FACT: 32 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings to open by the end of 2028.

THE NUMBERS: World’s tallest building by date* –-

* Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Their list doesn’t count free-standing towers like the 555-foot Washington Monument (1884), the 986-foot Eiffel Tower (1889), or the Great Pyramid. The Lincoln Cathedral’s height is a modern best guess, as the original spire fell down in 1548.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Having topped 100 floors last month, the Jeddah Tower on the Arabian coast will add 67 more by its mid-2028 opening date. At exactly a thousand meters (3281 feet), it will overtop the world’s current tallest building (Burj Khalifa on the other side of the peninsula in Dubai, which has held the “tallest building” title for 16 years) by 172 meters. For context, the Mt. Everest peak is about 3600 meters above the Tibetan plateau. A rundown on giant buildings:

(1) 53 in mainland China, 3 in Hong Kong. In 1980, mainland China’s tallest building was the Shanghai Exhibition Center, at a meager 361 feet or 115 meters. Now China is home to 46 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, and five of the top ten. At the very top, the Shanghai Tower (2015, 2073 feet) joins Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur, Burj Khalifa, and the Makkah Royal Clock Tower among the four officially recognized “mega skyscrapers” (i.e., buildings above 1,968 feet). Hong Kong currently has another five, though two will drop off the bottom of the list by 2028.

(2) 13 in the United Arab Emirates, including the top-ranked Burj Khalifa. If you count by cities rather than countries, Dubai will be the world leader with 15, followed by Shenzhen’s 12, New York’s 9, and Shanghai’s 7.

(3) 10 in the United States. The Council’s lists go back to 1890, just before America’s urban skyscraper boom. That year’s top 100 featured 20 American buildings, topped by the Illinois State Capitol at #23. Thus, the current U.S. share looks like the lowest since the mid-19th century. As of 2028, all 10 of the U.S. top-100 entries will be in New York and Chicago; One World Trade Center will rank 8th at 1,776 feet. The American skyline’s rise and (relative) eclipse:

Year     U.S. Top-100 Building Count
2028                                             10
2024                                             14
2020                                             14
2010                                             29
2000                                             47
1990                                             87
1950                                             91
1930                                             89
1900                                             38
1890                                             20

If it’s a consolation, though the American skyline may no longer tower over its rivals, the U.S.’s intellectual role in skyscraper design and construction remains large. Chicago-based Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill handled architectural design for both the Jeddah Tower and Burj Khalifa. (They seem cost-effective: the J.T. is supposed to cost $1.2 billion, only twice the $600 million estimate for the Trump administration’s “ballroom.”) New York-based Leslie E. Robertson Associates has the world’s most ambitious concept piece, though it seems unlikely to get built: a 5,700-foot “Sky Mile Tower” in Tokyo, nearly twice as high as Jeddah Tower and burying every conceivable competitor.

FURTHER READING

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

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

New York’s Council on Tall Building and Urban Habitat lists the world’s 100 tallest buildings from 2026 back to 1890.

Now:

The Jeddah Tower.

Burj Khalifa, record-holder since 2010, has 160 floors, a spiral shape to minimize upper-story wind torque, and specialized glass and heat-resistant glazed aluminum/stainless steel cladding on the outer walls.

Malaysia’s Merdeka 118 ranks second.

New York’s One World Trade Center (2014) is currently the world’s 7th-highest building at 1776 feet, and likely 8th in 2030.

And the ‘vision’ outline of the imaginary Tokyo Sky Mile Tower. On a clear day, a viewer on the top floor could see Mt. Fuji 62 miles away.

Then:

A brief survey of tall-building record-holders and techniques —

1.  Pyramids & Ziggurats: The 481-foot Great Pyramid outside Cairo held the world’s tallest record for 3,800 years. Not just a lame pile of rocks, it is a “smart pyramid” with a complex interior network of chambers, tunnels, and ventilation shafts meant for ceremonial, religious, and astronomical purposes. All point to sophisticated, though unrecorded, ancient Egyptian architectural drafting and engineering capacity. Since the Council limits its top-100 lists to some sort of occupancy beyond “single corpse,” neither pyramids nor free-standing towers like the Eiffel make the cut. But if they did, the G.P. would have held the record for nearly 3,000 years, and remained in the top 10 as late as 1900. The slightly younger ziggurats in neighboring Sumer and Akkad were made of brick, a squishier material, and topped out at around 170 feet.

2.  Cathedrals: Designed without printing presses, standardized weights and measures, or mathematics beyond flat-plane geometry, cathedrals got started in the 11th century and overtook pyramids by 1310. Contemporary comment:

“It was as though the world had shaken herself and cast off her old age, and clothed herself everywhere in a white garment of churches…”

Except for Philadelphia’s City Hall (548 feet, 1901) and Turin’s Mole Antonelliana (originally meant as a synagogue, but opened as a Risorgimento civic building in 1890), cathedrals remain the world’s tallest stone on stone buildings. The Ulm Munster (1890) is the tallest existing one.

3.  Skyscrapers: As noted above, stone buildings can’t get much above 500 feet, since the weight of the upper tiers will crack the load-bearing pillars and walls beneath. Steel-skeleton buildings with curtain walls designed in Chicago and New York — blueprints, slide rules, etc. — solved the height problem, while the Otis hydraulic elevator system settled the 50-story-climb-to-the-top challenge. The Empire State Building, looking ahead to its 2031 centennial, has a retrospective.

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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FACT: ‘Global-economy’ debates are not new.

THE NUMBERS: Merchandise trade/U.S. GDP ratio* –

* Modern GDP and goods trade figures from BEA and Census. 1790 GDP estimates and trade from measuringworth.com and Almanac of Statistical Abstracts.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Two of the Declaration’s 27 grievances relate to tariffs and trade:

The abstract question of taxation and representation aside, the Continental Congress delegates and their successors in early-republic government had lots of practical reasons to think about these things. Data illustrate:

Nobody really knows how large America’s early economy was; www.measuringworth.com, a Virginia-based economic history project, makes an admirable try. They believe that in 1790, the 13 states and 3.9 million Americans combined to produce a GDP of $193 million. Alexander Hamilton’s 119 newly hired Customs agents counted $23 million in imports and $20 million in exports that year. Assuming the GDP estimate is reasonable, the early republic’s trade-to-GDP ratio would have been 22 percent, about equal to the 23% modern-era peak in 2008. (We’re a bit lower now: the Bureau of Economic Analysis put U.S. GDP at $30.8 trillion in 2025 while Census reported $3.4 trillion in goods imports and $2.2 trillion in exports, for an 18.2% ratio.)

