Trade Archives - Progressive Policy Institute

U.S. Customs blocks about $0.8 billion worth of goods a year on suspicion of ‘forced labor’

Posted on April 8, 2026April 8, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: U.S. Customs blocks about $0.8 billion worth of goods a year on suspicion of ‘forced labor.’

THE NUMBERS: For 2021 –

World goods exports	$22.290 trillion
U.S. goods imports	$2.849 trillion
Illegal profit from industrial and agricultural forced labor*	$40 billion
US imports blocked by CBP for suspected forced labor content	<$1 billion

* International Labour Organization estimates, 2024. “Industry” includes manufacturing, mining, construction, and utilities.
** CBP statistics.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, explains the Trump administration’s plan to replace its 2025 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariff decrees with new ones using different laws:

“Six Justices … ruled that IEEPA authorities cannot be used to raise even one dollar of revenue. This administration will invoke alternative legal authorities to replace the IEEPA tariffs. We will be leveraging Section 232 [a “national security” law run by the Commerce Department] and Section 301 [see below] tariff authorities that have been validated through thousands of legal challenges. Treasury’s estimates show that the use of Section 122 authority, combined with potentially enhanced Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs, will result in virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026.”

Six weeks later, Bessent’s neighbors at the U.S. Representative Office have now duly launched two “Section 301” cases. The first, on “Structural Excess Capacity,” says manufacturing industries in 16 trading partners are too big. (Our view in short: it’s neither economically nor legally serious, and has an inappropriate acronym.) The second charges that the top 60 U.S. trading partners — from the European Union to the Bahamas — are hurting America’s economy by failing to sufficiently combat trade in goods produced by forced labor. This one also seems legally shaky, but at least identifies a real phenomenon and moral challenge. Some observations:

U.S. law has barred imports of goods made by prisoners since the “McKinley Tariff” of 1890. (Though at least one U.S. prison routinely exports goods made by inmates; see below.) The 1930 Tariff Act (“Smoot-Hawley”) then banned imports of goods made with forced labor, unless buyers could show there was no available U.S. substitute. Most recently, an Obama-era law passed in 2016 banned any imports of goods with a “reasonable suspicion” of forced labor content. In sum, for the past decade the U.S. has banned all forced labor imports.

“Section 301,” a trade law dating to 1974, allows U.S. administrations to identify “an act, policy, or practice” of a foreign government which is in some way “unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce,” and gives them a right to use tariffs as a negotiating tool to fix the problem. USTR’s argument for using it here runs as follows: (a) many foreign countries lack a law banning imports of goods made with forced labor like America’s, so (b) they may be incorporating forced labor goods as inputs to their manufacturing industries, which (c) might allow them to produce goods more cheaply than similar American stuff, and therefore (d) this would justify a U.S. tariff to offset this supposed advantage.

1. Law: As a legal matter, then, their argument is that the absence of a particular policy — a law similar to America’s — is the same as actually having the requisite unreasonable policy. This sounds like a stretch, but courts will decide.

2. Economics: USTR’s Federal Register Notice announcing the investigation doesn’t offer evidence that countries on its list are buying any forced labor goods, but says that “none of these countries has adopted and effectively enforced a forced labor import prohibition to date,” and this “may negatively affect U.S. commerce.” How much, then, can we really know? Reliable facts on forced labor are scarce — as is typical of criminal enterprises — but international research and U.S. data both suggest that the scale of forced-labor trade is probably small.

* International evidence: International Labour Organization reports in 2022 and 2024 (which USTR uses as points of reference for its “301” investigation), say that 27.6 million of the world’s 3.22 billion workers were in various forms of forced labor as of 2021 — most commonly, people trapped in jobs when executives withhold pay or confiscate passports. This includes 8.4 million in “industry” (by which the ILO means manufacturing, mining, utilities, and construction), out of an 800-million worldwide total, and 2.1 million of 916 million farm and agriculture workers. They say forced labor is “highest in severity and scale” in “informal micro- and small enterprises operating at the lower links of supply chains in high-risk sectors and locations,” and that with respect to trade destined for wealthier countries, forced labor is likely most common in “raw materials production in the lower tiers of supply chains of consumer goods.”

“Illegal profits” from forced labor, the ILO researchers believe, totaled $236 billion in 2021. About three-quarters of this – $172 billion – came from sex trafficking. Forced-labor profits “industry” totaled $35 billion, and from agriculture $5 billion. The ILO doesn’t speculate on how much of the combined $40 billion came from purely domestic sales and construction contracts, and how much from exports of goods. But in an extreme case, if all of the $40 billion came from goods exports, about 0.2% of the world’s $22.3 trillion in 2021 goods exports would contain some forced labor content. As to effects on trade flows, if forced-labor businesses sold at market prices and pocketed the full $40 billion in profits at the expense of exploited workers, there wouldn’t be a price effect or a “burden on commerce,” but it seems likely that they would sell somewhat cheaper, losing some profit but gaining illicit market share.

* American data: Since passage of the 2016 law, CBP has imposed 55 “Work Release Orders” to block imports of goods worth $3.08 billion, or about $400 million a year. Seizures under a second law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, were about the same. Annual U.S. goods imports during this time averaged a bit above $3 trillion, so the combined $0.8 billion in seizures would be about 0.03% of U.S. import value. Meanwhile, as former U.S. trade/labor negotiator Desiree LeClercq notes, neither the 1930 nor the 2016 law actually bans export of U.S.-made goods produced with forced labor. DHS reporting, for example, shows that 5% of forced labor prosecutions in the United States show up in agriculture, and an unstated but non-zero number in manufacturing, so some U.S. exports to other countries may also contain forced-labor content.

In sum, international research and U.S. data do suggest that some products flowing between countries are made by coerced workers. But the total is likely small relative to trade flows or U.S. industry — and to the $166 billion IEEPA tariffs Bessent wants to restore. And again, the USTR hasn’t provided evidence that countries on its 60-partner list are knowing (or even unwitting) buyers. Nor for that matter is the U.S. law necessarily the world’s best: LeClercq argues that the European Union’s forced labor policy, set to enter into force next year, is better than America’s, since its program does ban exports of European goods made with forced labor, and has stronger due process rules on import cases.

3. Conclusion: International trade isn’t the core forced labor problem, and forced labor likely has only a modest influence on trade flows. But a systematic program to reduce the amount of forced labor worldwide — including keeping forced-labor goods out of the U.S. and forced-labor U.S. goods out of world markets, as will as improving laws and compliance elsewhere — would be admirable regardless of the problem’s scale. And if the administration wants ideas for such a program, it needn’t look far: the Biden administration actually ran one, combining USAID and Labor Department project support with CBP enforcement programs, diplomacy, and trade negotiations.

Bessent’s comments, though, indicate that the Trump administration simply plans to use forced labor as a pretext to recreate the IEEPA tariffs, just as its first IEEPA decrees in 2025 used fentanyl deaths as a pretext for tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods. This isn’t admirable. And if courts take Bessent at his word, they may conclude that the investigation is an illegal use of Section 301, meant not to address a “burden on U.S. commerce” but to bypass Congress and create a new tariff system by decree. As we’ve said before, the Constitution gives Congress, not presidents, the power to set tax rates, including tariffs. If the administration wants a higher tariff rate, it should simply follow the Constitution and ask Congress to pass a bill.

U.S. Gasoline Prices Rose from $2.98 to $4.02 per Gallon Last Month

Posted on April 1, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: U.S. gasoline prices rose from $2.98 to $4.02 per gallon last month.

THE NUMBERS: Price increases since late February –

Crude oil	90%
Polyethylene (plastic base)	37%
Gasoline	36%*
Urea (fertilizer base)	12%

* American Automobile Association (AAA) calculations for the United States, regular grade.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Named for a medieval Arab kingdom famous enough for its 17th-century wealth to serve as a chapter headline in Paradise Lost, the Strait of Hormuz connects the mostly land-locked Persian Gulf to the open-water Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean. A look at the implications, and the impact to date, of its closure:

Geography: The Strait is one of 24 narrow, heavily traveled ocean channels (“maritime chokepoints”) supply-chain analysts identified in Nature last November as posing special global-economy risk from natural disasters, shipping accidents, pirate attacks, and conflicts. Shaped like an upside-down “U,” it is about 110 miles long and 30 miles wide — Iran’s Bandar Abbas port on the north, Oman’s Musandam governate on the south — and 200 meters deep. A large ship needs about two hours for the transit.
Use: The Strait is the maritime outlet for nearly all the energy the four small Gulf monarchies (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates) produce, and for about 90% of Iranian and Iraqi output. About 100 vessels a day transited last year, like cars on a highway, with incoming ships using a two-mile-wide northern “lane” near Iran and outgoing vessels a similar “lane” on the southern side. Container ships and roll-on/roll-off vessels ferry in consumer goods and cars, while oil tankers and bulk carriers carry out aluminum, fertilizer, crude oil, and natural gas. Tanker traffic usually totaled about 35 vessels per day, carrying an average of 40 million barrels of oil to customers abroad. A table of energy exports drawn from World Trade Organization data covers more than crude and LNG, but gives a sense of scale:

World Fuel Exports, 2024	$3,122 billion
Via Strait of Hormuz	$592 billion
United Arab Emirates	$286 billion
Iraq	$100 billion
Qatar	$78 billion
Kuwait	$69 billion
Iran	$47 billion
Bahrain	$12 billion

Disruption: Persian Gulf energy mainly goes to Asian customers — India, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, ASEAN members — with Europe and a smaller buyer, but the market disruption affects the world. As one illuminating data point, insurance for a Strait transit was about 0.2% of the value of a tanker last winter, and is now said to be 4% to 10%. In practical terms, that would mean insurers were charging shipping lines about $200,000 for a transit a month ago, and now $4 million to $10 million.

