Category: Uncategorized

No commercial rubber trees grow in the United States

Posted on by Alex Terr

FACT:  No commercial rubber trees grow in the United States.

THE NUMBERS: Imports of goods by industry type (2024)* –

Industry type  Import value Share of Imports
All identifiable U.S. importers $2.925 trillion 89%
… Manufacturers  $1.220 trillion 37%
… Wholesalers  $0.971 trillion 29%
… All known others  $0.735 trillion 22%
All else, not identified by importer type $0.370 trillion 11%

* Census Bureau.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

As legal devices, the Trump administration’s tariff decrees are faring poorly. The Supreme Court killed most of Plan A — “emergency” declarations under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — in February. The specialized Court of International Trade found Plan B, a Section 122 claim that the U.S. is in the midst of a “balance of payments crisis,” illegal last Thursday: 

“Because the Proclamation’s use of trade and current account deficits to stand in the place of balance-of-payment deficits within the meaning of the statute renders the Proclamation ultra vires … Proclamation No. 11012 is invalid, and the tariffs imposed on Plaintiffs are unauthorized by law.”
Plan C, announced in March and probably going live in July, disinters a third old trade law (“Section 301”), hoping to use it to impose tariffs on allegations of “structural excess capacity” and forced labor law. (PPI’s unimpressed comment here.) Court rulings on this one will presumable coming next year. In the interim, a reality check: if the administration’s decrees are struggling as a legal matter, are they nonetheless achieving their real-world economic goals? 

A year ago, the administration said that while tariff increases might cause pain, this would be transitory. Though prices might go up, and living standards for American waitresses, teachers, truck drivers, and auto mechanics might fall, new manufacturing output and jobs would compensate with better opportunities. A year later, this hasn’t happened: manufacturers have shed about 100,000 jobs, and their “GDP” share is down from 9.8% to 9.4%. Why not? A likely explanation is that the administration’s mental picture of both “trade” and “manufacturing” was naïve: manufacturers are far larger importers than it realized, and a lot of the tariff burden has fallen on them. Two examples, then the big-picture point:

  1. Metal tariffs and container chassis-making: Sitting next to PPI’s Ed Gresser at the U.S. Trade Representative Office’s “public hearing” on Plan C last Friday, a lawyer for U.S.-based makers of container chassis for trucks argued that foreign chassis-makers are getting various tax breaks and other supports from their governments, and unfairly competing to sell the low-priced result to American trucking companies, so tariffs on Chinese-made chassis have simply shifted production to other countries.

Whether or not foreign chassis have gotten too cheap, the administration’s tariff decrees are definitely making the U.S.-made version more expensive. Last June’s “Section 232” tariff decree — not legally challenged so far, and thus fully in force — imposed a 50% tariff on steel on “national security” grounds. According to the Commerce Department, American buyers of steel now pay an average of $971 per ton for their metal, more than twice the $460 average their overseas competitors pay. A 40-foot container chassis costing about $25,000 requires about three tons of steel, and this price gap means the U.S. version now starts out $1,500 in the hole against foreign rivals — even before the potential Plan C tariffs on screws, coatings, rivets, lathes, sandblasters, gantry welders, laser cutters, positioning tables, etc., and all the inputs and capital equipment needed to make things out of metal.

  1. Natural rubber tariffs and airplane tire-making: The March “Federal Register Notice” announcing Plan C cites a “trade surplus in rubber” as grounds for putting Thailand on its 16-country investigation list. Thailand does indeed have such a surplus, but this is natural — in economic terms, a consequence of Southeast Asia’s “absolute advantage” in rubber trees — and a Plan C tariff on Thai rubber would help nobody and harm lots of American manufacturers.

To explain, the U.S. uses about 3 million tons of rubber a year. This includes 1 million tons of natural rubber produced by rubber-tree tapping, and 2 million tons of artificial rubber produced in factories. They aren’t substitutes for one another: artificial rubber is less chemically active and therefore preferred for gaskets, fan belts, tubes, and the soles of shoes; natural rubber, being stretchier and more friction-resistant, is the main material for airplane and truck tires, as well as for condoms, surgical gloves, construction joints, and medical devices.  

