under strain.
Employers struggle to find skilled workers. Families increasingly question the cost and payoff of a traditional college education. And young people are entering a labor market reshaped by artificial intelligence and rising credential requirements. Entry-level jobs that once served as stepping stones now demand prior experience, and skills grow obsolete faster than ever.
For much of the past half-century, education policy rested on a simple promise: Prepare students for college, and opportunity will follow. That formula has weakened. College completion remains uneven, student debt burdens are widespread and too many graduates leave school without clear routes into stable, well-paying work.
| Tariff rate | Employment | |
| 2025 | 15.3% – ~80.0% | 0 jobs |
| 2024 | 5.3% | 0 jobs |
* Rates now include the 5.3% MFN tariff, plus a series of “emergency decree” rates including (i) a 10% worldwide tariff, (ii) country-by-country rates varying from 15% to 30%, (iii) frequently shifting tariffs on Chinese-made toasters, and (iv) a “national security” tariff of 50% on the value of any copper, steel, or aluminum parts and components. The (iv) part makes actual rates vary by model as well as country, and are hard even for CBP line officers to assess.
Why did manufacturing employment turn down last year? An illustrative snapshot-in-miniature –
Then-Senator J.D. Vance in July of 2024: “We believe that a million cheap knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single U.S. manufacturing job.” Putting an arithmetical gloss on this a few months later, DC-based tariff proponent Oren Cass used a hypothetical 10% tariff on Chinese-made toasters and a consequent price increase from $30 to $33 to argue that (a) higher tariffs would only modestly raise toaster prices, and (b) a large social and economic benefit would offset this extra cost:
“Damage is done when a consumer who would have benefited from a $30 toaster chooses not to buy one for $33. A second cost appears as consumers switch to domestic options that are more expensive. The consumer who buys the $32 toaster made in America pays the extra $2, but the government collects no extra revenue. Still, the share of the $32 purchase price that would once have gone to a Chinese factory and its workers now goes to an American firm and its workers instead. It pays American taxes and supports American families in American communities.”
Our own look in September had taken a different view. Setting aside the cost – across the full range of consumer spending on physical goods, the $2-per-toaster price increase would reduce average family purchasing power by about $2,000 – the claim that a 10% tariff would mean more U.S. toaster-manufacturing didn’t look realistic. At that time, no U.S. companies were making home pop-ups at all back then, though some were making large mass-production toasters for hotels and restaurants. The example of successful high-end pop-up makers in three peer countries — Dualit in the U.K., Italy’s Milantoast, and Japan’s Mitsubishi TO-ST1-T — suggested that a 10% tariff wouldn’t change that, and toaster prices would likely have to go somewhere around $300 before U.S. firms would go back to making pop-ups.
More fundamentally, the premise of a “10% tariff increase on toasters” wasn’t right, since what the Trump/Vance campaign was pitching at the time (and its administration successors have implemented since) was not a toaster or appliance-specific policy, but a general tariff increase also applying to the metals, heating elements, screws, plastic buttons, electrical wiring, etc., manufacturers need to make them. Our conclusion then:
“To get the spectacular ten-fold price-hike that sustains super-toaster making in Japan, Italy, and the UK, you’d need a 900% tariff or some equivalent policy. (Or, if you need only a five-fold price jump to make less impressive appliances profitable, 400%.) In fact, the additional Trump/Vance tariffs on metals, wiring, buttons, plastics, and other inputs would make U.S.-based toaster-making — including for currently successful producers like Holman Star — harder, not easier. The differentially higher tariff on Chinese-made pop-ups might push some into Vietnam or the Philippines, or possibly Mexico, but that would be the end of it.”
Sixteen months later, abstract arguments on hypothetical policies have been joined by real-world data and experience. Here’s what they say:
Policy: The 5.3% toaster tariff in the Congressionally authorized “MFN” tariff system (HTS 851672) still exists, but the Trump administration tariff decrees have put a sort of carousel of shifting rates on top of it. A rundown:
Note: At this point in early April, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, predicted an “army of millions and millions” of Americans would be taking assembly-line jobs turning screws in appliance and consumer electronics factories.