Since the Trump administration opened its campaign at the end of February, Strait transits have dropped by about 96%, and tanker transits appear to be running at one or two per day. This implies about 280 million “barrels” of oil taken out of the world market, or roughly 20% of the worldwide oil supply. With a sudden contraction in energy supply, and no change in Asia’s need for it, prices have risen fast. Crude oil jumped from $55 per barrel at the end of February to about $100 per barrel by mid-March, and stayed there.

Prices: As crude oil prices rise, refined fuels and petroleum-based manufactured goods — plastics, synthetic fabrics, dyes, and some chemical fertilizers — follow them up. Crude oil costs are half the cost of gasoline, where prices are especially easy to track, and markets respond quickly. According to the American Automobile Association, U.S. gas prices averaged $2.98 per gallon (for “regular” quality gasoline) the week before the war, and topped $4.00 yesterday. Using this morning’s $4.06 average, the near-doubling of crude oil prices has now raised gas prices by more than a third. Diesel prices are up a bit more, by 45%, to a $5.38 average. Sustained for a year, this would cost a middle-income family about $950 (assuming no change in driving habits), a bit more than their spending on “personal care products” like soaps, makeup, and shaving supplies. The common use of petroleum in these things – paraffin wax in lipstick, skin creams, plastic packaging — means their prices will be rising too.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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Transparency International: U.S. government perceived as increasingly corrupt

Posted on March 25, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Transparency International: U.S. government perceived as increasingly corrupt

THE NUMBERS: U.S. worldwide ranking in Transparency International’s annual “Corruption Perceptions Index”* –

2025	29
2015	16
2005	17
1995	15

* The 2025 Index places the U.S 29th among 182 countries and territories. By comparison, the U.S. placed 16th among 180 in the 2015 Index, and 15th among 159 in the 2005 Index. The 1995 edition was the first and had only 41 countries and territories.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

From the D.C. Circuit Court opinion a week ago Friday, quashing the Trump administration’s attempt to indict Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell:

“The case asks: Did prosecutors issue those subpoenas for a proper purpose? The Court finds that they did not. There is abundant evidence that the subpoenas’ dominant (if not sole) purpose is to harass and pressure Powell either to yield to the President or to resign and make way for a Fed Chair who will. On the other side of the scale, the Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President. The Court must thus conclude that the asserted justifications for these subpoenas are mere pretexts.”

The subpoenas (ostensibly about renovation costs for the Fed’s D.C. headquarters, but really, the Court concludes, an attempt to coerce the Fed on interest rate policy) are — or “were,” assuming the opinion holds — one in a series of Justice Department attempts to charge prominent administration opponents and critics. Other recent ones include Fed Governor Lisa Cook, six Members of Congress, ex-FBI head James Comey, and the New York Attorney General. So far, all have failed. They’re probably leaving a mark on America’s reputation, though. One way to judge this –

Each spring since 1995, the international corruption-monitoring NGO Transparency International has published a “Corruption Perceptions Index,” which ranks most of the world’s governments for perceived corruption. Their Index uses 13 international surveys done by academics, consultancies, international organizations, and other up-close observers of government, each asking about various forms of corruption: bribery, officials using their jobs for personal gain (including political as well as financial), whistle-blower protection, crony capitalism (“state capture by narrow vested interests”), and so on. The collated survey results produce a country’s “corruption perception score,” ranging from a theoretically most corrupt “zero” score to the cleanest possible governance at 100. The current method, yielding comparable numbers over time, goes back to 2012. Its highest-ever scores were the “91” ratings for Denmark and New Zealand in the mid-2010s, and its lowest was last year’s “8” for South Sudan.

TI’s releases are rarely upbeat. The newest, out last month and covering the year 2025, is especially gloomy:

“The global order is under strain from rivalry among major powers, and dangerous disregard for international norms. Armed conflicts and the climate crisis are having a deadly impact. Societies are also becoming more polarised. To meet these challenges, the world needs principled leaders and strong independent institutions that act with integrity to protect the public interest. Yet too often, we are seeing a failure of good government and accountable leadership. In many places, leaders point to security, economic or geopolitical issues as reasons to centralise power, sideline checks and roll back commitments to internationally agreed standards — including anti-corruption measures. Too often, they treat transparency, independent scrutiny and accountability to the public as optional.”

This Index edition covers 182 governments, and puts Denmark, Finland, and Singapore at the top with respective “scores” of 89, 88, and 84. Venezuela, Somalia, and South Sudan are at the bottom, with 10, 9, and 9; South Africa, Trinidad, and Vietnam define the middle at 41. To select a bright spot, TI credits 11 countries with steady improvement over time: Estonia, Korea, Bhutan, and Seychelles as building from relatively good starting positions, and Albania, Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Laos, Senegal, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan as rising steadily from lower initial scores. Their view of the U.S., though, is bleak. Not only is the American government’s image eroding, they say, but its recent policy choices are having systemic impacts beyond American borders:

“The United States sustained its slide to its lowest-ever score. While the full impact of 2025 developments are not yet reflected, recent actions, such as targeting independent voices and undermining judicial independence, raise serious concerns. Beyond the CPI findings, the temporary freeze and weakening of enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signal tolerance for corrupt business practices, while cuts to U.S. aid to overseas civil society have weakened global anti-corruption practices.”

Statistically, the U.S. scored 64, and tied with the Bahamas for 29th. For historical context, during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2016, the American score averaged 74 (with a peak of 76 in 2015), and U.S. rankings varied from 19th to 15th. For contemporary comparisons, the 2025 Index puts the U.S. 23rd among the 38 OECD countries, down from 16th in 2015; fourth in the Western Hemisphere, down from second and below Canada, Uruguay, and Barbados; and sixth in the G-7, down from fourth.

The Powell case and its cousins no doubt help to explain this. But to end on a hopeful note, their implications for corruption in American government are complex. The attempt to coerce the Federal Reserve Board through subpoenas is an obvious indicator of deteriorating governance. On the other hand, the Fed’s determination to continue making monetary policy based on careful evaluation of the economic evidence, and the Court’s ruling on the subpoenas, both represent important areas in which personal integrity and the rule of law remain the norm in American public life. They suggest that though TI’s analysts have reason for gloom, this battle isn’t yet lost.

ABOUT ED

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

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Trump admin accuses foreigners of excessive SExCiness, threatens them with tariffs

Posted on March 18, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Trump admin accuses foreigners of excessive SExCiness, threatens them with tariffs.

THE NUMBERS: Per the U.S. Trade Representative Office, trading partners flagged for “Structural Excess Capacity”–

Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

In the Reagan-era Washingtoon comic, Rep. Bob Forehead’s political consultants grow disenchanted with bland “buzzwords” such as “jobs” and “big spenders.” (Short and easy to grasp, yes, but voters sense a lack of intellectual weight.) Anticipating a presidential campaign launch and worried about “an emerging perception of Bob as being purely image and lacking in substance”, they supplement his buzzwords with “fuzzwords”. These are long polysyllables — e.g., “the Federal Reserve should abandon its targets of aggregates” — which also lack intellectual weight, but sound complicated and thus have a desirably confusing and numbing effect on the public.

Life imitates art: Four decades later, aware that short 2025 tariff slogans like “new golden age” and “reindustrialization” aren’t landing, the Trump administration is trying the same thing. Last week the U.S. Trade Representative Office published a Federal Register Notice introducing a nine-syllable neologism — “structural excess capacity” — as a new intellectual foundation for tariff increases:

“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.”

As policy, the Notice announces a “Section 301” investigation of 16 economies — Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam — for “structural excess capacity”. For readers new to trade-bar jargon, Section 301 is a 1974 statute giving administrations some ability to threaten tariffs on goods from particular countries, in hopes of getting them to remove objectionable policies. Typical uses, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s but more recently vis-à-vis China, were on specific things: limits on U.S. exports, intellectual property appropriation, etc. Using this law for “structural excess capacity” — it seems essentially to mean a country’s overall industrial output; see below — is novel.

Obvious first question: Who is writing these Notices, anyway? As a fuzzword, “structural excess capacity” has the right murky tone, but astute readers quickly catch its natural acronym: “SExC.” So the administration is accusing the Euros, as well as the Japanese, Thais, Mexicans, Bangladeshis, etc., of excessive SExCiness and threatening them with tariffs for it. Too hot to fly! Americans above the age of twelve have learned over the last year that tariffs are taxes paid by buyers, so this isn’t technically a fine on foreigners for unreasonable hotness – they might pay willingly — but a demoralizing tax, probably in the tens of billions of dollars, on Americans for lacking it.