Similar circumstances can elicit similar thoughts. So, for this July 4th weekend, three post-Independence perspectives on “globalization”:

1. Alexander Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791): In the first U.S. government paper on trade policy and “competitiveness,” Hamilton — then in his third year as Treasury Secretary — patiently refutes claims that low-wage foreign competition (from Industrial Revolution Britain and continental Europe) makes it impossible for American manufacturing to succeed:

FURTHER READING

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

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

Happy 250th:

The National Archives’ official Declaration transcript.

PPI’s newly launched American Identity Project, led by Richard Kahlenberg, expresses faith in a common American identity and seeks a “deep and healthy sense of reflective patriotism.”

… and joins the Center for New Liberalism to publish three prize-winning 2026 essays by young Americans on “what it means to be an American.” They respond through the lenses of immigrant experience and individual liberty, America seen from abroad, and family.

Some classics:

Hamilton’s Report on Manufactures (1791)

Jefferson’s 7-country Report on Foreign Commerce (1793)

And Paine’s Rights of Man, 1790; passage on commerce in chapter 5.

Then & now:

Census (1970) reprints colonial-era and early republic trade data.

“Measuring Worth” estimates GDP, per capita income, etc. for the U.S., Australia, the U.K., and Spain from the 1790s forward.

BEA’s modern GDP data.

Census’s trade data.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: The U.S. prosecutes about 200 cases of forced labor and human trafficking a year.

THE NUMBERS: Profits from a 2015-2021 forced labor scheme in U.S. onion- and blueberry-picking* –

~$200 million

* U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Georgia.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

On June 12, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia wrapped up a five-year prosecution of 24 individuals for a forced-labor scheme in onion- and blueberry-picking in southern Georgia, as the last three defendants — Brett Bussey, Margarita Rojas Cardenas, and Nery Rene Carrillo-Najaro — admitted to:

Ten days earlier, as the three were preparing their ‘guilty’ pleas, the Trump administration’s U.S. Trade Representative Office published a plan to impose tariffs of 12.5% on goods from 54 trading partners, and 10% on six more, claiming they don’t do enough to stop imports of goods made with forced labor. Together, the 60 economies — the EU and the U.K., China and Taiwan, Jordan and South Africa, Japan and the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, Chile and Peru, Mexico and Canada, etc. — provide about 97% of America’s imports. Extrapolating from the revenue temporarily sucked in by last year’s illegal “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” decrees, this will likely cost Americans around $100 billion a year.

The logic works like this: If foreign laws aren’t good enough, forced-labor “inputs” might flow into production chains. Their unnaturally low labor costs would make them artificially cheap. That in turn would make the final goods cheaper, displacing honorably produced American goods. As we noted last week, USTR’s report contains little actual evidence, but does feature four suggestive “case studies.” Two of these claim European Union members are depriving American malt liquor and cigarette businesses of some exports, as (i) Spain’s importing of Burmese rice “strongly suggests” that Spanish breweries might have purchased “at least some” rice produced with forced labor, and likewise (ii) Polish purchasing of tobacco from three Malawian companies placed under a CBP “Withhold Release Order” from November 2019 to May of 2021 blockage of imports of tobacco from three Malawi companies “strongly suggests” that “a significant proportion” of Poland’s tobacco imports before 2020 might have had forced labor content. Sample from the malt liquor passage:

“The TVPRA list [a Labor Department publication] has flagged rice from Burma as being at risk of forced labor since 2009. … While not all of Spain’s imports of rice from Burma were necessarily produced using forced labor, the prevalence of forced labor in rice production in Burma strongly suggests that at least some of Spain’s imports of rice were produced wholly or in part with forced labor. …Faced with higher input costs, Spain would have exported a lower volume of downstream malt beer products… [while] the United States would likely have experienced greater sales, revenues, and exports of malt beer, all else equal.”

Obviously, phrases like “at least some” and “strongly suggest” themselves suggest that the report’s authors aren’t really sure Spain or Poland bought forced labor goods. And more generally, though their unexamined premise about prices — forced labor means cheaper goods and a cost advantage — feels intuitively plausible and may sometimes be correct, it’s also sometimes clearly wrong.

The report’s specific claims about rice and tobacco, for example, don’t hold up well. It doesn’t include price data, but Burmese rice sells at $339/ton this month, only 3% below India’s $351/ton and about 10% below Asia’s $378/ton average; the U.S.’ $542/ton is far above the cost of not only Burmese, but any Southeast or South Asian mass-market rice. (And rice is a very small factor in malt liquor prices anyway, probably accounting for 0.5% to 2.5% of wholesale cost.) Likewise, Malawi tobacco costs about the same as tobacco from neighboring Mozambique. So at least in these cases, there’s no evidence of a big saving on input costs.

In the U.S., meanwhile, the Georgia case’s sentencing and indictment papers provide detailed information on the actual inner working of a large forced-labor enterprise in agriculture, which did not affect the cost of goods. Its operators ran a labor contracting company called Rojas Avila Harvesting with an office in Bacon County, along with several shell companies. Farmers in six adjacent counties paid them to recruit seasonal workers from Central America for seasonal harvesting of onions and blueberries from 2015 through 2021, including handling H2A visa fees and paperwork, along with wages, transport, and other labor costs. Once the workers arrived for their jobs, the Rojas Avila Harvesting officers confiscated their passports, took much of their wages, assigned them debts to cover the travel costs, and threatened them with violence should they try to leave or get help. The trials and evidence since 2022, and journalistic accounts like this one from ProPublica, report that the scheme trapped at least 500 men and women in forced labor and brought its authors over $200 million. Though one farmer pleaded guilty to participating in the scheme, most appear to have been unaware of Rojas Avila’s actions.

Some tentative lessons:

ILO research validated: The Rojas Avila Harvesting scheme closely matches the International Labour Organization’s description of the nature of forced labor worldwide. ILO’s reports argue that withholding of wages, confiscation of passports, and debt bondage are especially frequent forms of forced labor; consider threats of violence relatively common; and believe risks are especially high for migrant workers. This fits Rojas Avila’s operations perfectly, suggesting that forced labor in the U.S. may not differ drastically from forced labor in other countries.

Forced-labor enterprises don’t always charge low prices: USTR’s report assumes forced-labor enterprises naturally sell their goods at below-market prices, but that’s not how the Rojas Avila Harvesting scheme worked. Its managers just diverted wage payments from workers to themselves to get as much money as they could. The onions and blueberries that its unlucky workers picked appear to have gone into American food industry and grocery supply chains at standard market prices.