Extremely complicated, but the basics are a higher worldwide tariff and an especially high one on Chinese-made stuff. What’s happened since? At least so far, our mid-2024 guess at what the real-world impact might be looks extremely close to the real-life experience. Here’s the data:
1. Higher costs for families: A Cleveland Fed study of tariff impacts suggests that the various decrees have hiked the prices of tariffed goods by about 6.6%, and that the price of locally produced substitutes has gone up by about 3.8%. So, in Mr. Cass’s case of a toaster previously costing $30, the family will very likely pay $2 more.
2. Small toaster production shift: The spikes and volatility in China policy have encouraged some production shifts, with a few toaster-makers moving assembly from China to Malaysia last summer. By November, imports of toasters had dropped a bit, but China still accounted for 95% of toaster sourcing, with Malaysia at 4%. We were slightly off, having guessed at Vietnam and the Philippines as the likely beneficiaries. Not terrible guesses – the differential China tariff has pushed a lot of microwave and personal computer assembly to Vietnam, and the Philippines has picked up some vacuum cleaners – but Malaysia seems to have the toaster-making advantage.
3. No change in U.S. industry and manufacturing employment trending down: No U.S. firm is making pop-ups, so Mr. Vance’s hypothetical guy hasn’t found a toaster job. Nor, on a larger scale, has anyone enlisted in Mr. Lutnick’s ghostly screw-turning army. To the contrary, with higher tariffs on industrial inputs like the metals and wiring, fewer Americans are turning screws on production lines now than were a year ago. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, overall U.S. manufacturing employment dropped by 108,000 last year, with home appliance production shedding 2,600 jobs and consumer electronics shedding 800 more.
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
Data:
Lending Tree’s chocolate-price survey.
Then:
Then-Sen. Vance’s toaster dream.
PPI on the $300-per-toaster cost it likely implies.
… and Mr. Cass’s rosier view.
Now:
Harvard Price Lab tracks the prices of consumer goods subject to new tariffs.
And per the Financial Times (subs. req.), tariff carousel continues to turn, as Trump administration officials scramble to dial back the August 19 rules on “steel and aluminum derivative products”:
“Donald Trump is planning to scale back some tariffs on steel and aluminium goods as he battles an affordability crisis that has sapped his approval ratings … [Anonymous FT sources] said trade officials in the commerce department and US trade representative’s office believed the tariffs were hurting consumers by raising prices for goods such as pie tins and food and drink cans.”
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.
Reform UK are eyeing up a big win in Greater Manchester at this month’s Gorton & Denton by-election.
Nigel Farage and his band of ex-Tories are hoping to persuade voters disillusioned with Labour in Government that they are the workers’ champions. But actions speak louder than words, and the actions of Reform and their populist allies show they are not to be trusted as the workers’ friend.
Just take a look at America, where millions of workers who were fed up of the status quo voted for Donald Trump. Yet one year on, his policies of slapping tariffs on foreign goods and chopping and changing is pushing up prices for American workers.
Meanwhile, his wealthy cronies are raking it in for themselves, with the Trump family fortune ballooning by $1billion since he was elected for the second time, and 30 Trump donors have received benefits or advantages. No wonder his poll ratings are taking a dive as ordinary Americans who were promised change start to doubt he can deliver on what matters to them.
George Washington’s tenacity in winning our war of independence (with French help), after losing many battles, forms the dramatic arc of Ken Burn’s gripping documentary, “The American Revolution.”
Looking ahead to this year’s midterm elections, Democrats should take the long view like Washington. As important as it is to win the House and possibly the Senate in November, it’s even more crucial for Democrats to take back the White House in 2028.
Taking control of the House would give heretofore impotent Democrats some ability to check President Trump’s flagrant abuses of presidential power. They could freeze funding for his outlandish decrees and probe his brazen politicization of federal law enforcement agencies and meddling in state elections.
The party out of power usually makes gains in midterm elections, and Democrats need only flip three seats to control the House. They are also riding a tailwind from Trump’s unpopular policies. By large margins, the public disapproves of his handling the economy, inflation and his signature issue, immigration.
Yet Trump’s fall doesn’t signal Democrats’ rise. Voters still trust Republicans more to address most of their top concerns. That’s why even a House and Senate sweep wouldn’t stop today’s realignment of U.S. politics along educational lines. It’s given Republicans a structural advantage because their base — non-college voters — constitute a supermajority (nearly 60 percent) and are spread more evenly across the country.
The newest fiscal forecast from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), released this Wednesday, amounts to a damning report card on the Trump administration’s first-year tax and economic policies. It projects staggering deficits, a deteriorating debt path, and rising interest costs. But what makes the assessment especially striking is how much worse these numbers are compared to just a year ago, before the White House’s profligate, short-sighted agenda was put into effect.
The report’s topline numbers are sobering. Annual deficits are projected to exceed $3 trillion by the end of the decade, up from $1.9 trillion this year and nearly $500 billion higher than last year’s forecast. Over the longer term, the picture is equally troubling. The CBO now projects that over the next three decades, our deficit-to-GDP ratio will increase roughly four times faster than it previously anticipated. As a result, federal debt held by the public is expected to rise to 172% of GDP by 2055, well above last year’s 156% estimate.
This deterioration from previous projections is not coincidental. It reflects deliberate choices made by the Trump administration over the past year. Take the One Big Beautiful Budget Act (OBBBA), the administration’s domestic policy centerpiece. The law’s extension and expansion of trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts is projected to add roughly $4.7 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. This large cost was no secret during the legislative process, yet many supporters argued that rapid growth would cover the gap. CBO’s analysis tells a different story, pointing to a modest and temporary boost to GDP, with long-run economic growth largely unchanged from a year ago.
The administration’s immigration agenda has also taken a toll on America’s fiscal outlook. By ramping up deportations — while also sharply cutting legal immigration — the administration is precipitously shrinking the labor force, constraining long-term economic output, and eroding the future tax base. CBO projects that overall, the administration’s immigration policies will cumulatively increase the deficit by roughly $500 billion over the next decade.
Even more worrisome is that CBO projections are likely overestimating the government’s only major new source of revenue. It credits the Trump administration with roughly $3 trillion in new tariff revenue, which, despite tariffs’ many other damaging economic effects, has partially offset the impact of their deficit-fueling policies elsewhere. But the bulk of this new tariff revenue is built on legally dubious emergency declarations currently being litigated in the Supreme Court. If the justices strike down the tariffs, America’s fiscal trajectory could soon look even worse than CBO’s already somber projections.
This lack of fiscal discipline in Washington is especially reckless given the nation already pays more than $1 trillion annually for debt servicing, which reached its all-time high as a percent of GDP in 2025. Now should be the time for lawmakers to reduce the deficit and bring interest payments down to a manageable level. But instead, the CBO projects that debt servicing costs will continuously break new records going forward. By 2047, interest costs are expected to eclipse Social Security to become the largest federal expenditure. By 2055, they will constitute a whopping 6.8% of GDP, more than double what they are today and 25% higher than last year’s projections.
Beneath these interest projections lies an equally troubling structural shift. When the government’s average interest rate rises above the economy’s nominal growth rate, debt begins to compound faster than the economy can grow its way out of it, setting up a dangerous spiral. In that environment, even modest deficits can cause the debt-to-GDP ratio to climb, forcing policymakers to embrace extreme austerity measures and run sustained primary surpluses just to stabilize the fiscal outlook. The CBO projects that this will be the case within the next few years — far earlier than its previous forecast of 2045 — making today’s deficit binge even more perilous than it may appear.
A worsening fiscal outlook ultimately means lower living standards. Americans face the prospect of higher interest rates across the economy, appearing as higher mortgage payments, auto loans, and small business financing costs. Persistent deficits can also crowd out private or public investments, dampening productivity and wage growth over time. And for the millions of people that rely on government programs, rapidly increasing interest costs will force more and more revenue just to pay for yesterday’s consumption, leaving less available for critical public services and programs.
This administration remains wholly uninterested in fiscal discipline, choosing to embrace fantastical promises about cost-cutting and growth rather than confront the dismal reality its policies are ushering in. But to prevent the biggest consequences of runaway debt, Washington must act as soon as possible to reverse course and confront our nation’s fiscal challenges. Bringing the deficit down to 3% of GDP, as one recent bipartisan resolution proposes, would be a sensible step in the right direction. But words alone won’t be enough. Lawmakers must deliver a comprehensive, balanced package to do so, including pro-growth tax reform that raises adequate revenue, sensible entitlement adjustments that reflect demographic realities, and a retreat from this administration’s economically damaging trade and immigration policies.