More analytically, the “structural excess capacity” concept rests on the premise that a country which makes more of something than it needs at home is doing something wrong. If it simply limited production to local needs, Americans would buy less from them and make the stuff ourselves instead. The Notice uses two data points as evidence of SExCiness: (a) selling more goods abroad (in general, or to Americans specifically) than one buys, and (b) factories running at “capacity utilization” rates below 80%, a level its drafters claim indicates more supply of manufactured goods on the market than the world wants or needs. Samples:

Norway: “Evidence of structural excess capacity and production exists for Norway. Norway maintains a global goods trade surplus, led by exports in sectors such as mineral fuels and oils, certain electronic equipment, and machinery. … At 77.7 percent in Q4 2025, Norway’s rate of capacity utilization was more than a full percentage point below what it was a year ago, and over two percentage points less than it was three years ago. In addition, Norway engages in policies and practices that have the effect of undervaluing its domestic currency, including the use of state-owned or -controlled enterprises to recycle oil revenues into non-domestic currencies, like the U.S. dollar, rather than its domestic currency.”

Cambodia: “Evidence of structural excess capacity and production exists for Cambodia. Cambodia maintains a bilateral trade surplus with the United States, which in 2024 was approximately $1 billion. Evidence indicates its garment, footwear, and travel goods (GFT) sector exported $11.8 billion in the first nine months of 2025, a 16 percent increase from the same period in 2024. When Cambodia’s GFT industry was facing uncertainty with U.S. tariffs, Cambodia’s Deputy Secretary-General stated that enhancing capacity along the product chains was an option to further boost the manufacturing sector and create lucrative opportunities.”

So Norwegians produce more energy than they use at home, maliciously sell the extra Brent crude to refiners in other countries, and on top of that, use dollars (as energy traders everywhere typically do) rather than krone. Cambodians likewise stitch more clothes and rivet together more suitcases than Phnom Penh’s schoolchildren and business travelers need. The resulting sectoral trade surpluses not only demonstrate the two countries’ SExCiness but help frustrate Trump-team hopes of “reindustrialization” and “a new golden age.”

The ostensible goal of the “301” investigation, therefore, is that threats of tariffs will persuade the Norwegians and Cambodians to drill less oil and sew fewer duffel bags, and then someone will be better off. Three observations:

1. “Structural excess capacity” is not a meaningful concept: The Notice’s premise is wrong, as American experience quickly shows. U.S. factories produce more airplanes and artificial body parts than American air carriers and hospitals require. They sell the extras to customers abroad — three in every four U.S.-made airplanes, for example — which is good for foreign travelers and patients, and also brings in money to hire more workers and fund next-gen research. American farmers grow almonds and wheat than American kitchens and restaurants need, and send respectively 75% and 45% overseas, mostly to Asia. Same with software, natural gas, music, and film. That’s how American aerospace, medical technologies, and agriculture, as well as tech, energy, and entertainment, succeed and grow. The same thing happens in other countries.

2. “Structural excess capacity” reduction is an implausible use of Section 301. The administration’s hope for less world SExCiness must mean either “increasing world demand for goods,” or “reducing output of goods.” The Notice makes pretty clear it’s the latter. Its 16 economies account for about $10.7 trillion in manufacturing output, two-thirds of the world’s total. At a capacity utilization of 75%, that suggests a potential output of about $14.3 trillion. Raising utilization to 80% — again, the level the Notice claims would put supply in line with demand — by reducing production entails persuading foreign governments to take around $1 trillion worth of annual clothes, cars, toys, soap, helicopters, medicines, and other goods offline. Not likely.

3. And probably not the real goal anyway. Back in 1974, the authors of “Section 301” hoped to find ways to remove or mitigate policies they didn’t like. In 2026, the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Bessent, says the Trump administration just wants “alternative legal authorities” to replace the “international emergency” tariffs the Supreme Court axed in February. By that measure, the 301 investigation is simply another attempt to take Congress’ Constitutional authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises,” impose tariffs by decree, and hope courts don’t stop it.

Coda: Rep. Forehead’s problem in Washingtoon wasn’t vocabulary choice. Rather, the public’s emerging perception of him as all-image and low-substance was correct. Likewise, in 2026, the administration’s problem isn’t one of “messaging”. It’s the conclusions Americans have drawn, after a year of rising costs, slowing growth, and falling hires, about the real-world impact of tariff increases. Replacing faded 2025 slogans with long new words — even with more dignified acronyms — won’t solve it.

ABOUT ED

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

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2025 trade growth was the fastest since 2021

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

FACT: 2025 trade growth was the fastest since 2021.

THE NUMBERS:

	2024	2026
Working satellites	~11,500	~18,000
Fiber-optic cables	561 cables	~637 cables
Container ships	30.4 million TEU	33.9 million TEU
Freighter planes	2,375	~2,675

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Two of the three big drivers of “economic integration” have faded or gone dark. The Trump administration’s tariff binge, even after the Supreme Court scrapped its “international emergency” decrees, leaves the world economy more “closed” than it was a year ago. Peace among big powers is growing steadily shakier. This ought to chill commerce — that was the path of the 1930s — but so far it hasn’t. In fact, the WTO’s calculations of “trade growth by volume” (essentially, though not exactly, an inflation-adjusted real-dollar count of export growth) put trade growth in 2025 faster than any year since the anomalous pandemic-recovery year 2021, and well above the last decade’s 3.0% average.

2025	3.60%
2024	2.90%
2023	-1.20%
2022	2.70%
2021	9.70%
2020	-5.30%
2019	0.10%
2018	3.00%
2017	4.70%
2016	1.70%

Why? In contrast to the 1930s, rising trade barriers aren’t a worldwide policy. Back then, lots of big economies followed the Hoover administration into high-tariff isolationism. In the 2020s, by contrast, most have kept policy stable, and many are continuing to integrate and ‘liberalize’. The European Union and South America’s “Mercosur” group (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay) signed a Free Trade Agreement in January; the U.K. has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership; the African Continental Free Trade Area just got its 49th ratification, etc.

The U.S.’s large share of trade — 12.8% of goods & services imports, 9.8% of exports as of 2024 — means American policy choices should nonetheless affect total trade flows at least a bit. But that impact may be cushioned or entirely offset, though, by the strength of the third driver: the steady decline in communication and logistics costs as physical infrastructure improves.

Even over the last two years, it’s become noticeably cheaper and easier to move information and goods around the world. Some indicators:

Information carriers: Much of the world’s $8 trillion in services trade (setting aside personal travel and transport) moves in digital form, converted to information and then sent under the sea along a glass wire or through the sky via satellite beam.

Cables: Fiber-optic cables carry most information traffic, and therefore most services trade. Cable-tracker TeleGeography’s count of active cables has risen from 561 to a projected 637 this year, and newer cables are not only numerous but more powerful than their older siblings. As an example, last year’s “Bifrost” (oddly named for the “rainbow bridge” to heaven in Norse myth) is a 16,500-kilometer wire connecting Singapore to California, with branches in Oregon, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Bifrost can carry 32.5 terabits of data per second. By comparison, all of the 111 world cables in 2010 put together could carry about 239.5 terabits per second. A decade earlier, as fiber-optics replaced the older copper wires, the total world capacity was below 2 terabits per second.

Satellites: Satellites carry less information than cables but offer more options with fewer geographic dead spots, and are multiplying even faster than cables: Jonathan’s endearingly “2005 blogger-style web page” count of operating satellites, having risen from about 5,000 operating satellites in 2020 to 9,100 in early 2024, likely passed 15,000 this month. Liftoff schedules suggest the total may be near 20,000 when the next Congress takes office in January 2027.

Goods carriers: Luxuries and perishables, manufacturing inputs, metals, ores and energy, appliances and clothes, all move in ships, trucks, pipelines, and planes. About 45% of the $24 trillion in annual merchandise trade — measured by value rather than weight — travels by container ship, and 35% by plane.

Container ships: As of early 2026, container trackers at Alphaliner report 7,520 container ships steaming around the world’s oceans. Taken together, they can carry 33.9 million TEU worth of containers. (TEU: “twenty-foot equivalent units,” a standard measurement standing for a container 20 feet long, 8 feet high, and 8.5 feet wide.) The container fleet of 2024 had 6,464 ships with a capacity of 31.4 million TEU. For a more dramatic counterpoint, the entire worldwide container ship count in the year 2000 was 2,595 ships with 4.3 million TEU. So the last two years of yardwork have added nearly the equivalent of the whole millennial fleet. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of the Biden era, meanwhile, put $17 billion into U.S. seaports — more efficient terminals, better links to roads and railways, etc. — meaning that even in the U.S., cargo arrivals are incrementally getting faster and cheaper, offsetting some tariff increases.

Air freighters: The count of active large civil aircraft, meanwhile, has jumped from 28,400 to over 35,500, or by about a fifth. This isn’t simple to relate directly to air cargo flows, as some planes move only people, some just cargo, and many do both. But the count of planes strictly meant for cargo gives at least a sense of direction. Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Outlook estimated that by 2039, the world’s delivery services would be using 2,439 freighter planes. Their most recent edition says we’ve already arrived: by 2024, the cargo fleet employed 2,375 freighters — 920 at standard size, 800 medium widebodies, 655 large widebodies — and about 300 more took off in 2025 and 2026. Their new long-term projection is that the cargo fleet will reach 3,975 planes by 2044, up 70%, with the fastest growth in the largest planes.