U.S. itself not free of forced-labor goods: Between 2015 and 2020, the U.S. exported blueberries to 59 countries and onions to 80, with Canada the largest buyer and Caribbean island countries most reliant on U.S. supply. Press coverage suggests the farms contracting with Rojas Avila Harvesting sold to domestic buyers rather than exporting, so these particular berries and onions might not have entered international supply chains, but at this point certainty may be impossible. And while abuses on the scale of Rojas Avila Harvesting are likely rare, each year since 2020 the DoJ has prosecuted 183 to 208 people for forced labor and human trafficking crimes a year since 2020, it would probably be naïve to consider them wholly unique.

Against that background, the logic USTR employs for Spanish malt and Polish cigarettes would encourage worldwide policies along the following lines:

• Some U.S. onions and blueberries were harvested in the recent past with forced labor;
• Therefore, all U.S. onions and blueberries are suspect;
• Buyers of U.S. onions and blueberries could use them to make processed foods like sauces and pies, unfairly competing with our food;
• A foreign country that buys any U.S. onions and blueberries should therefore face tariffs on everything it produces.

Again, forced labor remains an egregious human rights violation in the United States or anywhere else, and forced-labor trade an appropriate target for policy. But Americans, as well as targeted countries, would have strong and well-founded complaints about a policy like this. As the EU, Canada, the U.K., Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan, and dozens of developing countries do about the administration’s claims about them. All, really, should view forced labor not as a pretext for tariff increases, but a human rights and law-enforcement concern broadly shared and requiring sustained cooperative work to solve.

FURTHER READING

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

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

USTR’s “Section 301” report calls for tariffs on goods from 60 trading partners, alleging insufficient laws against forced labor imports.

Meanwhile:

The Justice Department’s 2021 indictment of 24 Rojas Avila Harvesting officers and employees.

On June 12, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern Georgia District announces the final sentencings.

ProPublic tells one trapped worker’s story.

And a surreal footnote: One farmer participated in the scheme and pleaded guilty in 2022. Others appear to have been duped. One of the latter, a blueberry proprietor and now Georgia State Senator, apparently unaware of the abuses, actually appeared at a USTR hearing in 2020 with a retrospectively brazen appeal for high tariffs on Mexican blueberries, arguing that supposedly low Mexican wages and labor standards provided an “unfair cost advantage” over Georgia businesses.

Compare & contrast:

Trump admin. scraps U.S. support for forced labor reduction abroad.

The Biden administration’s four-year program against forced labor and human trafficking.

And EU law on trade in forced labor products.

International research and data:

The International Labour Organization studied the scale of forced labor as of 2021.

… and profits drawn from it.

U.S. data and policy:

DHS summarizes forced labor cases by industry type.

The Justice Department on forced labor and human trafficking prosecutions.

CBP’s Withhold Release Orders and Findings since 2017.

… and similar data on Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act seizures.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: Americans supply over 80% of the Bahamas’ imported goods.

THE NUMBERS:

Assuming 10% and 12.5% tariffs on goods imports, extrapolating from 2025 tariff collection under 10% “IEEPA” tariffs.
** CBP statistics; annual totals vary but average $0.8 billion over the last 8 years.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Metaphorically shaking his fist at the Supreme Court this past February, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the administration will replace its illegal “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” (“IEEPA”) tariff decrees with new ones using different laws:

“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.”

One such decree, a 98-page “Section 301” report published by the U.S. Trade Representative Office, showed up two weeks ago. It announced tariffs of 10% and 12.5% on 60 trading partners — Colombia and Korea, the UK and the European Union, Jordan and South Africa, the Bahamas and New Zealand — beginning late July, on the basis of a claim that they don’t do as much as the U.S. to stop trade in goods made using forced labor. Together, they provide about 97% of all U.S. imports, from crude oil and semiconductors to clothes, winter vegetables, flat-screen TVs, hand tools, fertilizer, and dinner plates. Should the decree go into effect, taking its various exceptions (energy, USMCA goods, etc.) into account, it would likely cost American families, farmers, manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, building contractors, and other goods-buyers about $100 billion a year — more than 100 times the $0.8 billion average annual value of goods CBP blocks at U.S. borders on forced-labor suspicion.

As to its legal prospects, Mr. Bessent is correct that some past “Section 301” tariffs were challenged and survived. But no two “301” actions are alike, and the fact that courts allowed earlier ones doesn’t mean they’ll accept this one. Let’s look:

“Section 301,” a trade law dating to 1974, allows the U.S. government to identify “an act, policy, or practice” of a foreign government that in some “unreasonable” way “burdens or restricts U.S. commerce” and use tariff threats as a negotiating tool to fix it. USTR’s complex four-step argument for using it here (setting aside, for now, Bessent’s earlier statement of the administration’s real motive) is –

(i) 54 countries on its list lack a law like the U.S. ban on all imports of goods made with forced
labor. Six more (Canada, Ecuador, Indonesia, the EU, Mexico, Pakistan) do have such laws, but the report says they don’t enforce them as well as the United States does. Therefore,
(ii) manufacturers in these countries may be unwittingly incorporating forced labor goods as inputs, which
(iii) might allow them to produce goods more cheaply than similar American stuff. This, in turn,
(iv) justifies a tariff on any scale the administration wants — in this case, one vastly greater than any estimate of actual forced-labor trade flows.

If this decree is to survive legal challenge this fall, the administration must convince courts of three things:

1. The existence of unreasonable “acts, policies, or practices”: Here, the claim is that the absence of a forced-labor import ban identical to America’s (passed in 1930, updated in 2015) is the same as the presence of the unreasonable “act, policy, or practice” the “Section 301” statute requires. This seems a stretch, but some similar previous efforts — for example, investigations citing weak copyright or patent protection overseas — have held up. Set against this, as former U.S. trade/labor negotiator Desiree LeClercq observes, the investigation’s premise is that the U.S.’ forced-labor program is ideal, which isn’t necessarily so. LeClercq notes, for example, that the EU’s forced-labor law has stronger evidentiary rules than America’s and — unlike the U.S. — not only bans imports from other countries but also exports of goods containing forced labor inputs from Europe. And from a beyond-trade perspective, U.S. forced-labor policy has steadily weakened over the past 18 months, as the Trump administration’s 2025 “DOGE” program abolished most efforts to fight forced labor overseas while cutting the Labor Department’s domestic Wage and Hour Division staff from 1,435 and 974 field inspectors 2024 to a requested 1175 and 611 field investigators this year.

2. The existence of a “burden on commerce”. Should the court accept the first argument, the administration would then need to demonstrate that the “acts, policies, or practices” impose a “burden” of some sort on U.S. commerce. USTR’s report doesn’t seem to do this at all.

First, it doesn’t show that any listed country actually buys any goods made with forced labor. Its 98 pages cite no actual, verified shipment of such goods passing customs in Sri Lanka, Italy, South Africa, Uruguay, or anywhere else. Rather, citing CBP trade-blockage figures and International Labour Organization estimates of the possible scale of forced labor output (as distinct from “trade”), it notes that some forced-labor goods do cross borders, and asserts without proof that other countries likely import more of them than does the United States.