All natural rubber comes from abroad — mainly Southeast Asia, secondarily West Africa — because the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, is a tropical plant which thrives in hot, rainy climates. (Curious D.C. Metro residents can see one in the U.S. Botanical Gardens’ climate-controlled Tropics Room near the Capitol.) Since rubber trees don’t grow in places with cold winters, the U.S. produces no natural rubber at all. Tariffs on natural rubber, no matter how high, won’t bring rubber-tree plantation jobs to Minnesota or North Carolina, but will raise costs and reduce sales for every U.S. manufacturer of airplane and truck tires, vibration dampers in bridges, specialized medical equipment, and so on.

These specific cases illustrate a systematic administration error: a belief that “trade” operates on something like 19th-century terms, with manufacturers buying raw materials, farmers and miners exporting bulk commodities, and countries competing to export finished manufactured goods. This wasn’t exactly true then, and hasn’t been close to reality since the 1950s. Just-in-time delivery, supply chains, and coordinated production mean the largest amount of trade is in “intermediate” goods — neither raw materials nor finished stuff, but parts and components used to assemble more complex things. The largest U.S. importers are accordingly not “buyers of finished goods” such as retail chains, hospitals, construction firms, restaurants, and so forth. Instead, they are the chassis-makers buying metals, the airplane-tire-makers buying natural rubber, and other manufacturers buying energy, paint, screws, semiconductor chips, etc., so as to turn these “inputs” into final products or “semi-finished goods” they then sell to others. So though tariffs on steel may benefit steel companies, those benefits only come at the expense of chassis-makers and other metal-users; and tariffs natural rubber are pure losses for U.S. manufacturing.

Statistically, the Census’s annual “Profile of Importing and Exporting Companies” release last Tuesday credits manufacturers with $1.2 trillion in imports — over 40% of the total import value they could identify by industry. That suggests last year’s tariff decrees likely hit U.S. manufacturers with $150 billion or so in new costs. So as the tariffs raised prices for the waitresses, teachers, truck operators, and repair-shop mechanics, they also made it more expensive to operate factories in the United States. Thus no industrial boom has materialized.

In sum: So far, legal judgments on the administration’s tariff decrees haven’t been positive. Real-world economic impacts, likewise.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

  • Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
  • Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
  • Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
  • Offer a positive alternative.

Data:

Census counts U.S. importers and exporters by industry type, company size, etc., as of 2024 (see Table 1d for the importers), and finds that manufacturers are the largest importers.

Legal update:

Plan A: The April 2nd, 2025, “international emergency” decree. Now defunct.

… the Supreme Court’s February 20 ruling striking it down.

Plan A(ii): The June 3, 2025, steel “national security” decree is an exception since it hasn’t so far faced legal challenge and is still in effect.

Plan B: The February 26, 2026, “balance of payments crisis” decree, ruled illegal last week with appeal pending.

… the Court of International Trade’s ruling striking it down last Thursday.

Plan C: The U.S. Trade Representative Office’s “Structural Excess Capacity” investigation, with a gloomy assessment of how “reindustrialization” is going, and a memorably loopy explanation of “Structural Excess Capacity”:

“The Trump Administration’s reindustrialization efforts continue to face significant challenges due to foreign economies’ structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors. Across numerous sectors, many U.S. trading partners are producing more goods than they can consume domestically. This overproduction displaces existing U.S. domestic production or prevents investment and expansion in U.S. manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online. In many sectors, the United States has lost substantial domestic production capacity or has fallen worryingly behind foreign competitors.”

PPI’s Gresser testified on the “Plan C” 301 investigation last week. (Quick summary: inconsistent with the statute and a breach of the separation of powers; economically irrational; data unpersuasive and at times irrelevant.)

… and in Monday’s Wall Street Journal (subs. req.)

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.

Manno for Flypaper: The small federal charter school program that helped grow public school choice

Posted on by Alex Terr

National Charter Schools Week (May 10 to 16) rightly focuses our attention on the millions of students attending public charter schools. Less attention goes to the federal program that helped make much of that growth possible.

Today, charter schools are often treated as a partisan education fight. But the federal Charter Schools Program, or CSP, has a more practical, bipartisan story. Congress created it in 1994 as part of the Improving America’s Schools Act, the Clinton-era reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Created to help launch new charter schools, replicate strong models, and support facilities financing, CSP remains a modest federal tool with a large public purpose: helping communities create more quality K–12 public school options.