In sum: So far, the world of the 2020s isn’t following the example set in the early 1930s. As the Trump administration is trying to make trade more expensive and difficult for Americans, other forces are trying to make it cheaper and easier. As to which will win out, from the U.S. angle, it seems to be a draw so far. From the world perspective (should the Trump program remain in place for a while), the apparent trend is for the administration to diminish parts of the American role in the global economy, rather than shrink the global economy itself.

ABOUT ED

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

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Refunding illegally collected tariff money is not difficult

Posted on March 4, 2026March 4, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Refunding illegally collected tariff money is not difficult.

THE NUMBERS:

Illegally collected “IEEPA”* tariffs:	~$175 billion
Annual IRS income tax withholding refunds:	~$330 billion

* “IEEPA” is an acronym for “International Emergency Economic Powers Act,” the 1977 law the administration used as the basis for eight tariff decrees in 2025. The other tariff decrees, “national security” claims under “Section 232” of U.S. trade law, haven’t been challenged so far and remain in force. The $175 billion is the estimated actual tariff collection under the IEEPA decrees, and does not include required interest payments.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Brett Kavanaugh, one of three Supreme Court Justices to side with the Trump administration on “international emergency” tariffs two weeks ago, explains his view at least in part by saying he thinks repaying tariffs will be difficult:

“The United States may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid the IEEPA* tariffs, even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others. As was acknowledged at oral argument, the refund process is likely to be a ‘mess.’ In addition, according to the Government, the IEEPA tariffs have helped facilitate trade deals worth trillions of dollars — including with foreign nations from China to the United Kingdom to Japan, and more. The Court’s decision could generate uncertainty regarding those trade arrangements.”

A general legal point on this, then a couple of comments on the practical issues:

Legal: If an administration puts an illegal policy in motion, and courts later find it illegal, unwinding it can be messy. That’s the nature of Justice Marshall’s “judicial review” concept. Any “mess” is the administration’s responsibility and its problem to fix, not the courts’.

Practical: Neither of Kavanaugh’s complaints is very daunting. The “deals” have basic problems — all of them raise costs for Americans — and don’t seem built to last anyway. And refunding the “IEEPA” tariffs needn’t be messy at all.

With respect to “deals” and “trade arrangements”, they aren’t worth “trillions” of dollars and don’t look like they’re meant to last long. As recently as January, for example, the administration itself was perfectly willing to abandon its “deals” with the European Union and the U.K. by threatening new tariffs over control of Greenland. And if it now places high value on them, it can eliminate any risk by asking Congress to pass implementing laws that bring them to life. Earlier administrations did this 18 times between 1974 and 2020 for GATT, WTO, and FTA agreements. If Congressional support is there, the deals will be fine. If not, maybe they aren’t very meaningful.

And with respect to refunding illegally collected tariff money, no “mess” unless the administration wants one.

There’s no blurriness about who is owed the money. In customs and tariff jargon, the people who write tariff checks to the Customs and Border Patrol are the ‘importers of record’, meaning about 242,000 importing companies in the U.S., 11,000 customs brokers handling trade paperwork for small businesses, and individuals now paying tariffs on arriving packages. CBP’s “ACE” (Automated Commercial Environment) system lets the firms and customs brokers enter their payments in digital form with an 8-digit tariff code identifying the product they’re buying, the date it arrived, its value, the applicable tariff laws and rates, and the amount of money they paid. Each of the administration’s eight “IEEPA” decrees created special tariff lines beginning with the HTS code 9903 to apply the new tariffs to incoming goods. As an example, the April 2 “global” decree created 52 new tariff lines, starting at “9903.01.25” and going up to “9903.01.76.” So CBP knows very well who has paid IEEPA tariffs on Ghanaian shea butter, Vietnamese-assembled TV sets, Valentine roses from Ecuador and Colombia, etc., and the payers likewise know how much of their tariff payments originated in an illegal IEEPA decree.

Nor should the government have any problem writing the checks. Tariff-payers can probably arrange most of the refunds themselves, using the ACE system to revise tariff filings dating back to April of 2025. (Tariff payments typically wait around at CBP for 315 days, then “liquidate” as CBP sends them to the Treasury’s General Fund.) For the earlier ones, a bit more complicated but the U.S. government regularly does much larger and more complicated refunds. To put some numbers on this:

CBP’s “Trade Statistics” snapshot says that in Fiscal Year 2025, CBP line officers handled 50.08 million separate import “entries” – container unloadings, truck crossings, air cargo deliveries, pipeline shipments, etc. — with tariff collection totaling $195 billion. IEEPA tariffs totaled about $93 billion in 2025, and were running at $16 billion per month in the first quarter of FY2026. Assuming that remained pretty stable in early 2026, the IEEPA revenue total is likely about $175 billion. With interest, the government owes $200 billion or so in refunds.
By comparison, the Internal Revenue Service got 163.4 million individual income tax filings last year, and sent out 104.9 million tax withholding refunds, valued at $329.1 billion. So, twice as many individual payments, and 50% more refund money than the tariff repayment will require. Six weeks from now, in mid-April, they will do this all over again without any particular trouble.

In sum: CBP will have to sort through a lot of forms. The Treasury Department will need to send out more checks than usual this year. But it won’t be a mess unless the administration decides to create one. And either way, that’s not the Court’s problem.

ABOUT ED

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

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Gresser in Politico Pro Morning Trade: USTR outlines goals for critical mineral pact

Posted on February 27, 2026 by Alex Terr

[…]

The two conflicting visions don’t add up, said Ed Gresser, a former USTR economist now at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank.

“I don’t think you can say in the State of the Union address that the economy is in really, really great shape and then also say we’re about to have a collapse in the dollar, mass unemployment, inability to service foreign debt, those sorts of things,” Gresser said.

[…]

Supreme Court: Presidents cannot use ‘international emergencies’ as pretexts to create their own tariff systems

Posted on February 25, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Supreme Court: Presidents cannot use “international emergencies” as pretexts to create their own tariff systems.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. GDP growth, last five years–

2025    2.2%
2024    2.8%
2023    2.9%
2022    2.5%
2021    6.2%

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Having ordered his skeptical platoon to ford a flooding Louisiana river by moonlight, the obstinate, ill-fated captain in folksinger Pete Seeger’s Big Muddy insists that everything will be fine:

“It’ll be a little soggy, but just keep slogging. We’ll soon be on dry ground …”

It doesn’t work out quite that way.

The Supreme Court’s Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump opinion, released Friday morning, offered the administration an easy way out. By striking down all of last year’s “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” (“IEEPA”) decrees, the Court gave the administration a chance either to (a) quietly liquidate an unpopular experiment, or (b) return to the Constitutionally appropriate approach of asking Congress to pass a tariff bill, as the like-minded Harding and Hoover administrations did in the 1920s. Within a few hours, it made a different choice: emotional denunciations of the court, a legal gamble on an antiquated law meant for a different purpose, and new tariff decrees oscillating up and down between 10% and 15%. As this thrashing around proceeds, a look at how the past year’s tariff binge played out, with Seeger’s piece as a wry optional soundtrack:

GDP growth slows: To start at the top, the administration’s central tariff decree — the now-defunct April 2 “Executive Order 14257” — predicted that tariffs would open a “new golden age.” In practice, the U.S. economy grew by 2.2% last year. This isn’t terrible for a “developed” economy, but is noticeably slower growth than in any of the four Biden years: 6.2% in 2021 during the pandemic rebound, then 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023, and 2.8% in 2024.

… and rural America crashes: Growth, of course, isn’t a single uniform figure across all regions and economic “sectors,” but the average of many different experiences. Rural America, the most export-reliant part of the U.S. — sales to foreign customers typically provide a fifth of farm income — has had a particularly bad time. Retaliations and consumer boycotts damaged farm export earnings last year — soybean sales to China down from $12.6 billion in 2024 to $3.1 billion, wine exports to Canada from $460 million to $103 million, etc. — while higher tariffs on fertilizer, agricultural machinery, fencing, tools, and other needs raised farm operating costs. With income down and expenses up, farm country is in bad enough shape for commodity-group and ag policy veterans to warn this month of a possible “widespread collapse of American agriculture and our rural communities.”

Trade balance unchanged: The administration justified its April 2 decree to the courts by declaring a “national emergency posed by a large and persistent trade deficit” (in goods specifically, excluding services trade), and claiming a big tariff increase would “address” it. It hasn’t. Last Thursday, a day before the Supreme Court’s verdict, Census Bureau statisticians published the U.S. trade data for 2025, which showed a somewhat higher goods-trade deficit in 2025 than in 2024:

	2024	2025
Imports of goods	$3.30 trillion	$3.44 trillion
Exports of goods	$2.08 trillion	$2.20 trillion
Goods trade balance	-$1.22 trillion	-$1.24 trillion

Manufacturing slowdown: The administration’s pitch to the public was more practical: higher tariffs would cause “some pain,” but would compensate by launching a manufacturing boom. That didn’t happen either. Employment growth slowed in general, and especially so in manufacturing: Bureau of Labor Statistics reports show manufacturing employment falling by 108,000 in 2025, mainly because manufacturers hired about 330,000 fewer new workers. Meanwhile, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis calculates that the manufacturing share of U.S. GDP (based on the nine months of data available so far) contracted from 9.8% in 2024 to 9.4%.

