Category: Uncategorized

Marshall for The Hill: The Green New Deal Crashes to Earth

Posted on by Alex Terr

Less than a decade ago, young U.S. progressives started agitating for a Green New Deal to combat climate change and usher in a planned economy more planet-friendly than capitalism.

It was a bold, if implausible, demand for a crash program to rid America of fossil fuels. Animating it were decades of increasingly dire prophesies about how global warming is irreversibly impairing life on Earth.

Lecturing world leaders at a 2019 United Nations climate conference, Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg won rapturous applause when she informed her audience, “You have stolen my childhood.”

In the U.S., environmental groups pressured politicians to keep fossil fuels “in the ground” even as advances in fracking technology were unlocking a bonanza of shale oil and gas.

In 2020, first-term Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) stoked a social media frenzy by joining Green New Deal activists in a ‘60s-style sit-in in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office.

President Joe Biden got with the program, portentously calling climate change “an existential crisis” rising above such humdrum public concerns as spiking inflation and uncontrolled immigration.

Today, however, the Green New Deal seems to have fallen to earth, borne down by the inexorable gravity of economic and political reality. Therein lies a cautionary tale for Democrats about the gulf that separates elite and popular opinion on climate change.

Put simply, green activists have failed to convert America’s non-college majority to their cause. Working class voters recognize the problem but it takes a back seat to their everyday economic and social concerns.

Read more in The Hill

Foreign exchange trading in rubles is down by 96%

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT: Foreign exchange trading in rubles is down by 96%.

THE NUMBERS: Daily currency exchange* —

             2019              2025 Change
All currencies   $6.58 trillion   $9.60 trillion    +45%
Dollar   $5.81 trillion   $8.56 trillion    +47%
Euro   $2.13 trillion   $2.77 trillion    +30%
Yen   $1.11 trillion   $1.61 trillion    +45%
Renminbi   $0.29 trillion   $0.82 trillion  +187%
Pound   $0.84 trillion   $0.98 trillion    +16%
Ruble   $0.07 trillion   $0.003 trillion     -96%

* Bank of International Settlements 2025 Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Every three years, the Bank of International Settlements in Basel guesses at how much money currency traders – government ministries and central banks, firms buying and selling across borders, tourists, computerized hedge-fund trading programs — exchange in a day. Their 2025 “Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange,” out in September, reports $9.6 trillion (combining sellers’ earnings with buyers’ payments). Over a full year that comes to almost exactly $3.5 quadrillion. A few particulars:

Dollar role little changed: U.S. dollars figured in 89.2% of the world’s currency exchanges this spring.  This figure has been stable throughout the 21st century, as earlier Triennial Surveys found dollars used in 88.6% of all currency transactions in 2022, a slightly lower 84.9% in financial crisis-plagued 2010, and 89.9% in 2001. Looking at other currencies, the Survey gives some substance to financial-press speculation about the Chinese renminbi’s rising role: renminbi showed up in 2% of currency exchanges in 2013, 4% in 2019, and 7% in 2025. The euro, yen, and pound shares have meanwhile dipped a bit, with euros down from 39% of transactions in 2013 to 31% in 2025, yen from 23% to 17%, and sterling from 13% to 10%.

U.K. the forex center: City of London banks and firms handle 38% of all world currency trades, or about $1 quadrillion worth each year. As context for a twelve-zero number like this — $1,000,000,000,000,000 — “world GDP” is about $120 trillion, so London’s quadrillion in forex turnover is about 10 times the size of the ‘real’ goods and services world economy. New York ranks second with 19%, while Asia’s three big currency trading centers — Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo — have 12%, 7%, and 4% respectively, or 23% combined. Most exchange of major currencies basically track this division of labor, but renminbi trading is a little unusual; it isn’t concentrated in any one place, but instead is roughly evenly divided between London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and New York.

Collapse of ruble trading: The survey’s calculations, which show 39 individual currencies as well as worldwide totals, typically show trading levels in any particular currency rising over time, though at different rates. One bright-red exception: under the weight of international sanctions — for example, U.S., UK, EU, and Japanese prohibitions on transactions with the Russian central bank, purchasing of ruble-denominated bonds, and lending to Russian financial institutions — along with Russia’s own currency restrictions, trading in Russian rubles has plunged by 96% since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.