The nadir-of-credibility point is probably its claim about the Bahamas — a small island chain off Florida, population 404,000 — whose modest shipments of goods to the U.S. will now get a 12.5% tariff. (It’s mainly fuel oil, sea crayfish, and sand for Floridian customers.) The report offers no evidence at all that the Bahamas buys any forced labor goods — and since over 80% of the things Bahamians actually do buy from abroad are American*, the stats suggest that if any were made with forced labor, they’re most likely from America itself.

* U.S. exports to the Bahamas are principally refined fuels from Texas and Louisiana, and prepared foods from Florida. IMF World Economic Outlook database for Bahamas imports by country; Commerce Department TradeStats Express for U.S. exports to Bahamas by state.

Second, it doesn’t demonstrate that even if a country on the list does unwittingly import forced-labor goods, that would impose any “burden” on U.S. business, labor, or agriculture. Earlier “301” investigations, even in the first Trump administration, tried to demonstrate such “burdens” through specific facts and economic analysis. For example, the 215-page 2017 report on Chinese forced technology transfer and industrial espionage identified policy directives, government agencies assigned to carry them out, and the buildings in which the agencies operated, and then conducted a professional modeling of economic impact, estimating about $50 billion worth of “burden” through captured intellectual property, lost exports, artificial creation of new competitors, and so on.

Nothing like that shows up here. Instead, the report simply asserts that forced-labor production naturally creates a flow of unfairly low-priced goods that displace lawful competitors. This may be true — forced-labor enterprises might want to grab market share by selling at unnaturally low prices — but it also might be wrong, as they might equally want to grab maximum profit by selling at market prices. Only empirical analysis could settle this question, and the report offers none.

In fact, the main current analysis of worldwide forced-labor profit in goods-producing industries — the ILO’s 2024 estimates of $35.4 billion in industry and $5.0 billion in agriculture, cited in the report — suggests the latter is more likely. And CBP’s annual average of $0.8 billion worth of imports a year blocked on forced labor grounds, at roughly 0.02% of the U.S.’s $3.3 trillion annual goods-import total, suggests any economic impact may be too small to measure. Absent a price advantage, forced labor remains an egregious human rights violation and an appropriate policy target, but couldn’t legally justify any “301” tariff — let alone one on a scale so much larger than the actual import blockages.

3. Compliance with Congressional intent. Finally, stepping back a bit, the administration would need to show that it is acting as Congress intended when it wrote up the “301” statute five decades ago. One of the drafters, Alan Wolff – formerly a Deputy USTR and WTO official, now a scholar at the Peterson Institute for International Economics – doubts it can, arguing that the statute doesn’t authorize multi-country investigations or general tariff increases. And per Bessent, the investigation is meant not to solve specific trade-related policy problems, but rather to serve as a pretext for replacing the Congressionally authorized U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule by decree with a new tariff system of the administration’s own design. As such, it is perhaps not a real “301” investigation at all, but just Mr. Trump’s third attempt to take an old trade law meant for a very specific purpose, and try to use it to nullify Congress’ constitutional authority over tariff rates.

That’s not what Congress meant these laws to do. Courts so far haven’t applauded attempts to use them that way. And whatever the courts do this time, of course, Congress has the power to protect its authority and restore Constitutionally appropriate management of tariff rates, and can use it whenever it’s ready.

FURTHER READING

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

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

Treasury Secretary Bessent (Feb. 20) says “232” and “301” decrees will replace “IEEPA” tariffs.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s June Report announcing “Section 301” tariffs ostensibly for “inadequate forced labor laws.”

The “Section 301” statute.

Alan Wolff of PIIE on the origins and applicability of “301”, arguing among other things that it doesn’t authorize multi-country investigations or general tariff increases.

And Carnegie scholar Peter Harrell takes a similar view in Reason this week.

Compare & contrast:

The Biden administration’s four-year program against forced labor and human trafficking.

Trump admin. scraps forced labor reduction programs abroad.

And the EU law on trade in forced labor products.

International research and data:

The International Labour Organization studied the scale of forced labor as of 2021.

… and the profits drawn from it.

U.S. data and policy:

CBP’s Withhold Release Orders and Findings since 2017.

… and similar data on Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act seizures.

And at home, DHS has stats on cases by industry type; the Department of Justice itemizes about 180 prosecutions for forced labor and peonage each year; and the Labor Department proposes cuts to its investigation force.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: A U.S. “B-2” tourist visa for the World Cup costs $435.

THE NUMBERS: International visitor arrivals in the United States –

International Trade Administration, International Visitor Arrivals Program

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

The World Cup’s beloved preliminary rituals reach their close this afternoon: the local pols and FIFA eminences denouncing one another as cheapskates and money-grabbers, the irate fans yelling about $1,000-and-up tickets for even the earliest group-stage matches, the confusing and arbitrary stadium name-changes, etc. The first match, Mexico v. South Africa, kicks off tomorrow afternoon on Mexico City’s hybrid-turf pitch, and from then until the July 19th final at “New York-New Jersey Stadium,” the 48 qualifiers play 104 matches — 78 in the U.S., 13 apiece in Canada and Mexico. Administration economists predict the Cup will bring a mini-boom. As you wait for the kickoff, some background on the clash between their hopes and other policies –

Background: The World Bank says tourism supports about $10 trillion in output worldwide — about 9% of global GDP — as travelers take 2 billion annual trips across borders. For the U.S. specifically, the Commerce Department reported about 76 million foreign visitors a year in the 2010s, including two to four million coming for sports events, and calculated the impact at ~3% of U.S. GDP.

If this is still correct, tourism and travel would account for about $900 billion of the $30 trillion U.S. economy, and in principle the Cup matches might add a lot this summer. Few sports events other than the Olympics match the Cup’s blend of global reach and commercial appeal, and both the U.S. government and FIFA expect it will attract 5 to 7 million extra visitors. This spring, the State Department estimated a $17.2 billion GDP boost — like temporarily adding a small island economy like the Bahamas or Jamaica to the U.S. — and 185,000 extra jobs. FIFA’s more cautious estimate assumes (a) international fans will make up 40 percent of match attendees, (b) most will attend multiple matches, and (c) they will stay roughly 12 days while spending about $416 per day. With all this, they get $9.6 billion in extra U.S. GDP and $7.6 billion in tourism-related activity. So in normal times, a noticeable jolt to an economy that needs it. But these times aren’t very normal, and the American tourist economy may need more help than the Cup can give. Three points:

1. Tourism depressed and falling: During the COVID-19 pandemic the U.S’s count of international visitors shriveled, hitting a low of 19 million in 2020 and not getting back above 60 million until 2023. It had mostly rebounded by 2024 — though even then still 5 million below a typical 2010s count — but fell back last year as potential visitors, especially Canadians, reacted against Trump administration tariffs, visa fees, travel bans, and general rhetoric by staying home or going somewhere else. The 2025 count was only 68 million, and the early months of 2026 are about the same. So even if the U.S. government or FIFA predictions pan out, the overall result would not be a boom, but rather a tourism level like that of 2024.