It remains the only federal program specifically dedicated to expanding public charter school choice nationwide. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools describes CSP as a catalyst that helps educators and communities create new public school options rather than a federal effort to run schools from Washington.

Read more in Flypaper

Canter in The Heartlander: Mississippi’s educational turnaround was a marathon, not a miracle, experts say

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

Rachel Canter, one of the experts, directs education policy for the Progressive Policy Institute. She wrote a paper documenting changes over the last 20 years. Although the “Mississippi miracle” is associated with the rise in reading scores, the state has also boosted math scores as part of larger reforms.

“It’s a bigger story,” she said. The state met the national average in reading in 2019 and has exceeded it since COVID-19, a time when many states have struggled, but fourth- and eighth-grade math scores also now exceed the national average.

“If you adjust these data for our demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 in the country at both fourth- and eighth-grade math, and at fourth-grade reading, and we’re No. 4 in eighth-grade reading,” she said.

[…]

Read more in The Heartlander

Kahlenberg for The Atlantic: The Democrats Can’t Let Go of Racial Preferences

Posted on by Alex Terr

Racial preferences in college admissions have long been deeply unpopular, and three years ago, the Supreme Court declared them unlawful, in a sweeping ruling that portended doom for other race-conscious policies to promote diversity or remedy past discrimination. Some research indicates that, in the aftermath of the civil-rights era, the achievement gap between rich and poor students now dwarfs the gap between white and Black students. Even so, well-intentioned blue-state Democrats keep pushing for race-based affirmative action, to their own political detriment, rather than supporting a much fairer policy of providing a leg up to economically disadvantaged people of all races.

In February, the California State Assembly passed, by a 54–14 vote, a measure seeking to place on the November ballot a change in the state constitution to allow racial preferences in K–12 education and in higher-education scholarships. (The state Senate has not yet acted on the measure.) In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a 375-page Racial Equity Plan last month that said, “New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation and racial oppression”; among other measures, the plan reaffirms the city’s intent to steer contracts to minority-owned businesses. Late last year, Democratic supermajorities in the Maryland House and Senate overrode Governor Wes Moore’s veto of legislation to study reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.

In huge swaths of the country, the Democratic brand has become anathema. The party will struggle to recapture the White House and reclaim the Senate unless it can persuade some red-state voters to take a fresh look at it. One obvious move would be for the Democrats, who have hemorrhaged working-class voters, to abandon their stubborn support for politically radioactive racial preferences. Significantly more Americans believe that economically disadvantaged people of any race deserve special consideration in admissions and employment decisions, and such efforts do not run afoul of laws against racial discrimination. Nevertheless, many Democrats cannot bring themselves to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling—or the public’s attitude—even when doing so would help their prospects immensely.

Read more in The Atlantic

Manno for The 74: How Charter Schools Can Help Strengthen K-12 Public Education for the Future

Posted on by Alex Terr

Charter schools are now an enduring part of American K-12 public education. It’s time for policymakers and K-12 stakeholders to stop the foolish argument about whether these schools should exist. They’re here and aren’t going away. The real question is what the next phase of chartering should aim to achieve.

There are several answers to that question. I think one at the top of the list is figuring out how to use the tools that chartering developed, like performance contracting, authorizing, school-level autonomy, mission-driven governance and better measures of student success, to modernize all of U.S. public education for a changing economy and society.

No doubt, some of this has already occurred, as the charter idea has increasingly shaped mainstream expectations about how public schools should operate. — for example, innovation zones and portfolio school management. The challenge now is to ensure that chartering becomes a quality-and-opportunity strategy for all of K-12 public education.

Read more in The 74

Manno for Philanthropy Daily: How Charter Schools Create Opportunity—and What Donors Can Do Next

Posted on by Alex Terr

Many donors want to create genuine educational opportunity for young people who have too few good K–12 public school options. They see strong schools as an integral part of a healthy civil society where families exercise agency, communities build trust, and young people gain the knowledge, habits, and relationships they need to participate in American life.

This year’s National Charter Schools Week invites donors to look beyond the ubiquitous political debate on charter schools and focus on how they can create more charter schools that are flexible, accountable, and built around student and family needs.

That combination of freedom plus accountability in the service of families and kids was the original charter idea and remains the reason charter schools continue to matter.

Read more in Philanthropy Daily

Manno for Governing: An Honest Conversation We Need About Data Centers

Posted on by Alex Terr

America doesn’t need a simple yes-or-no debate over data centers. It needs a better civic compact to honestly weigh their benefits and costs.

Data centers are a rapidly growing and essential part of the country’s basic infrastructure. A country that wants to lead in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and digital innovation cannot treat large-scale computing capacity as optional.

But communities shouldn’t confuse national importance with automatic local benefit. The right question isn’t whether data centers should be built but on what terms states and communities should welcome them.

Data centers bring enormous capital investment, expanding the tax base and creating a burst of construction work. But they’re not large long-term job machines. Virginia’s experience shows that while the industry can generate large economic benefits, most employment impact is from construction rather than ongoing operations.

Read more in Governing

Ainsley in IPS Journal: ‘Britain is moving into a multi-party era’

Posted on by Alex Terr

[…]

Labour suffered a historic defeat in last week’s local elections, leaving both the party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer badly weakened. In response, Starmer tried to regain the initiative with a forceful speech. Did he succeed?

He made a strong speech yesterday in making the case for why his government should be allowed to continue. It was quite personal, which is something he hasn’t always been able to do. But there are still many question marks over whether his leadership will last until the end of this Parliament, which is what he was elected to do. Principally because of concerns within his own parliamentary party following Thursday’s election results and a fairly long run-up of rumbling discontent about whether he really has the credentials to lead the country in a moment of global uncertainty and domestic difficulty. However, it remains to be seen whether it will be enough for the parliamentary party to get behind him.

Starmer insisted he would fight any leadership challenge and would not walk away from his responsibilities as prime minister. How secure is his position?

Technically, he was elected for five years, so there doesn’t have to be another election until July 2029. On paper, he is in a secure position and he’s got a big majority in Parliament. Theoretically, he should be able to get through the laws the government wants to pass.

In practice, however, his position has been weakened by these elections and by growing discontent in the country, which had already been visible in the opinion polls beforehand. The elections really confirmed what the polls have been saying for some time: like in a number of other European countries, the main centre-ground parties – both Labour and the Conservatives – are losing support to Reform UK on the right and the Green Party on the left.

And this is the first time that has really happened in the UK. I think the multi-party element of what’s happening is being overlooked. There is a lot of fixation on Keir Starmer and Labour without fully recognising that voters are abandoning the traditional centre-ground parties and moving towards what were previously minority parties. But none of those parties currently commands more than about a quarter of the electorate.

[…]

Read more in IPS Journal

Advanced Recycling Could More Than Double U.S. Plastic Recycling Rates, New PPI Report Shows

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (May 12, 2026) — A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) finds that expanding advanced recycling at existing oil refineries and new standalone facilities nationwide can more than double the U.S. plastic recycling rate from 9% to between 19-23%.

Authored by Stuart Malec, PPI’s Vice President of Public Affairs, “The Waste Diversion Benefits of Expanding Advanced Recycling,” outlines how traditional mechanical recycling is limited due to its inability to recycle ‘flexible plastics’ such as shopping bags and plastic films or plastics contaminated by food or oil residue. Advanced recycling, which uses chemical processes like pyrolysis to break plastics down to the molecular level, can fill in the gap and convert plastic waste into raw materials that can be used to make new products.

“Scaling up advanced recycling efforts will lead to significant environmental and economic benefits,” said Malec. “Increasing the amount of  plastic waste that can be successfully recycled will not only benefit the planet, but will also collectively save communities across the country millions of dollars in their waste disposal budgets.”

Key findings from the report include:

  • Short-term deployment of advanced recycling could raise the nationwide plastic recycling rate from 9% to 19% while potentially reaching 23% in the long-term.
  • Local municipalities could save between $229.7 million-$327.5 million per year in avoided landfill tipping fees, defined as charges per ton to dispose of waste.
  • States with historically low recycling rates can use existing oil refineries to implement advanced recycling technology, raising their landfill diversion rates.

While advanced recycling can curb dangerous environmental effects and benefit local economies, Malec argues that there needs to be a regulatory framework that strengthens the economic incentives to collect plastic waste.

“Clear policy is essential for this innovative technology to achieve its full potential in waste diversion and economic impact,” said Malec. “Without a clear policy framework, more and more plastic waste will continue ending up in landfills instead of being reused in the economy.”

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 at @ppi.

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

Ainsley on ABC Australia’s Radio National Breakfast: More than 80 Labour MPs are now calling for the British Prime Minister to resign

Posted on by Alex Terr

Critics and supporters of the British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are asking how long he can hold the top job.

More than 80 Labour MPs have now publicly urged Sir Keir to resign immediately or draw up an exit timetable, with four ministers stepping down.

Meanwhile more than 100 Labour MPs have signed a statement opposing a leadership contest. So which side will prevail?

Listen on ABC Australia

The Waste Diversion Benefits of Expanding Advanced Recycling

Posted on by Alex Terr

Advanced recycling offers a unique potential solution to the problem of plastic waste. Conventional mechanical recycling is limited by technological and logistical issues, particularly the inability to process plastic waste contaminated by food or oil residue. Mechanical recycling is also not designed to recycle the millions of tons of flexible plastics (e.g., shopping bags and plastic films) generated each year, which means those plastic products must be sent to landfills. Existing recycling initiatives have shown promise, but not at the scale required to meaningfully reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in landfills.

A distinct advantage of advanced recycling over mechanical recycling is that, through chemical processes like pyrolysis, advanced recycling facilities can reduce plastics down to the molecular level. This means that a broader range of plastics, including flexible plastics, can be recycled at advanced recycling facilities compared to mechanical ones. Advanced recycling facilities are complementary to existing mechanical recycling facilities: together, both types of facilities form an “all-of-the-above” solution to recycling plastic waste.

In addition to broadening the types of plastic materials that can be recycled, advanced recycling expands the geographical extent of recycling efforts. Advanced recycling technology can be added to oil refineries, integrating plastic waste into their processes as a feedstock. Many existing oil refineries are located in states that historically have had low recycling rates, such as Louisiana, which currently has an estimated total plastic recycling rate of just 6%.

Advanced recycling could deliver economic benefits to municipalities beyond the benefits of plastic waste diversion. Landfills charge a “tipping fee” per ton of waste collected. Because recycling diverts plastic waste away from landfills, advanced recycling could save between $230 million and $328 million in tipping fees per year for municipalities across the U.S. For example, Los Angeles County, CA, could save between $3 to $6 million in tipping fees while Harris County, TX, could save up to $22 million.

Despite the potential environmental and economic benefits of advanced recycling technology, the advanced recycling industry lacks the regulatory framework necessary for a robust market for plastic waste to form. Absent strong economic incentives to collect, sort, and transport waste to advanced recycling facilities, the scale of the industry and its realized benefits will be constrained.

Read the full report.

Manno for Real Clear Education: How the Charter School Idea Reshaped Public Education: From Boutique to Baseline

Posted on by Alex Terr

The most important charter school story today isn’t how many students they serve or whether they outperform district schools. While those questions matter, they’re too narrow. National Charter Schools Week invites us to talk about the bigger story of how the charter school idea has reshaped American K–12 public education.

When the charter idea emerged in the early 1990s, it was framed as a way to create independent public schools of choice with more freedom over how they operated but more accountability for what students learned.

In 1999, that goal led National Urban League President Hugh Price to propose that policymakers “charterize all urban schools” to liberate them from “stifling district bureaucracy” and give them “the latitude to operate.”

While charter schools haven’t replaced traditional K–12 public schools, they’ve done something arguably more consequential. They’ve changed what families, educators, and policymakers expect from all public schools. What was a boutique innovation is increasingly a baseline expectation.

Read more in Real Clear Education

Gresser for The Wall Street Journal: The ‘Overproduction’ Excuse for Trump’s Tariffs

Posted on by Alex Terr

Since the Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs in February, administration officials have been working to revive the levies using different trade laws. They implemented a 10% across-the-board tariff, which the Court of International Trade held illegal on Thursday. But the White House is using another strategy, which descends through the fjords of Norway and puddles of Bangladeshi cement into economic absurdity.

In mid-March, the administration announced it would investigate 16 economies under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows Washington to impose tariffs on countries with policies that burden or restrict U.S. commerce.

The targets of this probe, from giants like China and the European Union to little Norway, stand accused of “structural excess capacity.” The phrase isn’t something economic literature explains, but U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer’s office describes it essentially as countries’ producing more manufactured goods than they reasonably ought to. The administration uses the concept to claim that two normal features of economies, including America’s, are predatory.

Read more in The Wall Street Journal

PPI Challenges Trump Administration’s ‘Structural Excess Capacity’ Investigation as Legally Flawed and Economically Unfounded

Posted on by Alex Terr

WASHINGTON (May 8, 2026) — The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today challenged the Trump administration’s Section 301 investigation into alleged “structural excess capacity” in 16 economies, arguing the probe misuses trade law, rests on economically unsound premises, and lacks evidence of the foreign government practices it purports to address.

Ed Gresser, PPI Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets, delivered the critique during a public hearing before the Section 301 Committee, testifying that senior administration officials have candidly stated the investigation’s true goal is to recreate tariff rates the Supreme Court invalidated in February on constitutional grounds, a purpose Section 301 was never designed to serve.

Gresser systematized three core defects in the USTR’s March 11 Federal Register Notice initiating the probe:

  1. Misuse of Trade Law: Treasury Secretary Bessent explicitly stated the administration intends to use Section 301 to replace tariff revenue lost when the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This goal is inconsistent with Section 301’s statutory purpose and raises fundamental separation-of-powers concerns, Gresser argued.
  2. Incoherent Premise: The concept of “structural excess capacity,” defined as countries producing more goods than they consume domestically, is not economically abnormal or inherently problematic. Gresser noted that the U.S. itself exports far more aerospace products, almonds, and natural gas than Americans consume, citing Boeing’s delivery of 391 aircraft to overseas customers last year and American farmers’ export of over one million tons of almonds.
  3. Unconvincing Data: The Federal Register Notice cites a global manufacturing capacity utilization rate of 75% as evidence of excess capacity. Yet the U.S. manufacturing sector itself operates at 75.2% utilization. Specific country examples – for example, complaints about Norwegian fish production, Cambodian clothing, and Bangladeshi cement – further illustrate the investigation’s illogic. Norway, with deep oxygen-rich fjords and a small population, naturally produces fish for world markets. Cambodia has comparative advantage in garment production, and maintains a long-term national trade deficit despite a bilateral surplus with the U.S. And Bangladesh’s cement industry, cited as an example of excess capacity, has never meaningfully exported cement to America at all and thus cannot burden U.S. commerce.

PPI does not support broad tariff increases as economic policy, noting that tariffs function as regressive taxes that disproportionately burden lower-income households and goods-intensive industries, including farming, manufacturing, and construction. Despite administration hopes that higher tariffs would expand U.S. manufacturing, the sector has shed jobs and lost economic share since 2024.

Read and download the testimony 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 at @ppi.

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

Marshall for The Hill: America at 250: Battling over National Identity

Posted on by Alex Terr

President Trump promises “monumental” and “spectacular” celebrations this year to mark the 250th anniversary of American independence. For example, on June 14 — his 80th birthday — the White House will host an Ultimate Fighting Championship match.

For this most combative of presidents, nothing honors America like young men punching and kicking the heck out of each other in the Rose Garden.

Despite Trump’s bombastic notions of American greatness — or perhaps because of them — the nation’s deep political fractures cast a pall on its 250th birthday party. Reaching this milestone should be an occasion for reaffirming the nation’s founding precepts and our never-ending struggle to live up to them. Instead, we’re relitigating the most basic question of national identity: What does it mean to be an American?

During the 1976 bicentennial celebration, there wasn’t much controversy about the answer. Both Democrats and Republicans laid claim to the ideals that animated the American Revolution: individual freedom, equality and popular self-rule. Where they differed was in how they interpreted and applied these overarching principles.

But Trump seems to regard them as pious claptrap, a fig leaf for the one thing he does respect: a ruthless will to power. Vice President JD Vance likewise rejects the “creedal” understanding of American identity, which he sees as anchored more firmly in ethnicity, religion and attachment to place than in arid abstractions about liberty and democracy.

Read more in The Hill