The actual numbers here: the $72 billion in daily ruble trading in 2019 fell to $13 billion in 2022, and to $3 billion in 2025. As a point of comparison, this $3 billion is just above the $1 billion in daily trading in Argentine pesos and a notch below the $4 billion in Bulgarian lev exchange. By market, ruble trading is down 95% in Singapore, 96.5% in London, 99% in New York, 99.4% in Hong Kong, and 99.9% in Zurich. Those wishing to dispose of rubles do, though, have one notable refuge: ruble trading has grown about 100-fold in the United Arab Emirates — $18 million in 2019, $2.7 billion in 2025 — which now does almost two-thirds of all world ruble trading.

FURTHER READING

BIS’ 2025 Triennial Survey of the $3.5 quadrillion annual, $9.6 trillion daily, world foreign exchange market.

Regulators and sanctions:

The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority regulates the City of London, the world’s largest currency-exchange center.

Japan’s Finance Ministry imposes new Russia sanctions.

A sanctions brief from the European Council.

And the U.S. Treasury Department monitors dollar exchange rates and explains sanctions on ruble-trading.

And some comparisons:

Then and now: A generation ago, in the last days of the managed-exchange-rate “Bretton Woods System,” currency turnover was a comparatively modest $6 trillion a year, mostly facilitating tourism, debt repayments, and import/export trade. The “floating exchange,” which replaced Bretton Woods, launched in March 1973, has since become the largest market of any sort in human history. The BiS estimates, converted from their “daily turnover” headlines to the annual totals:

2025 $3.502 quadrillion
2022 $2.726 quadrillion
2019 $2.402 quadrillion
2016 $1.849 quadrillion
2010 $1.450 quadrillion
2001 $0.452 quadrillion
1992 $0.298 quadrillion
1970 $0.006 quadrillion

“All the money in the world”: Dividing BiS’s double-entry forex totals in half to make them comparable to trade flows, wealth held in banks and securities, etc., currency trading matches up against world GDP, privately held wealth, circulating money, and goods-services trade like this:

Currency exchange, 2025 $1,750 trillion
Total privately held wealth, 2024  ~$475 trillion
World GDP, 2025    $117 trillion
All physical money in banks, bills, & coins      $50 trillion
All goods/service trade, 2024      $33 trillion
All circulating bills and coins      ~$8 trillion

The WTO’s trade statistics dashboard shows trade in goods at $24.4 trillion last year, and trade in services $8.6 trillion.

The IMF’s World Economic Outlook database has the total global GDP at $117 trillion this year, with the U.S. contributing $30.6 trillion, China $19.4 trillion, the EU $21.2 trillion, Japan $4.3 trillion, the U.K. $4.0 trillion, and all other countries $36 trillion.

UBS’s 2025 Global Wealth Report reviews economic data from 56 countries and territories,* which they believe hold about 92% of all privately held world wealth. (I.e., the value of homes and properties, stocks and bonds, bank deposits, etc., excluding government assets.) They place this total at about $475 trillion, so adding the other 8% would yield a world wealth total of about $515 trillion.

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.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Testimony: USMCA is Not Broken, Doesn’t Need Major Changes

Posted on by Alyssa Brown

Hearing on Operation of the USMCA (December 3, 2025)

Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify this morning, as the U.S. Trade Representative Office considers the functioning of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement over the past six years in preparation for next July’s scheduled “review.”

By way of introduction, I am Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) in Washington, D.C., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit research institution established in 1989, which publishes a wide range of public policy topics. In this position, I oversee PPI’s research and publications on trade and global economy matters. Before joining PPI, I served at USTR from 2015 to 2021 as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics, with responsibility for overseeing USTR’s economic research and use of trade data, interagency policy coordination, including chairing the interagency Trade Policy Staff Committee, and administration of the Generalized System of Preferences.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement, has been in force since July 1, 2020. As approved by Congress in 2019, its Final Provisions chapter includes a clause directing the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments to conduct a “review” after six years — that is, by July 2026 — and decide whether changes to the Agreement might be useful.