Costs up: If tariffs haven’t produced growth, trade balance, or a manufacturing job surge, they have succeeded in raising costs. CBP appears to have collected a bit more than $260 billion in tariff money last year, more than triple the $76 billion of 2024. The biggest cost appears to have fallen on the automotive industry — over $40 billion on cars and parts, mostly under “national security” (technically, “Section 232”) tariffs that so far haven’t faced court challenge and thus remain in place. But the general tariff increase is seeping into daily life in unexpected and sometimes very personal ways. Some samples of where CBP got this money:

	2024	2025
Primary health products
OTC medicines	$0 million	$316 million
Band-Aids and other bandages	$0 million	$206 million
Condoms	$0 million	$7 million
Tampons	$23 million	$143 million
Crutches, splints, other fracture devices	$0 million	$197 million

Personal care & beauty	2024	2025
Soap	$31 million	$172 million
Makeup	$158 million	$724 million
Perfume	$11 million	$391 million
Hair care	$28 million	$140 million
Deodorant	$6 million	$17 million
Shaving cream, razors, & aftershave	$12 million	$63 million
Dental floss, toothbrushes, & toothpaste	$20 million	$100 million

Groceries	2024	2025
Fresh fruit and vegetables	$196 million	$1,175 million
Flowers	$8 million	$145 million
Coffee & tea	$6 million	$935 million
Honey	$4 million	$64 million
Pepper, cinnamon, ginger	$16 million	$128 million

Across the whole economy, the Harvard Business School’s tracking project estimates that tariffs raised the price of tariffed goods by 6.6% above trend, the price of similar locally produced goods by 3.8%, and overall prices by about 1%.

Federal debt up: As to federal finances, the Court’s ruling doesn’t mean the administration has to pay the whole $261 billion back, just most of it. The Congressionally authorized “MFN” tariff system is still active, though buried under much larger tariff decrees, and legally raises about $40 billion a year. The administration’s Section 232 “national security” decrees are often laughable — one defines condensed milk and balance beams as “steel or aluminum derivative products,” another says lumber tariffs will make sure we have the wood needed to build “ballistic missile defense systems” and “thermal protection systems for nuclear re-entry vehicles” — but so far haven’t faced legal challenge. But the “IEEPA” tariffs struck down on Friday account for about two-thirds of tariff revenue, roughly $175 billion, and the administration will have to pay it back with interest. That means the 2025 tariff experiment will likely end up a net loss to the Treasury.

In sum: slower growth, rural crisis, fewer manufacturing jobs, higher costs for families, and more debt for the government. The unfortunate captain in Seeger’s song tells his worried platoon to keep slogging as the water rises. But dry ground is nowhere in sight.

ABOUT ED

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

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PPI Applauds Supreme Court Decision to Strike Down Trump ‘Emergency’ Tariffs

Posted on February 20, 2026February 23, 2026 by Max Sherrill

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.

###

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

U.S. manufacturing employment is down 108,000 in 2025

Posted on February 18, 2026February 18, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: U.S. manufacturing employment is down 108,000 in 2025

THE NUMBERS: U.S. pop-up toaster tariffs and employment–

	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.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

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:

Three Feb. 1^st, 2025, decrees added 10% tariffs for Chinese-made toasters, plus 25% on hypothetical Mexican and Canadian alternatives. The Mexican and Canadian ones went away.
An April 2^nd decree created a new 10% worldwide rate for most goods, including all home appliances, plus country-by-country rates varying from 15% to 50%.

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.

An up-and-down set of U.S.-China tariff retaliations in April and May spiked the extra China-toaster tariff rate to 125%, then reduced it to 20%.
The July amendment to the April 2 decree set rates of 19% and 20% rates for Southeast Asian and Taiwanese toaster-producers.
The Commerce Department’s August 19^th decree, defining toasters as a “steel or aluminum derivative product,” put a 50% worldwide tariff on the value of steel and aluminum included in toasters. If you can’t figure out the metal value, it’s a flat 50%.

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.

ABOUT ED

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

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Valentine’s Day boxed chocolate prices are up 11.8% this year 💝📈😡💔

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

FACT: Valentine’s Day boxed chocolate prices are up 11.8% this year.

THE NUMBERS: Tariff increases on cacao and chocolate, Jan.-November 2025*

Total	$544 million
Cacao beans, paste, and cocoa butter	$313 million
Chocolates & cocoa powder	$231 million

*Most recent data available.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Why does your V-Day box of assorted cremes, darks, truffles, and ganache cost so much? Partly it’s an unavoidable natural consequence of last year’s bad weather in West Africa, and partly it’s self-inflicted via tariffs. A look at the chocolate world — trees and farmers, shippers and chocolatiers, retailers and lovers — and the impact of eccentric and ill-judged policy:

Sources, Trade, and Production: Chocolate comes from the cacao tree, a shade-loving evergreen native to the Amazon. About 20 feet high when mature, the tree produces a few dozen green, red, or purple “pods” annually, each weighing about a half kilo and containing 20 to 50 beans. It’s not quite true to say that no chocolate originates in the United States — artisanal Hawaiian and Puerto Rican farmers produce about 100 tons of beans a year —but that’s a tiny fraction of the quarter-million tons American chocolatiers use annually. Most come from West Africa: Cote d’Ivoire grows nearly half of the world’s annual 5.6 million tons of cacao beans and neighboring Ghana adds 0.6 million more, with Ecuador third and Indonesia fourth.

Cacao farmers pluck the pods twice a year, then extract, ferment, and dry the beans to prepare them for sale. The New York Botanical Gardens explain:

“The fruits are cut from the tree and split open with machetes to extract the seeds surrounded by the white pulp. Next, the seeds are put into wooden boxes to ferment for usually three to six days. The fermentation causes the development of the characteristic aroma and flavor of chocolate, and in the breakdown of the white pulp surrounding the seeds. The beans are dried, either in the sun or in ovens, and the remaining pulp is removed.”

American chocolatiers are the world’s fourth-largest buyers (Europeans do more), purchasing 235,000 tons last year, with 82,000 tons from Cote d’Ivoire, another 84,000 tons from Ghana and Ecuador combined, and the rest divided among about 15 other producers around the world. Along with this came 311,000 tons of semi-processed cocoa paste and cocoa butter, with Côte d’Ivoire, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Ghana the main sources. All are duty-free under the normal, Congressionally authorized U.S. tariff system. Next step:

“In the chocolate factory, the beans are roasted to further enhance the flavor [ed. note: turning them from “cacao” into “cocoa” beans] and then the seed husk is broken and blown away in a process called winnowing, which leaves only pieces of the embryo called nibs. The nibs are ground into chocolate liquor, which is run through a hydraulic press to yield cocoa butter on one side and cocoa powder (which also contains some cocoa butter) on the other side of the press.”

The powder goes to drinks, and the “butter” (mixed in various degrees with milk, sugar, etc.) to confections. Compressing the whole tree-to-tongue supply chain, one or two pods go into a chocolate bar (roughly one pod for milk, and two for dark), and a 14-piece assortment needs about five pods. U.S. chocolatiers produce about 2.1 million tons annually, while grocers and retailers import another 755,000 tons, mainly from Canada and Europe.

Prices, Weather, and Tariffs: If this Saturday’s Valentine gift seems especially expensive, you’re not wrong. A Lending Tree study this month found that prices for boxed assortments have jumped by 11.8% on average since last February, and in some cases nearly doubled.

One reason for the spike is natural and unavoidable. Drought and unusual heat in West Africa last year meant trees produced fewer beans. This pushed prices up from $2,000 to $3,000 per ton of beans to above $10,000. The other reason is artificial and self-inflicted: the Trump administration’s April 2 tariff decree imposed 21% tariffs on Ivorian beans, 10% on Ghanaian beans, 32% on Indonesian beans, and 10% on beans from Ecuador. (Again, all were previously duty-free.) On top of this, they added 20% tariffs on European Union confectionery and 31% on Swiss confectionery. Rates have shifted around a lot — a July rewrite of the decree reset them at 15% for the West African and Ecuadoran beans, 19% on the Indonesian butter and paste, and 15% for European and Swiss confectionery — but have been raising costs all year long.

Altogether, from April to November the tariffs put over half a billion dollars’ worth of new expenses into the U.S.’ chocolate supply chain. Averaging by month, that’s an extra $25 million in tariffs on $250 million in cacao and chocolate imports. About three-fifths of the cost fell on U.S. chocolatiers buying beans, paste, and butter to turn into bars, truffles, and kisses. (And on their workers: BLS’s most recent data showed confectionery employment down by 3,500 jobs since January.) Grocers and retailers buying finished confections and powder paid the rest. The financials:

	2024	2025	Extra payments
Total	$71 million	$615 million	$544 million
Cacao beans	$0 million	$111 million	$111 million
Cocoa paste and butter	$0 million	$202 million	$202 million
Cocoa powder	$0.4 million	$59 million	$59 million
Chocolate confectionery	$71.million	$243 million	$172 million

The administration backed off on the beans, paste, and butter tariffs in mid-November, so Ghirardelli and Hershey got some year-end relief. But your Cadbury, Valrhona, Nestle or Lindt box still comes with 15% tacked on.