2. Cup trips are getting very expensive. Meanwhile, the early predictions may have been a bit optimistic, as Cup costs started high and have been rising all year. Match tickets are pricy — at the extreme end, a “Category 1” price for the final match hit $10,000 by April and reached $16,000 by May (Disgruntled fan group Football Supporters Europe: “A monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup, ignoring the contribution of supporters to the spectacle it is,” amplified by FIFA “bait advertising” and “pressure-selling tactics”.) Travel costs then spiked in spring, as the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz closure drove up fuel prices. Three Lions fans hoping to see England’s first Cup win since 1966 would have paid $285 for a standard Heathrow-to-JFK economy fare if they booked in February; by April, prices were at $628, plus extra new $10-to-$50 bag charges. As to lodging, hotels around the NY/NJ final venue have lots of rooms but are expensive, and even the special Manhattan-to-stadium train costs over $100. Other venues are squeezed for space — Kansas City, host to Argentina’s group-round matches, has a stadium seating more than 76,000 spectators, but only around 36,000 metro-area hotel rooms.

3. And policy is making travel more difficult. Meanwhile, new visa fees and country-by-country rules make travel to the U.S. more expensive, and often harder, than it was a year ago. Brazilians hoping for the sixth Cup and Argentines confidently expecting a repeat of their overtime 2022 win; excited fans of first-time entry Uzbekistan traveling from Samarkand; Paraguayans checking in for tomorrow’s 15-hour flight from Asuncion for the Albirroja’s Friday match v. the USMNT in Los Angeles — all must navigate the “B-2” tourist visa labyrinth. The initial DS-160 form expressing interest in such a visa costs a nonrefundable $185. Then comes the real work: securing an in-person interview, often requiring months in high-demand countries; then more paperwork on the purpose of travel, financial capacity, intent to return home, etc.; and finally, if the Consulate says yes, another $250 tacked on as of late 2025 under the grim title “visa integrity fee”.  On top of this, fans from Algeria, Cabo Verde, Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal, and Tunisia must now post new “visa bonds” of $5,000 to $15,000, and citizens of two qualified World Cup teams — Haiti and Iran — usually can’t get visas at all.

Even with all the expense and paperwork, the Cup will attract visitors and provide a bump. Maybe less, though, than the administration and FIFA guessed a few months back. For lots of fans, TV and streaming video may be looking like a reasonable second-best.

Special Note: Research and drafting for this week’s Trade Fact by PPI Spring Fellow Madeline Tong. Ms. Tong is a graduating senior at Georgetown University, concentrating in philosophy and economics.

FURTHER READING

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

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

World Cup:

From FIFA, World Cup central.

… the U.S. National Team and its first “Group D” rival Paraguay.

… top-seed France.

… and defending champ Argentina.

Pre-Cup friendlies:

FIFA makes stadiums change their names.

Euro-fans complain about ticket prices.

New York pols blast the New Jersey transit authority, jawbone the ticket price for the 35-minute Manhattan-to-stadium train down from $150 to $98.

Elimination rounds:

The World Bank assesses tourism in the global economy.

The Commerce Department’s Inbound International Tourists Arrival site has arrival counts by country since 2013.

Politico on last year’s sharp drop in Canadian tourism, the heavy economic impact on Las Vegas, and the political implications for mid-term U.S. elections.

The Trump admin. predicts a Cup-related mini-boom.

… and FIFA is a bit more cautious.

Finals:

Which is the real “football”? Trick question, there are five, and they’re all “real.” The name itself comes from an 18th and early 19th-century British game expressively termed “mob football”. This was apparently a highly informal, few-rules version of “capture the flag” with hundreds of players, with the “footwork” much more about “putting the boot in” than flashy shooting and dribbling. Modern “football” games all descend from high-minded Victorian efforts to develop lower-casualty alternatives:

* “Soccer”: As the “FIFA” acronym (“Federation Internationale de Football Association”) reminds everyone, World Cup matches are technically “Association Football” games. The quasi-acronym “soccer” is not a provincial Americanism, but the short form of “association.” Top sport for Europe, the U.K., and Latin America.

* “Rugby football”: Invented around the same time as soccer at the school of the same name, “rugby” is the top or near-top sport in South Africa, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

* “Gridiron football”: The U.S. and Canadian game, named for the field’s yard-line layout, with rules standardized during Theodore Roosevelt’s early 20th-century presidency. TR wanted to reduce arbitrary violence and encourage respect for rules in college sports. Careful what you wish for.

* “Aussie rules football”: Somewhere between the rugby and gridiron versions, Australia only, invented in Melbourne in the 1850s.

* “Gaelic football”: The Irish version, apparently close to Aussie rules except for requiring some basketball-like hand dribbling.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: 831 data centers are under construction in the United States.

THE NUMBERS: Taiwanese GDP growth* –

* Taiwan Directorate-General for Budget, Accounting, and Statistics for 2026 figures; IMF World Economic Outlook database for 21st-century average.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

The Chinese calendar’s twelve animals and five elements, rotating on their 60-year cycle, converge to make 2026 a “Fire Horse” year. Horses are said to embody energy and independence; fire, passion and inspiration. Writing in Taipei-based CommonWealth Magazine, Judy Lin says such a year:

“Brings a surge of intensity, momentum, and transformative change. This once-in-60-
years combination amplifies courage and restlessness, rewarding bold action while
testing focus and restraint.” 

Taiwan’s stat people provide data support for Ms. Lin’s high-energy forecast: their laconic GDP release last Friday reports that — precisely as she was writing up the zodiac outlook — the Taiwanese economy was growing at a rate of 14.6%, and predicted 9.6% over the full year. Setting aside an anomalous 10.5% rebound after the financial crisis in 2010, that would be Taiwan’s biggest growth surge in 40 years and triple the island’s 21st-century average.

What has happened? The background is the worldwide, and particularly American, surge of investment into AI data centers. Some samples:

* McKinsey estimates $7 trillion going into data centers over the next five years, with 40% of it spent in the United States. The global total would account for about 1% of the world’s likely $690 trillion in GDP over these years, and the ~$2.8 trillion U.S. investment would be about 1.6% of U.S. GDP.

* UNCTAD says data center-building accounted for a fifth of the $1.6 trillion in “greenfield” FDI investment last year.

* DataCenterMap, which counts the number of actually operating data centers, reports 11,534 live worldwide, including 4,312 in the United States, and Bloomberg NEF says Americans are building 831 new ones.

In sum, lots of construction projects, huge amounts of money spent to build them, and as data centers prepare to go live, they quickly fill up with AI chips, server racks, motherboards, graphics processing units, cooling systems, CPUs, and the like. The world’s largest centers for production of these things are the three Science Park complexes Taiwan launched in the 1970s – Hsinchu, Southern Taiwan, Central Taiwan — which now serve as home bases for semiconductor and IT hardware manufacturers of the TSMC, UMC, MediaTek, Foxconn, etc. type.  For the past two years, they have been sending a torrent of this stuff from Taiwan – a recent Air Cargo News report suggests likely 1,500 tons of semiconductors and AI server racks arriving by plane daily, along with ships loaded with power distribution units, heavy cooling systems, and fiber-optics – to the new data centers Bloomberg describes.

U.S. trade data are a window on the scale of this flow. They show total imports from Taiwan more than tripling from $88 billion in 2023 to a likely total above $300 billion this year, and Taiwan overtaking Korea, Germany, Japan, and now China to trail only Canada and Mexico as a U.S. import source. Two quick tables:

1. U.S. goods imports 2023-2026

Census, Goods Trade by Country

2. Imports from Taiwan by product type, 2023-2026

USITC Dataweb, NAICS classifications

This explains the Fire Horse-style “intensity” and “momentum” in Taiwan’s economic data. On the U.S. side, IT goods have been so far mostly exempted from the tariff binge that has weighed down auto production, retail, chemical industries, and construction. So even as U.S. macro-econ data take on an alarmingly ‘stagflationary’ look – high inflation, low hiring, falling GDP growth, and collapsing consumer confidence – the data-center construction boom continues to offset at least some of the drag.

Big events, of course, raise complex questions: “transformative change” in social life and employment, the local impacts of these hundreds of construction projects on traffic, utility prices, and land use. If calendar animals and elements are of use, 2027 is a “Fire Goat” year, thought still to involve some intensity and momentum, but temper them with more reflection and creativity. For a look at what these might entail, close the horoscope tab and see PPI President Will Marshall’s thoughtful guide to policy on data centers and AI.

FURTHER READING

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

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

Fire Horse:

Zodiac animals and elements explained, from the U.S.-based Asia Society.

… and Taiwan’s CommonWealth Magazine explains the “Fire Horse” year.

The AI future:

PPI President Will Marshall on the road forward for AI and data center construction.

For a long read, Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas reflects on technology and society, human and artificial intelligence, common good, exclusion and communion, through a “Babel v. Jerusalem” lens.

Data on data centers:

McKinsey estimates the scale of worldwide data center investment and offers ideas for U.S. states.

UNCTAD on data centers as the top driver of foreign direct investment worldwide last year.

DataCenterMap.com counts data centers by country.

And Bloomberg NEF monitors data center building in the U.S.

Taiwan’s boom:

“TECRO” — the Taipei Economic & Cultural Relations Office — is Taiwan’s de facto Embassy
in DC.

The Directorate-General for Budget, Accounting, and Statistics has the most recent GDP growth
report.

And some growth context, using the IMF’s April 2026 “World Economic Outlook” 2025 growth estimates, supplemented for the U.S.by last Thursday’s downbeat BEA report on first-quarter growth:

And the sci/tech background:

Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council

A Japanese/Taiwanese academic looks at Taiwan’s science parks as a successful industrial strategy model.

… and the Hsinchu Science Park.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: U.S. layoffs are up for four consecutive years.

THE NUMBERS: Annual U.S. layoffs*

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

An idea for the next Congress, floated four years ago by then-PPI Workforce Policy Development Director Taylor Maag and Ed Gresser, and still good now: revive the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, but open it to everyone.

As an entry point, the Raleigh News & Observer has a stark lede last week:

“American tiremaker Goodyear Tire & Rubber plans to shut its long-running Fayetteville plant and eliminate approximately 1,700 jobs in what would be one of the biggest factory closures by employment loss in recent North Carolina history. Goodyear announced this week it is talking with the local workers’ union to end site operations by December 2027.” 

Not only North Carolina’s largest recent factory closure, this event appears to be the largest U.S. mass factory layoff outside the processed-food business in the 15 years since the end of the financial crisis. To put the impact in context, Metro Fayetteville is home to about 390,000 people, with the Goodyear plant joining a Wal-Mart distribution center and the local hospital as the top private-sector employer. Goodyear’s press comment cites short-term cost issues and lower consumer demand for tires; its quarterly earnings calls cite a loss of $420 million this year to “inflation, tariffs, and other costs” as a complementary challenge. (See Eric Boehm in Reason for a close look at the event, and analysis of the impact of tariffs and the Iran war’s interruption of petrochemical stocks for synthetic rubber.)

This particular closure comes in a larger environment in which layoffs are not at extreme highs, but have risen for five years in a row. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ “Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, last year’s 21.2 million layoffs were the largest annual total since the Covid pandemic in 2020, and about equal to the rates of the 2010s. To put this aggregate figure in human perspective, each day about 161 million Americans go to work, and about 60,000 come home with pink slips.

Their standard support program, unemployment insurance, provides a post-layoff stipend of up to 26 weeks in some states as they look for the next job. From 1962 through the summer of 2022, though, the smaller “Trade Adjustment Assistance” program offered a much broader range of options to those dislocated workers who could show that import competition or job shifts overseas “contributed importantly to [their] separation or threat of separation.” Background on this:

Origins and benefits: President John F. Kennedy launched “TAA” in 1962, as a complement to his very ambitious trade-liberalizing and tariff-cutting bill. By 2015, when TAA got the last of its 18 renewals and upgrades, it had evolved into a sort of pilot program in active labor-market policy, offering a menu of self-help options appropriate to workers with widely differing career goals and local options: two years of job training for those seeking a new career path; temporary wage insurance for older workers taking lower-paying jobs; health care tax credits; and relocation support for workers planning to move to areas with more employment opportunities. Examining the results in 2018, New York Fed researcher Ben Hyman found strong benefits for workers and a useful concentration of benefits in regions with particularly high needs:

“Ten years out, TAA-trained workers have $50,000 higher cumulative earnings, driven by both higher incomes and greater labor force participation. Yet annual returns fully depreciate after ten years. … Returns are further concentrated in the most disrupted regions.”

Small scale and structural limits: TAA didn’t, though, actually serve many workers. From 2014 to 2018, according to the DoL’s annual reports, about 85,700 displaced workers a year got TAA benefits. This would be about 0.5% of the era’s 21.6 million annual layoffs. Modest use isn’t per se a problem — lots of workers find jobs after layoffs and don’t require extra support — but the limitation imposed by TAA’s tie to trade competition made it hard to get. Since eligibility depended on proving imports or job shifts overseas “contributed importantly” to the layoff, most workers — health sector, retail, gas stations, beauty parlors, government agencies — weren’t eligible at all. And though “contributed importantly” isn’t in principle a very high bar, in practice, it created a big obstacle by requiring workers in distress to find the statistics and economic analysis necessary to demonstrate eligibility.

And a core question: The TAA concept also, as Gresser and Maag noted in 2022, had a “troubling inequity” at its core:

Workers who lose jobs to trade competition can get more generous benefits than workers who lose jobs to recession or domestic competition.  Is there really a strong ethical case to distinguish between (say) a displaced clothing factory worker and a displaced waitress or gas station attendant, and view the former as more in need of benefits or more entitled to benefits than the latter? 

With the program then on the verge of lapsing, they urged Congress to renew it, but drop the trade requirement and offer TAA-type benefits to all workers displaced through no fault of their own. Subsequent events — events such as the Goodyear factory closure, where U.S. tariff increases rather than import competition are likely the “important contributor,” or the broader acceleration of technological change and outmoding of particular skills or industries — only add force to the conclusion. Congress regrettably didn’t act then, and TAA has lapsed for four years. The new Congress arriving next January, or the early-stage presidential campaigns launching around that time, can take it up now.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s New Skills for a New Economy project, with Michael Pearson as Director, has an analysis of a robust workforce development system that is fully-funded, modern, industry-responsive, and equips current and future workers with the skills they need to get ahead.

Gresser and Maag (2022) on re-authorizing Trade Adjustment Assistance, but opening it to everyone. Their estimate was that such a program would serve about a million displaced workers annually, at a cost of about $6 billion per year.

… and follow Maag’s work at Jobs for the Future.

Layoffs:

The Raleigh News & Observer reports on Goodyear’s Fayetteville factory closing announcement.

Eric Boehm in Reason takes a close look at the events, and the impact of tariffs and war.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey (most recent release here; and database here) puts individual events in the context of national job openings, new hires, layoffs, quits, and retirements.

TAA data and status:

The Labor Department’s TAA database, with counts of petitions and worker certifications from 2010 forward.

… and DoL’s formal Annual Reports on TAA from 2009 to the lapse in 2022.

An evaluation from Ben Hyman of the New York Fed, 2018.

And a Ways and Means Committee renewal hearing featuring workers, firm owners, and state officials, 2021.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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

FACT: U.S. coffin prices up $100 last year.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. funerals, 2025* –

* National Funeral Directors Association

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

A brief macabre parable from “Legalist” writer Han Fei-tzu (Warring States-era China, ~250 B.C.E.):

“The carriage maker making carriages hopes that men will grow rich and eminent; the carpenter fashioning coffins hopes that men will die prematurely. It is not that the carriage maker is kind-hearted and the carpenter a knave. It is just that if men do not become rich and eminent, the carriages will never sell, and if men do not die, there will be no market for coffins. The carpenter has no feeling of hatred for others; he merely stands to profit by their death.”

Whatever the merit of Master Han’s view of human nature, his specific example turns out to be wrong. People haven’t stopped dying — the U.S. bids farewell to 3 million each year — but the “market for coffins” is fading nonetheless as America’s bereaved choose cremation over burial. And as casket-makers struggle to adapt to changing American funerary tastes, tariff strategists in the Trump administration’s Commerce Department are hurrying them toward oblivion. Some data, then an explanation –

Materials, purchases, and trade: Americans typically buy about a million coffins a year. The median price is around $2,500. About 60% are metal, most often welded 20-gauge carbon steel. Another 25% are wood, mostly oak or poplar. The other 15% use synthetic materials or biodegradable boxes. U.S.-based manufacturers make about two-thirds of these coffins, and the rest come from abroad, mainly from Mexico.

Cremation vs. burial: Sir Thomas Browne’s “Urn-Buriall,” the classic authority on eternity and the tomb, views earth and fire as equally suitable for the last act: “Man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave.” As a matter of taste, though, Americans are steadily shifting away from the 20th century’s preference for coffin burials and toward cremation. The National Funeral Directors Association says cremation overtook burial in 2015, accounted for 63.4% of funeral services last year, and will reach 75% by 2035. One reason is cost — cremation is about $6,000 per service and burial is about $8,500, with the coffin price the main factor in the gap. 

Looking ahead a decade or two, NFDA guesses that the shrinking number of burials will cut coffin sales to 500,000 a year. U.S. casket-makers are doing their best to respond; Indiana-based Batesville, for example, is broadening its offerings to full-service remembrance offerings such as urns and jewelry.

Now to policy:

The Trump administration has been publishing “national security” tariff decrees — technically “Section 232” tariff proclamations drafted by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security — for the past 15 months. One of the earliest, in February 2025, imposed tariffs of 25% on steel. Another, that June, raised this rate to 50%. By winter, according to the Department’s quarterly “Steel Executive Summary,” the average price of steel in the U.S. was $971 per ton — more than double the $460 worldwide average. They haven’t yet updated the Summary for spring, but last week’s “Producer Price Index” report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the cost of “materials for durable manufacturing”* up 13.7% this past year. 

As metal prices rise, metal-using U.S. businesses naturally lose ground to foreigners making similar things. Thus, in August, the Department added a third “national security” metals decree declaring that large swathes of everyday goods are now considered “steel or aluminum derivative products,” also essential to national security and therefore subject to the same tariffs. This included everything from silverware and pitchforks to condensed milk, exercise equipment, shampoo, and coffins. The buyers — say, a bakery ordering whipped cream canisters, or a gym club buying a new balance beam — had to figure out the value of their purchase’s metal content and pay a 50% tariff on it. 

Months of public derision and angry business complaints forced the Department to scrap this particular decree last month and try a new version. This drops some of last year’s loonier claims — the restaurants and gym clubs are off the hook, as are buyers of mosquito repellent, shampoo, and windshield-wiper fluid — and instead simply lists a lot of things made of metal and assigns them new tariff rates. Paint rollers, flashlight parts, clothes-hangers, that kind of thing. Coffins – “iron or steel caskets for burial,” with the 10-digit HTS line 7326.90.8677 — are in Annex I-B, with a 25% tariff.  

How is all this working out? As an economic matter, setting aside the ludicrous claim that coffins are a “national security” product, Mr. Trump’s Commerce people are providing a lesson in unexamined premises, perverse incentives and unanticipated consequences. After 15 months of tariffs, Federal Reserve statisticians find coffin prices up about 4.5%. In practical terms, this means a median-tier coffin now costs about $100 more. Looking ahead, by raising the cost of both the materials and the final product, the administration is speeding up the trend toward cremation and, therefore, the decline of American casket-making. Meanwhile, we’re left with the unsettling image of tariff decrees literally chasing Americans into their graves. 

And what might be done? Sir Thomas, recognizing that all human debates share a common fate, would likely counsel equanimity and acceptance. (“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction.”) Alternatively, Congress could — whenever it wants — save bereaved families some money, and provide a bit of help to beleaguered casket-makers, by putting a stop to this.

* This includes not only metals but the lumber used in plain pine boxes, which now also gets “national security” tariffs of 10%.

FURTHER READING

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

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

Reporting:

Mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control.

The National Funeral Directors Association reports on cremation v. burial trends.

Assessing the U.S. coffin-market outlook, Funeral Directors Daily expects sales to fall to 507,000 per year in the next two decades.

And a concerned state of the industry report for 2025, noting among much else “off-again, on-again tariffs policies that decrease economic confidence” that will likely depress consumer spending and lead the bereaved to choose less costly services.

Broader funeral market analysis from death-care consultancy Foresight, including an examination of tariff impact on caskets and urns. Sample:

“Many funeral goods – caskets, urns, cremation machines – are imported or use imported components. These come with baked-in increases from trade policy. There’s less chaos than peak trade war years, but costs are still up.”

And from the business side, the largest U.S. casket-maker, Indiana-based Batesville, looks to adapt via e-commerce and full-service remembrance offerings.

Policy documents:

April 2026: The current Commerce Department “national security” decree imposes 25% tariff on coffins.
… or direct link to the product list; coffins in Annex 1-B.

August 2025: The now-defunct “steel or aluminum derivative products” Federal Register Notice declaring condensed milk, balance beams, etc. to be made of metal.

… PPI’s Gresser, in the Wall Street Journal last fall (subs. req.), has some strong words on this idea.

June 2025: Section 232 “national security” decree, still in effect, imposes 50% tariff on steel. Similar decrees put identical rates on copper and aluminum.

And last:

From Warring States-era China, Han Fei Tzu (250 B.C.E., Burton Watson translation) takes a dim view of human nature and favors very decisive government. See “Precautions Within the Palace” for the carriage-makers and carpenters; other highlights include “The Difficulties of Persuasion” and “The Five Vermin”.

Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn-Buriall (1658) has a melancholy subject but a brighter perspective on humanity. Last reassuring word:

“[M]an is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.”

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

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

* Census Bureau.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FURTHER READING

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

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

Data:

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

Legal update:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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FACT:  “Precious metal” is now the U.S.’ top export.

THE NUMBERS: Gold, silver, and platinum share of U.S. exports, January-February* –

* USITC Dataweb

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Asking the Senate for budget money late last month, Howard Lutnick claims the administration’s first-year policy adventures “dramatically reduced the trade deficit, lowered imports, and increased exports to over $3.4 trillion, a 6% increase from 2024.”

Mr. Lutnick’s stats are rarely precise, and no exception here. Four factual claims in twenty words, two of them wrong, two right.

The errors are on imports and balance, and pretty easy to clear up. Each month, the Census Bureau — a branch of Mr. L’s Department! — publishes the official U.S. trade data. Their most recent report shows that imports rose from $4.1 trillion to $4.3 trillion rather than getting “lower.” Vis-à-vis trade balance, the 2025 deficit was down by 0.2% if you combine goods and services, or up by 2.0% if you count goods alone. Reasonable people can debate whether this is “very slightly down,” “a little bit up,” or “essentially the same.” But either way, it isn’t “dramatic.”

The points about export growth are more interesting — factually correct, but in a strange and unsettling way. The figures, if you look at them in a little detail, turn out mainly to be a sharp rise in transfers of precious metal abroad. That in turn suggests less a useful jump in selling things to foreigners than financial unease, fading confidence, and maybe an exotic form of capital flight. Background –

The Census Bureau statisticians say that last year, American exports (goods and services combined) rose from $3.23 trillion to $3.43 trillion. That, as Mr. Lutnick says, is 6%, or more precisely 6.2%. This makes 2025 exactly the 21st-century median year for export growth, and a bit below the long-term 7.2% export growth average since 1960.

In most cases, a modestly higher export number may be dull, but it means Americans are selling more cars, airplanes, and soybeans abroad, getting more software downloads and movie screenings, etc., and/or that prices have gone up a bit. There’s some of both involved in last year’s figures, but neither farm-and-factory goods nor inflation is the main story. About two thirds of last year’s goods export growth — $68 billion of $117 billion — comes not from ships full of grain, LNG tankers, ro/ros stacked with cars, planes delivering semiconductors to waiting factories, and so forth, but the physical shipment of about 260 tons of gold from U.S. vaults under Wall Street, along with 17 tons of platinum and lots of silver, to London, Zurich, and Hong Kong.

Early data for 2026 show this accelerating. Precious metals (HTS 72) typically make up about 4% of U.S. export values, and reached 7% over the course of 2025. By last February — the most recent month for which full data are up on the USITC’s Dataweb — they had reached 15%, overtaking energy, airplanes, agriculture, cars, chemicals, and other big items as the single largest U.S. export. (Yesterday’s Census trade release adds March figures, and appears about the same.) The jump — the St. Louis Fed presents gold shipments as a classic “hockey stick” graph – appears to reflect a combination of (a) higher prices, (b) investors guessing that precious metals may be better bets than stocks or dollars, and (c) central banks “repatriating” assets, likely thinking the U.S. isn’t as safe a place to hold valuable things as was a couple of years ago. A quick table of February’s top exports:

So Mr. Lutnick was off on imports and balances. He did get export growth right, though, even though most of it seems to be money leaving the country. And he may well be right to say that Trump administration policies are at least in part responsible. As to whether that’s something to boast about …

FURTHER READING

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

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

Mr. Lutnick testifies at the Senate Appropriations Committee.

… Census’ monthly trade data has some correctives.

… and the St. Louis Federal Reserves “FRED” database has a classic “hockey stick” gold export graph.

Gold background –

Will the U.S. run out of gold? Not likely. The government owns 8,133 tons and so far hasn’t touched it. Also, the U.S. Geological Survey thinks there’s at least 15,000 tons still underground.

The U.S. Mint explains Fort Knox and the U.S. Bullion Depository.

USGS’ summary of gold production, trade, reserves, and uses as of 2025.

The World Gold Council tallies gold reserves by country

… and recaps prices since 2023.

ABOUT ED

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

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

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

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

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