Our core view is that USMCA is working reasonably well. It is a very large agreement, spanning many different industries and applying to nearly $2 trillion in U.S. goods and services trade. And like any large human creation, USMCA is by definition imperfect. But it is accomplishing its main goals — facilitating trade in agriculture, services, energy, and manufacturing, helping digital trade channels stay open, encouraging joint work on wildlife trafficking and ocean health, providing Americans with reliable and low-cost consumer goods and industrial supplies, and experimenting with a novel approach to labor issues.

Meanwhile, and quite recently, very large problems unrelated to the agreement have emerged in U.S. trade, generally, and in relations with Canada and Mexico specifically. Since this past February, the Trump administration’s profligate imposition of tariffs, and accompanying threats against Canada and Mexico, have caused a series of genuine crises: damage to the Constitutional separation of powers; erosion of relationships at the core of U.S. national security; and a deteriorating economy as tariffs raise the cost of living for families, sap growth, and diminish the competitiveness of U.S. farming and manufacturing.

The Final Chapter “review” clause entails assessment rather than requiring any particular action. And while in different circumstances it might be useful to look in detail at ways to bring the agreement closer to perfection, in the actual circumstances of 2025 and 2026, policy vis-à-vis Mexico and Canada should focus on ending these self-created crises and mitigating their effects.

If the administration nonetheless wants to proceed with revisions to the agreement, our view is that such a program should come only after three steps:

  • Congressional passage of legislation terminating “emergency” and “national security” tariff decrees under laws like “IEEPA,” “Section 232,” and “Section 301” and requiring votes on any future Presidential imposition of tariffs (or other import limits) with some carefully circumscribed exceptions.
  • Stabilization of North American security by restoring trust, mutual respect, and common interest as the foundation of U.S. policy for America’s neighbors.
  • Restoration of Constitutionally appropriate policymaking, with Congress setting negotiating objectives for any significant changes in USMCA and voting to approve, or not, any resulting accord.

With these done, it would be appropriate, and might be useful, to look closely at the USMCA and see whether broad consensus exists for changes that would improve it. Absent them, we do not believe such a program is currently appropriate.

Read the full testimony.

Brown in The New York Post: Dem-leaning group roasts NY’s green energy law as an ‘undeniable’ failure as customers zapped by soaring costs

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Empire State’s green energy push has been a pie-in-the-sky bust as politicians hit the brakes on their alternate energy goals — and New Yorkers get sticker shock from ever-soaring utility bills, a scathing new report found.

The analysis by the Democratic-leaning think tank the Progressive Policy Institute found a “clear and undeniable pattern of failure” across the most critical mandates of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Act.

“New York set bold climate targets, but ignored the economic and technical realities required to achieve them,” said PPI’s report author Neel Brown.

“The result is an energy system that is less reliable, more expensive, and now politically unsustainable. Unless policymakers course correct, the state risks turning a climate leadership story into a cautionary tale,” he added.

Read more in the New York Post. 

EU Space Act Hurts EU and US Space Sectors While Sparing China, New Analysis Finds

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON — A new analysis by European Economics, commissioned by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), finds that the proposed EU Space Act would significantly weaken both the European and American space sectors while leaving China’s rapidly expanding space industry largely unharmed.

The report shows that the initiative would impose substantial new compliance obligations that suppress investment, reduce demand, and undermine innovation across the European market. At the same time, because the United States exports nearly 10 times as many space-related goods to the EU as China does, American firms would face steep new barriers that China would mostly avoid. This analysis supports the arguments presented in PPI’s comments to the European Commission on this initiative, available here.

“This approach harms both sides of the transatlantic partnership just as China is successfully moving toward dominance in space, which has far-reaching implications for broad swaths of modern society,” said Mary Guenther, PPI’s Head of Space Policy. “The EU Space Act burdens Europe’s own companies, hits American firms too, and leaves China with a free pass. That is not a formula for competitiveness or security.”