In sum, the tariff experiment has had some clear results — more costs for chocolatiers, fewer jobs for confectionery workers, and higher prices for couples. To the extent there’s a bright spot: the National Retail Federation’s V-Day forecast — spending up $1.4 billion this year — suggests that couples, if with some regret, have mostly decided to absorb the extra expense rather than scale back. If so, tariffs have imposed a clear cost, but lovers haven’t let it kill the mood.

ABOUT ED

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

The U.S. public’s view of Trump tariffs was negative at the start. Few if any minds have changed since.

Posted on February 4, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Most Americans disliked higher tariffs a year ago, and few minds have changed since.

THE NUMBERS: CNN/SSRS surveys on Trump tariffs –

	“Disapprove”	“Approve”
January 2026	62%	37%
July 2025	61%	39%
March 2025	61%	39%

CNN/SSRS surveys in March 2025, July 2025, and January 2026.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Pollsters have been pestering Americans about trade and tariffs since the 1950s, but probably never as much as last year. Since the Trump administration’s first tariff decrees — last February 1, a year ago last Sunday — our probably incomplete count finds CNN/SSRS and Washington Post/ABC asking about tariffs three times each, the Pew Center twice, Fox News six times, NYT/Siena three times, the Wall Street Journal four, with Gallup, AP, the Economist and Reuters adding lots more. With their national data has come a gush of previously rare polling on tariff attitudes in individual states. The resulting mass of stats conveys a pretty simple message: Most Americans disliked higher tariffs a year ago, and few minds have changed since.

A summary with national averages, crosstabs, and states –

1. National: National polls suggest that (a) more than 60% of Americans disapprove of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, (b) a bit fewer than 40% support them, and (c) the most recent results look like the earliest ones. The CNN/SSRS figures above are pretty close to the overall average, but see below (“Further Reading”) to compare them with Washington Post/ABC, Fox News, and New York Times/Siena.

2. Crosstabs: Within this broad opposition, polling finds some consistent divisions of opinion. Three especially striking ones (and see “Further Reading” for two more):

Red v. Blue: Democrats nearly unanimously opposes, Republicans strongly but less enthusiastically support, and independents pretty decisively take the “blue” side. Fox News’ January survey, for example, reports opposition at 92%-8% among Democrats and 82%-18% among political independents, while Republicans approve by 71%-28%. At the state level, Bowling Green State’s October Ohio poll has an exceptionally sharp partisan split: within Ohioans’ overall 60%-40% disapproval, Democrats oppose the tariffs 97%-3%, and their independent neighbors oppose 83%-16%, while Republicans support 77%-23%.

Race & Ethnicity: African Americans are most opposed to tariffs, white Americans are most closely divided (though with anti-tariff majorities), and Hispanics are in between. For example, this January’s NYT/Siena poll (which seems to get the friendliest results for the administration) found white Americans opposing tariffs 51%-43%, African Americans 66%-25%, Hispanics 50%-29%, and “others” 63%-32%. Fox, meanwhile, had white Americans “disapproving” 61%-39%, African Americans 74%-26%, and Hispanics 67%-33%. Data on Asian American views is scarcer, but an AP poll last July showed Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders significantly more likely than Americans as a whole to believe tariffs would likely reduce job opportunities and raise prices, and the Pew Center’s April poll found 70%-28% Asian American “disapproval” of tariff increases. (We haven’t found a Native American survey, but try Native Voice One‘s in-depth radio discussion.)

Education: The education gap is a bit narrower, but socially illuminating. January’s NYT/Siena poll finds Americans with college degrees opposing tariffs by a very wide 65%-31% margin, and non-college Americans by a much narrower 48%-42%. The widest gulf is among white Americans: a 50%-43% plurality of non-college white respondents support the administration’s tariffs, while white Americans with college degrees oppose them by 63%-34%. NYT’s (very aggregated) “non-white” respondents are less sharply divided, with “non-college non-white” respondents opposing tariffs by 53%-30% and college degree holders by 72%-20%.

3. States: State polls add depth on regional opinion, and often ask distinctive questions that yield unexpected insights. Three examples (and more below):

New Hampshire: Relative importance of tariffs – The University of New Hampshire’s November poll provides a sense of the priority the public gives tariffs as an economic issue. Overall, 45% of their respondents approved of Mr. Trump’s economic management, while 54% disapproved. Among the “approving” minority, 27% cited tariffs as the most important reason for their good review. This was a higher share than any other issue got, and another 3% added “trade.” But an even larger 38% of the majority “disapprovers” cited tariffs as the most important factor in their opinion. So the New Hampshire public appears to agree that tariffs are very important, but on balance feels they’re important in a bad way.

Ohio: Tariff effects by economic class, business type, and unions – Bowling Green State University has polled Ohio twice, first in April and then in October. This went beyond broad approve/disapprove totals (60% disapproving and 40% approving in October, with 44% “strongly” disapproving and 18% “strongly” approving) to ask about the sort of people, institutions, and businesses who might benefit from tariffs. The answers suggest Ohioans developed an increasingly “un-populist” view of tariff impacts over the year. In April, 42% of respondents thought tariffs would help labor unions; by October, the share had fallen to 34. The share feeling tariffs might help small businesses likewise dropped from 41% to 35%, and those believing tariffs would help “the middle class” dropped from 42% to 36%. Meanwhile, the shares believing tariffs would benefit “the wealthy” and “large corporations” rose from 66% to 73% and from 60% to 67%

Texas: Levels of consensus on family finances, prices, and jobs – A December 2025 poll by the UT/Austin’s Texas Policy Project reports that 52% of respondents believe tariffs “will hurt my family,” while 20% think they will help, and 28% aren’t sure. Perceptions on price impacts were near-consensus: 67% believe tariffs are raising prices for “everyday goods,” while 9% think they’re lowering prices, and 25% weren’t sure. Guesses about job impact were most divided, with 42% feeling that tariffs mean fewer jobs for U.S. workers, while 29% predicted more jobs, and 29% didn’t know.

ABOUT ED

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

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The U.S. lost 20,000 scientific research jobs last year

Posted on January 28, 2026January 28, 2026 by Max Sherrill

FACT: The U.S. lost 20,000 scientific research jobs last year.

THE NUMBERS: Real-dollar growth in R&D spending, 2020-2023* –

World known	$400 billion
China	$173 billion
United States	$93 billion
Western Europe**	$55 billion
Japan/Korea/Taiwan	$55 billion
All other known***	$24 billion

* PPP basis, constant 2020 dollars. OECD Research and Development Indicators database
** 27 EU members, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland.
*** Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Turkey, Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Russia, Singapore, South Africa. OECD’s database does not include ASEAN members other than Singapore, the Middle East other than Israel, Africa other than South Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean apart from the four above.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Headline from trade journal R&D World’s 2025 forecast:

“The question is no longer if China will surpass U.S. R&D spending, but what happens next. R&D World’s 2025 Global Funding Forecast projects China reaching effective parity with the U.S. this year ($1.05T versus $1.07T in PPP terms), with a full crossover expected by 2026.”

Background:

The post-COVID pandemic years were good ones for American science. Research investment stats take a few years to work out, but the National Science Foundation estimates that in 2023 Americans spent $923 billion on research and development — the world’s highest figure by about $100 billion, and up (without adjusting for inflation) from $730 billion in 2020. This was 3.45% of American GDP, tied with Japan for the world’s fifth-highest total and behind only Israel, Korea, Taiwan, and Sweden. Employment figures are more up-to-date, and show that from December 2020 to December 2024, America’s count of working scientists rose from 788,000 to 941,000 — over 150,000, raising the total by 20%. Altogether, Americans interested in mRNA vaccines, artificial intelligence, next-generation space telescopes, autonomous cars and planes, agricultural bee vectoring, etc., could feel proud of national accomplishment and excited about the future.

The U.S. isn’t alone, of course. The OECD tries to tally spending by country, and then to convert the yuan, euros, yen, won, pounds, etc., into dollar equivalents. Their count isn’t complete — it misses India, Brazil, and generally most large developing countries — but it probably gets most of the world’s science. They find R&D investment growing by about $400 billion from 2020 through 2023. Currency conversions and inflation adjustments mean you should read these figures more as approximations than precise comparisons, and likewise, “amount of money spent” isn’t identical to “actual scientific progress”. But they’re still pretty striking:

	2020	2023	Real-dollar Growth
World known	$2.4 trillion	$2.8 trillion	$400 billion
U.S.	$730 billion	$823 billion	$93 billion
China	$608 billion	$781 billion	$173 billion
Western Europe	$582 billion	$637 billion	$55 billion
Japan/Korea/Taiwan	$333 billion	$388 billion	$55 billion
All other known	$147 billion	$171 billion	$24 billion

OECD, constant PPP-basis 2020 dollars.

In sum, despite the U.S.’s pretty big push, China by itself accounted for nearly half of all world R&D growth. In the abstract, competition among leading economies to put more money into research and invent more new things — whether for national prestige, for wealth and economic growth, or a better understanding of nature and broadly shared human progress — can be a net good. The startlingly fast growth in Chinese R&D, in this sense, might be a spur for Americans to try harder. But in fact, something quite different is happening.