Key Findings from the European Economics Report:

Effects on the EU space sector

  • Long-term annual investment in the EU space sector would fall by nearly €3.5 billion.
  • Demand for EU space products would decline by roughly 5 percent.
  • R&D spending would fall by 2 to 5 percent as firms scale back amid higher costs.

Effects on the U.S. space sector

  • The compliance burden on U.S. firms, which export almost ten times more space products to the EU than China does, would reduce global competitiveness.
  • Long-term revenue losses for the U.S. space sector could reach €85 million annually.

Effects on China

  • China’s space sector would see minimal impact, despite its state-supported growth and intensifying campaign for global space leadership
  • By imposing costs on European and American firms while sparing Chinese competitors, the initiative creates a strategic imbalance that aids Beijing’s long-term ambitions. This finding aligns with PPI’s April 2025 report on the modern space race between the United States and China, available here.

Guenther added, “Europe has remarkable potential in the space economy, but this proposal adds red tape without delivering clear benefits. The European Commission should go back to the drawing board to develop an approach that strengthens European innovation and competitiveness while preserving cooperation with allies. Instead, the current framework undercuts the West’s shared leadership and creates openings for China that neither side can afford.”

PPI encourages EU policymakers to eliminate technically infeasible or duplicative rules and to avoid measures that function as de facto barriers for trusted foreign partners. A more flexible approach, backed by several member states, would better support investment and competitiveness across the transatlantic space ecosystem. PPI’s full comments to the European Commission on the EU Space Act, which detail these concerns, are available here.

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. 

###

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

Analysis: EU Space Act Weakens Europe and the United States

Posted on by Alex Terr

The European Commission has proposed a new regulation, the EU Space Act, to strengthen safety, resilience, governance, and competitiveness of space activities in the EU market. While the legislation primarily aims to enhance security, sustainability, and regulatory coherence, it also introduces new compliance requirements for firms operating in the European space economy. In its associated impact assessment the EU identifies a range of additional costs imposed on private space businesses across the EU value chain.

This report assesses the economic implications of these measures by exploring the downstream effects of these cost increases on prices, demand, investment activity, research and development, and capital expenditure.

We model these effects not only for individual product segments in the local European space market, but also for US and Chinese exports into the EU.

This report thus provides a first quantitative assessment of how the EU Space Act may affect the competitiveness, investment capacity, and long-term growth prospects of the European space sector, while also quantifying spillover impacts on international exporters to the EU.

The report proceeds in three stages:

  1. We estimate what effects the increases in prices will have on costs, prices, and demanded quantities.
  2. We then estimate how firms will respond to these shifts and what relative effects this will have on profits, investments, research and development spending, and capital expenditure.
  3. Lastly, we map the global space economy and investment activity, to see what the absolute effects in the relevant regions will be in the short- and long-term.

Read the full report.

Jacoby on Joan Esposito Live Local & Progressive: An Update on Ukraine

Posted on by Alex Terr

 

Tamar Jacoby, contributor to Washington Monthly (https://washingtonmonthly.com/author/…)  and the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project (https://www.progressivepolicy.org/pro…)  and the author of “Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience.” Her latest article for Washington Monthly is “ Three Lessons From Trump’s Latest Plan for Ukraine (https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/11…) .”

PPI Warns That Hospital Takeovers of Physician Practices Are Driving Up Costs and Reducing Patient Access

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released a landmark report detailing how a wave of hospital acquisitions of independent physician practices is restricting consumer access to health care, driving up prices and costs, and accelerating the erosion of physician autonomy. The study, “Fixing a Broken System: Policy Responses to Hospital Acquisitions of Physician Practices That Limit Health Care Access for U.S. Consumers,” analyzes national data from 2017 to 2024 and reviews more than 70 economic studies to unveil the mounting consequences of unchecked vertical consolidation.

Led by Diana Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy, with coauthors Alix Ware, Director of Health Care Policy, and Lief Lin, Policy Research Fellow, the report shows that the share of independent physician practices has fallen sharply across the country as hospitals and large health systems absorb local providers. In many specialties, independent practices declined by up to 40%, with the steepest losses occurring in general surgery, oncology, and cardiology. Rural communities were hit hardest, experiencing a 34% decline in independent practices, compared to 22% in urban areas.