American private-sector research remains strong. The government’s contribution doesn’t. The Trump administration’s first year brought large-scale firing of government scientists, a shrinking total science workforce, and attempts to “institutionalize” this for the future. This began with chaotic purges of science-agency talent and research-contract cancellations during the “Department of Government Efficiency” debacle — the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Air and Space Administration staff cut by a fifth, the Centers for Disease Control by a third, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by a sixth; $2.6 billion in National Institutes of Health and $1.6 billion in National Science Foundation awards contracts canceled — and has been followed up with a more systematic attempt to disinvest from science.

Last September, the venerable American Association for the Advancement of Science reported that, altogether, the administration planned to cut federal R&D support from $197.5 billion in FY2025 to $154.0 billion in FY2026. Whether in percentages or total dollars, this would be the largest science budget cut ever — probably large enough all by itself, assuming Chinese growth has continued, to fulfil R&D World’s prediction and push the United States down into second place. Private-sector research can’t really compensate for this, as government programs weigh more toward basic research, which lacks immediate commercial return — space exploration in the 1960s, the invention of computer networks in the 1970s — but sometimes have very large long-term payoff. And in any case, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ job tallies indicate that private-sector science may be following the government down. Its count of working scientists fell by 20,000 last year, the first net loss in a decade:

December 2025	921,000
December 2024	941,000
December 2023	934,000
December 2022	913,000
December 2021	860,000
December 2020	788,000
December 2015	672,000

OECD, constant PPP-basis 2020 dollars.

Different policies might bring some of them back. But looking further ahead, drastic slowdowns in legal immigration, presaged in this month’s decision to stop processing immigrant visas for 75 countries, would mean a structurally smaller American talent pool. The National Science Foundation reports that a quarter of American scientists, engineers, and lab techs were born abroad, including nearly 60% of the doctorate-level mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers.

As they say, sometimes decline is a choice. But:

The Trump administration’s fecklessness doesn’t have to be “America’s choice.” At least in budgeting, the administration’s declining overall reputation appears to have emboldened Congress to reclaim its Constitutional role as the arbiter of spending. Without diving too deeply into arcane appropriations jargon — budget authority, outlays and obligation, FTEs, omnibus and minibus, etc. — Congress two weeks ago passed the “Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations” bill, which funds the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA. This restored nearly all the science investment Mr. Trump’s clan wanted to cut, and bars agencies from moving money from science to non-science offices. AAAS’s current tally foresees a cut of 3.6%, as against the nearly 25% it foresaw last summer. A pretty big step, though the bills funding the two agencies that comprise about 77% of all of the federal government’s RD funding — the Department of Defense and the badly wounded Department of Health and Human Services — aren’t yet done. Good start. Lots more to fix.

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The U.S. has no claim to Greenland

Posted on January 21, 2026 by Max Sherrill

FACT: The U.S. has no claim to Greenland.

THE NUMBERS: Trump tariff threats last week –

10% tariffs on goods from Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and the U.K., rising to 25% by summer.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump threatened to impose tariffs of 10% on February 1, rising to 25% by summer, on goods from eight historic allies — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom — over their unwillingness to support his strange ambition to acquire Greenland. So far, the White House has published no actual decree or other document giving this threat any force, and — as with last October’s threat for a similar 10% tariff on Canadian goods, meant to retaliate for an Ontario government advertisement quoting the late President Reagan on tariffs — perhaps it will simply go away.

That autumn threat, however, has done lasting harm: after a year of Mr. Trump’s provocations, the Canadian government has felt forced to make auto-trade and other arrangements with China to diminish the effect of any U.S. tariff on Canadian goods. The harm done by last week’s threat against America’s European friends will likewise escalate over time until it is reversed.

With this in mind, three points: the U.S. has no legal, historic, or other claim to Greenland; the administration’s effort to make such a claim is corroding American security; and Congress should repeal any tariffs on these countries immediately, and then reform trade law more generally to halt tariff innovation by decree and restore Constitutionally appropriate policymaking. More –

1. Greenland: Greenland is an autonomous country, constitutionally one of three realms of the Danish monarchy, with an elected government that sets its own policies. It is a NATO ally, with a large U.S. military base and an open economy. The governments of both Greenland and Denmark worked closely with the U.S. for eight decades on Arctic security (and often have been advocates of larger Arctic defense commitments than U.S. administrations have been willing to make), resource mining, and any other actual policy concerns, and remain willing to do so. Both have also made clear that sovereignty is not negotiable: neither Danes nor Greenlanders are interested, any more than Americans would be interested in selling off chunks of U.S. land and people to other countries. There is no Greenland “issue.”

2. Security: U.S. military alliance with the world’s advanced democracies — Western Europe, Canada, Japan, Korea, Australia — has been the foundation of American national security and world peace since the Second World War. It needs to remain so. Denmark specifically, as PPI’s Ed Gresser observed last year, is a four-generation ally and good neighbor, which committed 21,000 soldiers to the U.S.’s call for help in Afghanistan and Iraq and lost 50. National Security Director Peter Juul noted last week that threats and abuse against allies and good neighbors — that is, adventures which put this foundation of security at risk — are madness, and adds some time-to-break-the-glass ideas on ways Congress can usefully respond.

3. Tariffs: Congress has Constitutional authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises,” and needs to use it now. Mr. Trump has shown, repeatedly, over the past year, that he cannot responsibly manage any delegated tariff powers. Congress, and in particular Rep. Jason Smith and House Speaker Mike Johnson, need to remove his temptation to use them. This requires laws to (a) cancel any tariffs on Americans buying Danish or other European goods, and (b) require Congressional approval of any future tariffs imposed under trade laws including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”, the basis for most of last year’s tariff decrees, presumably meant by Congress to help address rather than try to create emergencies); the various “Sections” of trade law 232, 301, 122, and 338; and (c) likewise require Congressional approval for entering, or leaving, trade agreements with tariff components.

Such bills already exist. With leadership from Sens. Ron Wyden and Rand Paul last October, the Senate has already voted to terminate Mr. Trump’s IEEPA tariff decrees. The House bill introduced last spring by Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member Linda Sanchez and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats, HR 2888, would cancel all of Mr. Trump’s “emergency” and “national security” tariffs and require Congressional approval of any new ones. Now would be a good time for them.

Last point: As we — again — noted last year, the world is full of complex challenges, painful choices among lesser evils, and chronic problems with no obvious solution. The status of Greenland isn’t one of them. To the extent there is any problem, it is quite new and has an obvious and easy solution: the Trump administration should stop causing it.

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Venezuela oil production is down 75% since 1998

Posted on January 14, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: Venezuela oil production is down 75% since 1998.

THE NUMBERS: Venezuelan GDP (constant 2015 dollars*) –

2024	$42.6 billion
1998	$94.1 billion

* World Bank

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Assessing last week’s raid on Venezuela and the arrest of Chavista chief Nicolas Maduro, PPI’s National Security Director Peter Juul expects little good to come:

“Now-former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was a brutal dictator whose dreadful politics and policies, largely inherited from his equally autocratic predecessor Hugo Chavez, ran his country into the ground. The U.S. military operation that captured Maduro once again demonstrated the tactical and operational proficiency of the American armed forces. But neither Maduro’s autocratic governance nor the audacity and skill of the U.S. military in executing assigned tasks are the primary issue at hand here: at the whim of one man and with no real explanation or apparent rationale, the United States has launched an unwise and illegitimate military intervention that only undermines American interests and international security.”

What might be next? Trump administration comments and actions suggest three things. First, the admin. expects to “run” Venezuela for some time to come. Second, its apparent plan is to leave Maduro’s “Chavista” subordinates in place and hope they will cooperate with American managers. And third, U.S. and international energy companies will rebuild Venezuela’s oil industry as the basis for the national economy. Some oil data, then a couple of observations on the challenges a plan like this will face:

Venezuela sits on top of a large pool of petroleum. The U.S. Energy Information Administration and OPEC both cite a figure of 303 billion barrels of “proven reserves” of crude oil. This would be the world’s largest reserve, with Saudi Arabia second at 267 billion barrels and Iran third at 209 billion. (The U.S. has about 45 billion.) The two sources diverge a bit on the worldwide reserve total — EIA guesses 1.80 trillion barrels, OPEC 1.57 trillion — but either way, a 300-billion-barrel figure for Venezuela would be a sixth or maybe even a fifth of the world’s currently recoverable crude oil.

A lot of oil, then. But so far it hasn’t done Venezuelans much good – rather the reverse. Maria Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize address last December explains:

“The concentration of oil revenues in the State created perverse incentives: it gave the government immense power over society which turned into privilege, patronage, and corruption. … Oil wealth was not used to uplift, but to bind. Washing machines and refrigerators were handed out on national television to families living on dirt floors, not as progress but as spectacle. Apartments meant for social housing were handed to a select few as conditional rewards for obedience. And then came the ruin: Obscene corruption; historic looting. During the regime’s rule, Venezuela received more oil revenue than in the previous century combined. And it was all stolen. Oil money became a tool to purchase loyalty abroad while at home criminal and international terrorist groups fused themselves to the state. The economy collapsed by 80%. Poverty surpassed 86%. Nine million Venezuelans were forced to flee.”

And looking ahead from this point of inflection, there are some good reasons to believe a rebuilding plan centered on energy income isn’t likely to work: challenging at best for objective reasons, relying on partners who probably aren’t very reliable, and maybe the wrong strategic direction in general.