“The collapse of independent physician practices is not an isolated trend. It is a major structural shift that threatens affordability, choice, and the long-term resilience of our health care system,” said lead author Diana Moss. “Hospitals are acquiring local practices at a lightning pace, and consumers are paying the price through higher bills and fewer options.”

Key findings from the report include:

  • Most economic studies show hospital acquisitions of physician practices lead to higher prices and increased spending, with average price hikes of 14% and some exceeding 30%.
  • Nearly half of post-acquisition price increases stem from hospitals exploiting Medicare’s site-of-service payment differentials.
  • Large health systems are driving consolidation, with some expanding their ownership of  physician practices by several hundred percent between 2017 and 2024.
  • Current antitrust enforcement is far below average for the hospital and ambulatory health services sectors, despite mounting evidence of harm.

PPI’s analysis also underscores how state-level policies such as certificate of need (CON) laws and certificate of public advantage (COPA) agreements often exacerbate consolidation by raising barriers to entry and shielding hospital mergers from antitrust scrutiny. States without CON laws show significantly higher survival rates for independent physician practices and more new entry.

To address the crisis, PPI calls for a five-part federal and state policy strategy:

  1. Enact site-neutral Medicare payment reform to eliminate the financial incentives driving hospital purchases of physician practices.
  2. Strengthen antitrust enforcement to scrutinize hospital acquisitions of physician practices and challenge harmful transactions.
  3. Consider reforms to state CON and COPA laws that restrict competition and reinforce hospital market power.
  4. Protect physician autonomy by modernizing governance, compensation rules, and related federal policies that limit physician-led models.
  5. Strengthen rural health care access through targeted reinvestment, value-based care, and innovative delivery models.

“This is a moment for urgent, bipartisan action,” said co-author Alix Ware. “If policymakers fail to reform the incentives that fuel consolidation, patients will face even higher costs and fewer choices. The time to intervene is now.”

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. 

###

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

Fixing a Broken System: Policy Responses to Hospital Acquisitions of Physician Practices That Limit Health Care Access for U.S. Consumers

Posted on by Alex Terr

The Progressive Policy Institute’s new study unpacks ongoing hospital acquisitions of independent physician practices in the U.S. This vertical integration reduces vital competition in critical health care markets. The result is reduced access to health care for Americans, through higher prices and spending, less choice in health care delivery models, and the erosion of physician decision-making autonomy in patient care.

The loss of independent physician practices (IPPs) from hospital and health system acquisitions is a major component of the broader absorption of physician practices into corporate owners such as commercial health insurers, private equity firms, and retail conglomerates such as pharmacy chains. Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of IPPs owned by hospitals/ health systems and other corporate entities increased from 39% to 59%, while the percentage of physicians employed by these same entities increased from 62% to 78%.

American consumers are already struggling with less access to health care, including what they pay, how easily they can obtain health care services, whether they have choice in facilities and providers, and the overall stability and resiliency of the health care system. The looming disappearance of the IPP compounds this formidable problem.

A review of 70 economic studies shows that hospital acquisitions of IPPs have myriad adverse effects. This includes higher prices and health care spending and the loss of decision-making autonomy for physicians because of changed corporate financial objectives. The elimination of the IPP as a vital health care delivery model has also reduced access to health care by eliminating an important source of choice for consumers.

PPI’s study advances the state of policy analysis regarding the impact of consolidation by tracking the recent decline in IPPs in the U.S., against the backdrop of economic evidence that acquisitions by hospitals harms consumers. PPI looked at the decline in IPPs across nine major medical specialties at the national, state, regional, and rural vs. urban levels in 2017 and 2024. The results of PPI’s study highlight several major takeaways:

  • There is mounting economic evidence that vertical integration of hospitals and IPPs increases prices and spending.
  • The U.S. health care system has sustained a significant decline in IPPs as a result of being acquired by hospitals. These decreases range from 4% to 42% across nine medical specialties.
  • Hospital acquisitions of physician practices have an outsized impact on rural areas of the U.S. IPPs in rural areas declined by 34%, versus only 22% in urban areas and were the highest in the western Midwest and New England.
  • Hospitals focus on acquisitions of larger physician practices in establishing or scaling up their market position in a medical specialty area. Large IPPs decreased by 45% and medium size IPPs declined by 36%.
  • Some of the largest health systems in the U.S. are the most active acquirers of physician practices, exacerbating already high levels of concentration in hospital and medical specialty markets.

When considered in light of evidence from existing economic studies showing that hospital acquisitions of IPPs increase prices and spending, policy approaches to addressing the precipitous decline in IPPs in the U.S. take on new urgency. For example, studies show average price increases of about 14%, with some increases as high as 33%, and higher increases in markets where a hospital has a dominant position. Evidence also shows that approximately 45% of price increases are due to exploitation of Medicare site-of-service reimbursement rules. The majority of studies also show that hospital acquisitions of IPPs result in increased spending.

PPI’s study concludes that better policies, achieved through comprehensive policy reform, are needed to address the loss of IPPs in the U.S. In framing this approach, PPI unpacks the multiple, flawed policies that bear directly on the anticompetitive effects of hospital acquisitions of physician practices. These policies have collectively failed to rein in consolidation and, in some cases, even incentivize it.

Major policy areas that bear directly on hospital acquisitions of IPPs and their outcomes include: (1) Medicare reimbursement rules that incentivize vertical integration, (2) below average merger enforcement, (3) state regulations that limit market entry, immunize hospitals from antitrust liability, and encourage gaming of the rules and exceptions to facilitate consolidation; (4) the absence of coherent policy to address a loss of physician autonomy that results from selling an IPP to a hospital; and (5) the need for a policy on health care access for rural areas.

Because of the lightning speed at which hospitals have acquired IPPs over the last two decades — and especially in the last eight years covered by PPI’s study — policymakers are now working against the clock. PPI’s “call to action” is for policy reform to protect American consumers and physicians, and improve access to the health care system. This effort should garner broad, bipartisan support from Congressional sponsors of site-neutral payment reform, state lawmakers, and federal and state antitrust enforcers. PPI recommends a five-part plan to address rampant hospital acquisitions of IPPs.

  • Pass federal legislation for site-neutral payment reform to remove the major incentive that drives hospital acquisitions of IPPs.
  • Strengthen federal and state antitrust enforcement to ensure that anticompetitive hospital acquisitions of IPPs are blocked or adequately remedied.
  • Consider reforming or revisiting state laws that govern hospital entry and shield powerful companies from antitrust scrutiny.
  • Protect physician autonomy by advancing policies that focus on quality of care, physician leadership in governance in hospital settings, physician-led initiatives, and telemedicine.
  • Develop policies to ensure access to health care in rural areas by reinvesting in rural hospitals, moving to value-based care, and supporting innovative business models and technology use.

Read the full report.

Manno for Forbes: Rebuilding The First Rung Of The Opportunity Ladder

Posted on by Alex Terr

America’s Informal Apprenticeship System Is Changing.

Work-Based Learning Closes The Experience Gap And Makes Experience The New Currency of Mobility

For generations, young people entering the U.S. job market followed a predictable script. They went to school, graduated, landed an entry-level first job, learned on the job, and accumulated the experience they needed to advance.

Today, that system is disappearing, along with the first rung on the hiring ladder that moved individuals from school to work to opportunity. In its place, a new reality has emerged: an experience gap that quickly becomes an opportunity gap for those entering the workforce.\

Read more in Forbes. 

Mandel for The Hill: Local news has been pummeled by change. How AI can help.

Posted on by Alex Terr

The list of troubles facing local news operations seems to go on forever.

The rise in big box stores and ecommerce has made local newspaper retail advertising almost superfluous.

The long-term decline in the population of small cities like Cairo, Illinois has narrowed the subscriber base of many local papers, forcing closures and consolidations.

And the fall in the price of newspaper advertising — an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by my organization, Progressive Policy Institute, shows it’s down 15 percent since 2019 — has undercut the traditional business model of local news even further.

Read more in The Hill. 

Jacoby on Background Briefing with Ian Masters: What Impact Will the Resignation of Ukraine’s Negotiator Yermak Have on Peace Talks?

Posted on by Alex Terr

We assess the multiple and confusing Trump teams of negotiators trying to make a deal Putin clearly has no interest in peace with Ukraine unless he gets all of his maximalist demands. We also examine the impact of Zelensky’s right hand man Yermak’s resignation under a cloud of corruption accusations. Joining us for Kyiv is Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the Progressive Policy Institute’s New Ukraine Project. She was a senior writer and justice editor at Newsweek and, before that, the deputy editor of the New York Times op-ed page. Now a regular contributor to Forbes.com, she is the author of Displaced: The Ukrainian Refugee Experience and has an article at The Washington Monthly, “Three Lessons From Trump’s Latest Plan for Ukraine: Whatever emerges from U.S.-Ukrainian talks in Geneva, nothing good is likely to come from this recipe for appeasing Moscow.”

 

Background Briefing with Ian Masters · What Impact Will the Resignation of Ukraine’s Negotiator Yermak Have on Peace Talks?

U.S. food prices up 3% this year

Posted on by Max Sherrill

FACT: U.S. food prices up 3% this year.

THE NUMBERS: Food costs as a share of household income –

2023*   9.8%
2016   9.6%
2012 10.0%
2000 13.6%
1984 14.0%

* BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey. 2023 is the most recent year available; due to the government shutdown, 2024 figures are delayed until December.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Two first-hand accounts of the 1621 “First Thanksgiving” event survive, both concise one-paragraph reports.  Despite the Pilgrims’ austerely religious reputation, both are secular pieces focusing on the food and the participants. Governor Bradford mentions ducks, “great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many,” plus venison, “about a peck a meale a weeke to a person,” and “Indean corn.” His lieutenant Edward Winslow, relating the event to friends in Britain, adds codfish, bass, and the five deer Massasoit and his 90 sachems carried in. Neither mentions cranberries or pumpkin pie. Winslow’s conclusion does, though, offer some reflection on the Pilgrims’ good fortune that year:

“And although it be not always so plentifull, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plentie.”

Four centuries on, the BLS says that as of 2023, Americans spent on average $6,050 a year on “food at home,” and another $3,930 eating out. Taking all these together, the ‘food price’ burden on American families — that is, the cost of food relative to income — has fallen by half since the 1970s and by about 75% in the last century, but not at all over the last decade:

Year Food Budget “Food at Home” Only
2023               9.8%                             5.9%
2016               9.6%                             5.4%
2010               9.8%                             5.8%
2000             13.6%                             6.8%
1984             14.0%                             8.4%
1973             19.1%                                n/a
1950             26.7%                                n/a
1918             38.3%                                n/a

In sum, a very long period of falling food costs appears to have stopped somewhere in the 2010s, and meals now take a bit more of American families’ income than they did during the Obama presidency. This year’s bill is likely to be higher still.  BLS won’t have this year’s consumer spending stats for a while, but the Economic Research Service predicts that food prices will end 2025 about 3% higher than they were last year. So American families aren’t wrong to feel pressure from rising food costs, nor to worry that government policy is pushing them up: tariffs appear to be adding about $1 billion a month to food costs.

Nonetheless, most Americans are still “farre from want.” And as they prepare for this Thursday’s Thanksgiving observance, they have many more choices than the turkeys, fish, corn, and venison available to the Pilgrims and Wampanoags. In that spirit, we wish PPI’s readers, friends, and critics a joyful holiday.

FURTHER READING

Then:

The Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth has two contemporary notes on the first Thanksgiving.

Now:

The Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service reports that Americans spent $2.92 trillion on food last year, with 81% grown, ranched, or otherwise produced locally and 19% brought in from abroad. The 19% “international” share divides into two parts:

  • About 15% of the foods Americans eat arrive for direct sale to consumers. Say, manchego and olive oil from Spain, French wine, Indian spices, Canadian eggs and mushrooms, Thai and Ecuadoran shrimp, winter grapes and raspberries from Chile and Peru, Mexican avocados, South African oranges and wine, Sri Lankan and Kenyan tea and coffee. This has drifted up from 9% in 2000 and 13% in 2013.
  • The other 4% are inputs for U.S. processed-food producers. Think West African cocoa beans for chocolatiers, Canadian flour for bakers, etc, but also inputs such as energy and paper packaging for U.S. food companies. While direct consumer imports have risen, input costs have dropped slightly from the 5% ERS reports for the mid-2010s.

Tariffs:

According to the USDA’s “Global Agricultural Trade System,” Americans bought $212 billion worth of agricultural goods from abroad last year. Seafood, considered a ‘natural resource’ in their accounting, added $25 billion more.

Tariff collection on these products has jumped by about $1 billion a month since Mr. Trump’s April 2 “international emergency” decree: $290 million in August 2024; $1.25 billion in August 2025. With about $20 billion in food products a month, tariffs overall appear to be adding about 5% to the cost of imported food. This month’s retreat on coffee, bananas, cocoa beans, beef, etc. will ease that a bit, but a threatened new 91% tariff on Italian pasta (on top of the 15% coming from the most recent version of the April 2 decree) in January will add some back. More on this one next month.

Data:

BLS’ Consumer Expenditure Survey tells you how much Americans spend, and what they spend it on.

USDA’s “Global Agricultural Trade System” tallies ag exports and imports.

USITC’s Dataweb reports tariff collection (“calculated duties”) by product.

And the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s “FAOSTAT” system provides a worldwide context.

And last:

George Washington’s 470-word 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation — the U.S. government’s first official Thanksgiving observance — came a year after the approval of the Constitution and four days after the first session of Congress closed down. Washington’s government and Congress had achieved quite a lot that year, setting up government departments, creating a revenue system and the Customs Service, organizing federal courts, etc. He strikingly doesn’t brag about it, but instead asks the public to join him in seeking forgiveness for national misdeeds, living up to responsibilities, and trying to do better:

“… that we may unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions — to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually — [and] to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.”

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.

Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.

Libert for The Well News: The Blueprint for Democratic Renewal Lies in New Jersey and Virginia

Posted on by Max Sherrill

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City, while historic, is not the story Democrats should focus on as they look to regain majorities in 2026 and win the presidency in 2028.

Why? Because Mamdani won just 50% of the vote in a reliably blue city — one that has voted Democratic for generations and likely will for generations to come. The real lessons for Democrats can be found in New Jersey and Virginia, where Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger showed us how Democrats can win, and win big, by reconnecting with voters who have largely felt left behind by the Democratic Party.

At the Progressive Policy Institute, we have been speaking with these same kinds of voters. In a report authored by Claire Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, PPI found plenty of evidence that the Democratic Party has moved further from the mainstream values of most Americans.

Keep reading in The Well News.

Mandel in the Wyoming Star: EXCLUSIVE: The Great Build-Out. Part 3. Economics of Data Center Construction.

Posted on by Alex Terr

Dr. Michael Mandel, Chief Economist and Vice President at Progressive Policy Institute, by contrast, leans into the idea that this build-out is more like building railroads than building Pets.com:

“We’ve gone through a long period where “physical” industries such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and much of mining have stagnated compared to digital industries. This stagnation in physical industries has especially hurt states such as Wyoming, which has barely grown since 2019.

AI has the potential to transform physical industries, boosting productivity and incomes and opening up new markets. AI will be especially beneficial to states such as Wyoming, which has shown no productivity growth over the past 15 years.

The growth of AI requires investment in large-scale data centers. Data centers are necessary, both to train the underlying models and to power the applications. This investment is no different, conceptually, from laying down rails for trains or drilling for oil. You need to spend on technology to get the benefits of technology, especially when dealing with the complications of the real world.

Indeed, China is pouring hundreds of billions into advanced technology industries, including AI. In this context, the US wave of data center construction and grid modernization looks like a necessity rather than an optional choice.”

Read more in the Wyoming Star.