(1) Objective problems: The Chavista governments may have exaggerated the “300 billion barrels” figure for political reasons, so it should be thought of as a “theoretical maximum” rather than a firm number. And whatever the actual reserve level, Venezuela’s oil is pretty low quality — “heavy” and “sour” as opposed to the “light” and “sweet” refiners usually prefer. (“Heavy” meaning dense, carrying lots of asphalt and tar, harder to pump and transport; “sour” shorthand for high sulfur and sometimes metal content, thus needing more processing to reduce pollutants.)

(2) Likely unreliable partners: The 26 years of “Chavismo” featured regular large diversions of money from the state oil company PdVSA to regime loyalists and overseas clients, firings of skilled but politically independent-minded staff, and decaying infrastructure. So despite large reserves, the machines and wells needed to bring oil out of the ground and to ports are in bad shape. Venezuela’s real-world production is only about 1% of the world total: 810,000 barrels produced per day, down about 75% from 2.7 million barrels in 2014 and 3.1 million in 1998, and a bit less than 1% of the world’s 102.5 million-barrel daily output. Put bluntly, the administration seems to be relying on the people responsible for this to fix it.

(3) Probably the wrong strategy anyway: Venezuela is too reliant on oil. The WTO’s World Trade Profiles reports that oil exports — even in PdVSA’s current decrepit state — accounting for 75% of Venezuela’s $5 billion in exports. For a regional index, energy makes up 50% of Colombia’s $75 billion in total exports, 39% of Ecuador’s $33 billion, and 28% of Trinidad’s $13 billion. Ms. Machado’s comments on Venezuela’s experience are an extreme case of a general problem: developing countries solely reliant on resource exports risk concentration of power and wealth, internal corruption, and economic “Dutch disease” in which oil revenue inflates currency values and perversely shrinks the more labor-intensive agriculture and manufacturing sectors.

So a plan based on reviving large-scale Venezuelan energy exports, if it works, will be expensive and slow. Relying on the Chavista officials who crippled it over the past quarter-century to fix it now, rather than experts overseen by democratic politicians, makes such a plan likely to fail. And even if it succeeds to some extent, that might make the logical larger goal — a pluralistic economy and society, a democratic political system, cooperative relationships with South American and Caribbean neighbors — harder to achieve. Juul’s skepticism has a pretty strong foundation.

ABOUT ED

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

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The Trump administration is not protecting freedom of speech

Posted on January 7, 2026 by Alex Terr

FACT: The Trump administration is not protecting freedom of speech.

THE NUMBERS: Some people denied U.S. visas –

People	Year
Thierry Breton,Anna-Lena von Hollenberg, Josephine Ballon, Clare Melford, Imran Ahmed	December 2025
Wole Soyinka	October 2025
Patricia Lara	1986
Dario Fo	1980
John Lennon	1972
Gabriel Garcia Marquez	1971
Miriam Makeba	1968
Carlos Fuentes	1962
Charles Chaplin	1950
Pablo Neruda	1946

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Thomas Jefferson’s Second Inaugural calls for confidence in truth, the weakness of error and deceit, and the public’s capacity to reason — given freedom of speech — from facts informed by principles to a correct judgment:

“Since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts … the public judgment will correct false reasonings and opinions on a full hearing of all parties.”

In this age of troll farms, programmed bots, “influencers” subsidized by unfriendly powers, and other disinformation ops, sticking with Jefferson’s idealism takes nerve. The Trump administration hasn’t got it: Over the holidays, its State Department banned five citizens of U.S. allies — a former EU Commissioner and four digital-monitor NGO officers — from entering the United States, based essentially on claims that they talk too much and say unwelcome things. A rundown, then some thoughts:

France: Thierry Breton, the former EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, because in 2024 he “ominously reminded [Twitter owner] Elon Musk of @X’s legal obligations” under the European Union’s Digital Services Act.

United Kingdom: Clare Melford of Global Disinformation Index, apparently for involvement in Canadian controversies over Native American residential schools. Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate gets a flag too, as a “key collaborator with the Biden administration’s effort [ed. note: non-existent] to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens,” for example, by publishing a list of 12 prominent anti-vaccine sites and their leaders, one of whom now has a Trump admin. job.

Germany: Anna-Lena von Hollenberg and Josephine Ballon of HateAid, a “digital watchdog” NGO based in Berlin, both of whom “cited threat of ‘disinformation’ from ‘right-wing extremists online’” and “support the U.K.’s Online Safety Act and EU’s Digital Services Act.”

In sum: An ex-EU official reminds a company of legal obligations (even if the law in question, in the PPI view, isn’t a very good one); an NGO works in good faith with a U.S. administration to identify and publicize disinformation ops; another lists anti-vaxx groups; a third gets involved in intra-Canadian disputes. The Department says that these (a) amount to an effort to “coerce U.S. platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints”, and that (b) the five individuals’ “entry, presence, or activities in the United States” therefore “have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences [ed. note: none specified] for the United States,” (c) making the visa bans a way to “combat” a “global censorship-industrial complex.”

What to say about this? The Trump administration isn’t in general much of a free-speech defender. At home, the White House, the Federal Communications Commission, the Departments of Justice, Education, Defense, etc., and other agencies all frequently threaten to withdraw U.S. media companies’ broadcast licenses for unfavorable press coverage, accuse Members of Congress of “sedition” for the obviously correct statement that American soldiers must refuse illegal orders, sue overseas journalists, try to micro-manage university curricula, etc. Looking abroad, December’s visa decisions are more in a series of decisions meant to show petulance and hostility toward America’s European allies, but the Europeans aren’t the only targets. A few weeks earlier in October, the administration reanimated a particularly unfortunate Cold War policy — keeping artists and writers with inconvenient or objectionable opinions out of the U.S. — by canceling the visa of 91-year-old Nigerian Nobelist Wole Soyinka, apparently to express resentment for Soyinka’s unflattering comparison of Mr. Trump to the late Ugandan president Idi Amin.

None of this, of course, means that NGO critiques of U.S. platforms are always right, nor that the administration is invariably wrong. But the U.S. and the European democracies are certainly targets of disinformation campaigns. Governments ought to be cooperating to expose and counter them, and it’s good that British and German NGOs are trying – very much in Jefferson’s spirit of trying to provide the public a “full hearing” – to identify and publicize their origins and objectives. They sometimes do miss, and they may at times wrongly blame ‘platforms’ for larger policy problems. But the appropriate response is to provide accurate facts and let the public decide, not try to stop Americans from hearing them. And as to “serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” that looks like just blather. The administration’s real complaint seems to be about the expression of opinions and factual points that it, or some of its friends, dislikes hearing. In any such case, Jefferson remains the right guide.

ABOUT ED

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

Income	$74,474
Tax payments:	~$4,662
Savings	~$2,912
All spending	$66,900
Home/apartment	$15,257
Food (not including restaurants):	$5,820
Health expenses	$5,676
All non-food/housing/health spending	$40,147
Restaurants (“food away from home”)	$3,277
Entertainment	$2,764
Gasoline/other auto fuel	$2,645
Clothes	$1,642
Personal care products (e.g., soap, makeup)	$892

U.S. Customs blocks about $0.8 billion worth of goods a year on suspicion of ‘forced labor’

FACT: U.S. Customs blocks about $0.8 billion worth of goods a year on suspicion of ‘forced labor.’

THE NUMBERS: For 2021 –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

FACT: U.S. gasoline prices rose from $2.98 to $4.02 per gallon last month.

THE NUMBERS: Price increases since late February –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Transparency International: U.S. government perceived as increasingly corrupt

THE NUMBERS: U.S. worldwide ranking in Transparency International’s annual “Corruption Perceptions Index”* –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Trump admin accuses foreigners of excessive SExCiness, threatens them with tariffs.

THE NUMBERS: Per the U.S. Trade Representative Office, trading partners flagged for “Structural Excess Capacity”–

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: 2025 trade growth was the fastest since 2021.

THE NUMBERS:

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Refunding illegally collected tariff money is not difficult.

THE NUMBERS:

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Supreme Court: Presidents cannot use “international emergencies” as pretexts to create their own tariff systems.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. GDP growth, last five years–

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: U.S. manufacturing employment is down 108,000 in 2025

THE NUMBERS: U.S. pop-up toaster tariffs and employment–

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: Valentine’s Day boxed chocolate prices are up 11.8% this year.

THE NUMBERS: Tariff increases on cacao and chocolate, Jan.-November 2025*

FURTHER READING

Some V-Day Chocolate History

And some science:

ABOUT ED

FACT: Most Americans disliked higher tariffs a year ago, and few minds have changed since.

THE NUMBERS: CNN/SSRS surveys on Trump tariffs –

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: The U.S. lost 20,000 scientific research jobs last year.

THE NUMBERS: Real-dollar growth in R&D spending, 2020-2023* –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

FACT: The U.S. has no claim to Greenland.

THE NUMBERS: Trump tariff threats last week –

WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

FACT: Venezuela oil production is down 75% since 1998.

THE NUMBERS: Venezuelan GDP (constant 2015 dollars*) –

* World Bank WHAT THEY MEAN:

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

FACT: The Trump administration is not protecting freedom of speech.

THE NUMBERS: Some people denied U.S. visas –

FURTHER READING

ABOUT ED

* World Bank

WHAT THEY MEAN: