FACT: In a hypothetical Trump/Vance economy, a toaster would cost about $300.

THE NUMBERS: Toaster prices, September 2024* –

Model / Range	Made in	Price
Milantoast	Milan	€335
Dualit “Classic”	West Sussex	£170 – £249.99
Mitsubishi Electric TO-ST1-T	Suburbs of Tokyo	$246.68
Neiman Marcus range		$90 – $900
Walmart/Amazon/Target/Costco/Macy’s range		$15 – $40

* PPI surveys for mainstream retailers and Neiman Marcus prices; Amazon for the TO-ST1-T; manufacturer sites for Dualit Classic and Milantoast.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s Vice Presidential aspirant Senator J.D. Vance in Nevada last July: “We believe that a million cheap knockoff toasters aren’t worth the price of a single U.S. manufacturing job.” The unspoken converse (and as explained below, the more realistic interpretation) is that no toaster price would be too high to shift a single worker into U.S.-based pop-up production.  Here’s what this might mean:

Background: If you haven’t recently bought a toaster, mainstream retailers sell them at prices typically between $15 and $40. (We checked Target, Costco, Amazon, Macy’s, and Walmart.  You can pay more if you like, of course.) Your purchase won’t be U.S.-made, unless you’re a specialized buyer: kitchen appliance manufacturers do make toasters here, but only big conveyor types for restaurants and hotels. As an example, Holman Star’s factory in Smithville, Tennessee, produces machines in a range from the $1,487 QCS1-350, which browns 350 slices an hour, to the 2,000-slices-per hour Star DT-14 Double Conveyor at $7,273. No U.S. company, though, makes a small home pop-up here.

Overseas Comparisons: Home toaster-making in wealthy “peer” economies, however, is perfectly possible. Firms in the U.K., Italy, and Japan make them now. They’re pricey, though.  The U.K.’s Dualit Classic, with a silvery ‘retro’ look drawn from 1950s design, is “hand-built” in West Sussex and sells at prices from £170 for a two-slice model to £249.99 for a 6-slicer. (At $1.31 per pound sterling, this is $250 to $360.) Italy’s Milantoast makes an austere designer-black two-slice pop-up in Milan for €335.  ($372, at $1.11 per euro.) And Mitsubishi Electric’s futuristic TO-ST1-T, launched in 2019 and made in two factories outside Tokyo, blends a tea-ceremony-suitable “simple shape and wood grain” look with high-tech programming to provide the precise browning of your choice, preserve the bread’s interior moisture, and offer “fluffy French toast,” “Korean street egg toast,” and DIY options. A connoisseurs’ piece, the TO-ST1-T costs $246.88 and makes one slice at a time, no more. (For purists, yes, it is technically a “bread oven” rather than a pop-up. Close enough, in our opinion.)

In sum, “developed” high-income countries do make home toasters. But they are profitable at prices about ten times those you’d find in mainstream U.S. retail outlets.  Looked at another way, the $300 or so you’d pay for a Dualit Classic, Milantoast, or Mitsubishi is at the midpoint of this week’s Neiman Marcus catalog, whose cheapest toaster option is a $90 polka-dotted Kate Spade, and priciest a $900 Dolce & Gabbana “Sicily is My Love,” both produced in China.

So to achieve Vance’s apparent goal, mainstream toaster prices would probably have to rise to Neiman Marcus levels, say $300 each. More generally, we assume he isn’t fixated on toasters specifically, but uses them as one specific example of a more general aspiration for appliance-type products.  How would this hypothetical Trump/Vance-world look to families? To workers? And could their tariff ideas deliver it?

Family budgets: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent “Consumer Expenditure Survey” has family budget data for 2022. That year’s average (mean) U.S. household spent $73,000, including about $20,000 on goods purchases excluding restaurant meals. Small appliances cost them $142, and large appliances $408. That means $550 for appliances, 0.8% of the total budget and 2.5% of the goods-purchase budget.* If appliance prices generally rose to levels typical of the Dualits, Milantoasts, and Mitsubishis, family appliance bills would jump from $550 to about $5,000. That would mean a 25% increase in total U.S. household spending on goods. Few working families could afford that, of course. So home appliances would drop out of their present “easily affordable labor-saving device” range into a “scrimp-and-save luxury” tier.  Families would still need some, though, and would presumably scale back their entertainment, education, health, auto repair, and other discretionary choices to buy an occasional vacuum cleaner, microwave, iron, washing machine, microwave, or toaster.

Employment: And what labor impact could we expect? Again by BLS’ estimates, 64,290 Americans, including 36,940 production workers, now work in home appliance manufacturing.  The production workers’ average (mean) hourly earnings are $21.42. (The median wage is a nearly identical $21.23.) By comparison, average U.S. hourly production-worker earnings are $30.27 for the whole private sector, $27.96 for all manufacturing, $23.51 in electronics and appliance retail, and $18.91 in hardware retail. So pushing workers out of the toaster sections of appliance and hardware retailers into hypothetical toaster-making assembly lines would likely leave wages a bit better for some, a bit worse for others, and overall about the same.

Trade policy: Whether or not this is a good idea in principle, could the Trump/Vance tariff program — 10% or 20% tariffs on all goods, and 60% tariffs on Chinese-made products – actually do it?  Pretty clearly not. The U.S. already charges a 5.3% tariff on pop-up toasters (HTS 85167200).  None are made here.  So as with a lot of U.S. tariff lines, the toaster tariff’s only effect is somewhat higher prices.  To get the spectacular ten-fold price-hike that sustains super-toaster making in Japan, Italy, and the U.K., 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 popups might push some into Vietnam or the Philippines, or possibly Mexico, but that would be the end of it.

In sum, Vance-world looks very expensive for families, not obviously better for workers, and not realistic anyway.

*  For some more specific cases, the BLS says single-parent families, with lower earnings, spent $438 out of $56,240 on appliances, about the same 0.8% share of the budget. BLS’ top-earner families average $322,000 in household income and put $1084 into appliance-shopping out of $167,088 in total spending (maybe getting the Kate Spade or something similar?) for a slightly smaller 0.6% of the family budget.

FURTHER READING

Special note: Research on U.K. and U.S. toaster-making for this Trade Fact by 2024 PPI Policy Fellow Julia Amann. Research on Japanese toaster-production by PPI Senior Fellow Yuka Hayashi.

Sen. Vance on toasters.

Toasters made in the U.S. –

Holman Star’s restaurant- and hotel-destined conveyor toasters.

And abroad –

Dualit’s Classic line.

Milantoast.

Mitsubishi Electric’s TO-ST1-T.

For comparable prices –

Neiman Marcus options.

Data –

The Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at American appliance-manufacturing workers by job type and wage, and at household spending in 2022.

And just to make it more complicated and more realistic –

The Trump-Vance tariff pitch is for “tariffs on everything”. This includes toasters, but as noted above, also on the things needed to make toasters: metal, wires, buttons, plastics, insulation, etc. Shoppers would pay the toaster-tariff, but companies like Star Holman (and by extension, any business and workers making appliances in the United States) would pay tariffs on the inputs.  As their production costs rose, appliance-production in the United States would grow more difficult.  From the small-government, free-market right, National Review’s Dominic Pino reports on American kitchen appliance-makers’ unhappy experience with Trump-era metals tariffs.

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: “Sometimes countries make big and fateful choices … and sometimes their big and fateful choices go badly wrong.”

THE NUMBERS: U.S. hourly-wage and comparable workers, 2023* –

Total Employed:	161.0 million
Hourly wages or equivalent	80.5 million
“Industrial” hourly-wage workers**	15.7 million
“Non-industrial” hourly-wage workers	64.8 million

*  Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-year averages
** “Industrial” includes 8.9 million manufacturing workers, 5.7 million in construction, 0.3 million in energy and mining, and 0.8 million in agriculture. Top “non-industrial” categories include 12.5 million workers in health and social assistance, 10.9 million in retail, and 7.3 million in restaurants and other food service jobs.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

PPI’s newest report, Trump’s Folly, Harris’ Opportunity: Trade and the Blue-Collar Worker, opens with a warning:

“Sometimes countries make big and fateful choices. …  And sometimes big and fateful choices go badly wrong. American isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s helped make World War II possible. The ‘America First Committee’ policies*, had the U.S. adopted them in 1940, might have caused its loss. Hoover’s 1930 tariff hikes, advertised as a way to keep U.S. wages high and jobs at home, provoked retaliations and a deepened economic contraction, leaving exporters bankrupt and workers unemployed. These ideas’ return in 2024 presages a time in which American influence falls abroad, the cost of living soars at home, the U.S. and global economies grow more volatile, and the risks of world politics rise.”

Now as in the past, the best response to bad and dangerous ideas is to reject them and propose good ones instead. As Mr. Trump and Sen. Vance try to re-animate 1920s/1930s isolationism, Vice President Harris is creating a modernized, Roosevelt-like alternative. Starting from the basic conviction that American leadership can make the world safer and better, she affirms core U.S. alliances and support for Ukraine, and directly attacks on Mr. Trump’s neo-Hooverite tariff obsession:

“He wants to impose what is, in effect, a national sales tax on everyday products and basic necessities that we import from other countries.   That will devastate Americans.  It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs: a Trump tax on gas, a Trump tax on food, a Trump tax on clothing, a Trump tax on over-the-counter medication.   …  Donald Trump’s plan would cost a typical family $3,900 a year.  At this moment when everyday prices are too high, he will make them even higher.” 

Harris’ concise takedown perfectly matches George Orwell’s appeal for clarity and brevity (“use the fewest and shortest words necessary to carry your meaning”) in Politics and the English Language.  From a different angle (Bipartisan Infrastructure Act seaport investments), Transportation Secretary Buttigieg does the same in explaining the benefit Americans can draw from opening markets abroad and lowering the costs of trade: “keep prices down, shelves stocked, and American farms and businesses selling their goods around the world.”

What, then, should replace Mr. Trump’s national sales tax? The report — the fourth in PPI’s “Campaign for Working America” series this year, with others on housing, non-college career paths, and competition — assesses the limitations of “Bidenomics”’ honorable-but-not-quite-successful effort to create a “worker-centred” trade policy, and then suggests ways to connect trade policy to blue-collar aspirations and concerns, organized around a “guidepost” and four policy themes. A precis:

Guidepost: Per data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half of last year’s 160 million working Americans were “blue-collar” men and women earning hourly wages or an equivalent type of income. Just under 16 million are “industrial” workers in factories, on construction sites, or in mining or farm work; the other 65 million are “non-industrial” workers in health and caregiving, retail, restaurants and bars, repair shops, bus routes, and similar jobs. A successful policy has to consider the interest of the non-industrial workers as well as the industrials.

Theme 1: Bring home goods prices down by purging junk tariffs. Reduce the cost of living by purging the 11,414-line tariff system of lines — for groceries, for clothes and shoes, for small appliances, and table silverware – which raise prices, discriminate against women and lower-income families, and don’t protect any jobs.  The launch for this is the Fletcher/Pettersen Pink Tariffs Study Act introduced by Reps. Lizzie Fletcher and Brittany Pettersen this spring.

Theme 2: Help workers find better jobs by creating more export opportunities. Data from the Census and BEA illustrate the high quality of jobs in exporting firms. As just one example, African American-owned exporting firms average 10 more employees and $10,000 more in payroll per worker than the U.S. business community generally.  Here the next president can build on some creative Biden team policy launches — see Secretary Raimondo’s launch of the Global Diversity Exporter Initiative — and combine this with revived Obama-era themes of opening markets, pooling strengths, and building relationships with friends and allies.

Theme 3: Make the right exceptions. President Biden’s “industrial strategy” program is still a work in progress. Its most ambitious projects, in particular the hope to shift the $180 billion U.S. auto industry toward lower-emissions EV production, are still in their early phases. Here, the Biden team’s decision to use tariffs has a reasonable foundation.  With China having gotten to mass-market, low-price EV first (after a very large barrage of its own subsidies), U.S. battery and plant factories should have some time to catch up. This probably shouldn’t be permanent but it’s the appropriate type of exception.

Theme 4: Give workers more help. By 2028, all dislocated workers — and long-term unemployed, young people looking to move to a second job, workers with mediocre jobs imagining something better ‚ should be able to design a tailored set of supports that fit their needs, from training, career services, apprenticeships, to temporary wage subsidies for older workers.

More detail on each of these in the report, of course. Returning, though, to the big choice ahead, here’s a final thought on risk and an optimistic close:

“The Trump campaign’s attempted resurrection of isolationism — its resurrection of “America First” political isolationism, its economic Hooverism, its disdain for America’s allies and international leadership — is full of risk. Risk of repeating the awful mistakes of the 1930s, risk of new economic shocks and volatility, risk of conflict as America’s friends are demoralized, and aggressive dictators grow bolder. Once made, such a choice takes decades to undo.

“Vice President Harris is right to reject it. She is right to insist on the centrality of alliances among democracies, right to highlight the costs higher tariffs will impose on families, and right to use her early speeches and September debate victory to explain the risks Trumpism poses on both counts. She can cap this, and underline her own optimism and strength, with a clear and appealing alternative that lowers costs, helps workers find new and better job opportunities, and strengthens security in both personal and national senses. That is the alternative hourly-wage Americans and the nation as a whole need, as their large and fateful choice approaches.”

* The “America First Committee,” founded in 1940, was a group organized to stop the Roosevelt administration from providing “Lend-Lease” military aid to Britain as it fought alone. See below for a book rec.

FURTHER READING

“Trump’s Folly, Harris’ Opportunity: Trade and the Blue-Collar Worker.”

Reading List –

Harris’ North Carolina economic speech.

Buttigieg on port investments, prices, shelves, and exports.

And Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” (1946).

Precursors: isolationism and internationalism – 

Susan Dunn’s 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler – the Election Amid the Storm, has background on the people and goals of the “America First Committee.”

Herbert Hoover pitches tariff increases, 1928.

Roosevelt launches postwar trade negotiations, 1945.

More from PPI’s “Campaign for Working America” series – 

… Taylor Maag on better non-college options for young workers.

… Richard Kahlenburg on housing.

… Diana Moss on competition.

And blue-collar data –

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on working America; see Table 45 for hourly-wage workers by occupation.

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: Arctic sea ice cover is down by 3.2 million square kilometers — an expanse of water as big as India — since 2000.

 

THE NUMBERS: Carbon dioxide emissions intensity in 2023, in grams per $1 of GDP* –

Country	Value
Iran	54
China	42
Russia	36
Saudi Arabia	34
Canada	26
World Total	24
India	23
United States	19
Indonesia	17
Japan	16
European Union	10
United Kingdom	8
Sweden**	5
Ireland**	5
Singapore**	5
Switzerland**	5

Source: EDGAR, the EU’s “Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research”
** A 4-way tie for lowest emissions intensity rate among major economies.

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

The Arctic sea ice expands and contracts like a lung, growing through autumn and winter to a late-March peak, then shrinking back over the summer to a mid-September “minimum.” The 2024 minimum is likely this week. Reviewing their 46 years of data, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado concludes that it will be the fourth-smallest on record:

“With the waning of sunlight, the pace of sea ice loss in the Arctic is slowing, and the seasonal minimum is expected in mid-September. While a new record low is highly unlikely, extent at the beginning of September is below many recent years. Both the northern and southern Northwest Passage routes have largely cleared of ice, as has the Northern Sea Route. … Antarctic ice extent is approaching its seasonal maximum and is near last year’s record low. Arctic sea ice extent as of August 31 was 4.55 million square kilometers (1.76 million square miles), fourth lowest in the 46-year passive microwave record for that date.”

NSDIC says Arctic ice cover has contracted by about 10% per decade since the millennium. The cumulative loss of ice, averaged over a full year, comes to 3.2 million square kilometers — a space of water about as big as India — and means ice coverage is down about 40% from the 8 million square kms typical of the 1980s.  The ice is also (a) thinner — now mostly 2 to 3 meters from top to seawater, which is about half the 5-meter average Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen found on his first-ever Arctic ice transit in 1893 — and (b) younger.  In the 1980s, “old” ice four years old or more made up about a third of polar ice volume, and “new” ice less than one year old likewise a third; this decade, about 5% of ice is “old” and 70% “new.”

The diminished polar ice cap is an especially visible reminder that governments and industries have limited time to think and argue. Moving from ice to emissions, statistics from the EU’s EDGAR database — updated Thursday for 2023 emission totals, a day after the NSIDC published its 2024 Arctic minimum estimate — suggest three things. One, worldwide, the “battle” to contain climate change, if “battle” is the right metaphor, is being lost. Two, it’s being lost mostly in large middle-come countries – though carbon emissions from rich countries are now falling, those from China in particular, and also India and some other big countries, more than offset these drops; and three, the “battle” isn’t lost yet. Here’s a summary:

Totals: The number that counts for ice, forests, corals, northern mammals, sea life, arable land, and coastal community safety is the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  Here the annual human contribution continues to rise. In 2000, human carbon dioxide emissions came to 25.2 billion tons.  The 2023 total was 39.0 billion tons, meaning annual CO2 emissions are up 50% so far this century.  Alternatively, since 2020 (an unusually low year because of the COVID pandemic), carbon emissions are up by 2.9 billion tons, or 8%.

Emission by country: Within this big emissions total, smaller country-by-country shares (based on territorial output) have sharply changed. The “developed” world — the U.S. and Canada; the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland; Japan, Taiwan, and Korea; Israel; Australia and New Zealand — has cut annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2.5 billion tons since 2000.  Though they are still far from “net zero,” they are trending down at an accelerating pace. Annual CO2 emissions from the rest of the world, though, are up 16 billion tons, including by 9.6 billion tons in China, 2.0 billion tons in India, and about 4.0 billion tons elsewhere. In sum, the growth of Chinese and middle-income country emissions has far outdistanced the “developed” countries’ reduction.

“Emissions intensity”: Against this overall growth of emissions, trends in emissions “intensity”– that is, the amount of carbon produced per dollar of output — offer some reason for guarded optimism.  The United States and Europe have not cut emissions by getting poorer but by growing more efficient.  In 2000, Americans produced 38 grams of carbon for each dollar of (real, inflation-adjusted) GDP, and EU countries 21 grams. By 2023, the U.S. was down to 19 grams per dollar, and the EU to 10, and the world’s most carbon-efficient economies suggest that there’s still a lot of room to improve. The U.K. and France are at 8 grams of carbon per dollar, Denmark 6 grams, and Sweden, Ireland, Singapore, and Switzerland set the world standard at 5 grams.

This positive trend isn’t unique to the wealthy world: Chinese emissions intensity is down 44% – from 73 grams per dollar in 2000 to a still-high 42 last year since 2000 — and India’s by 24%.  In only three of the top 20 emissions sources — Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam — has intensity grown since 2000. Here’s a table summarizing emissions from the largest country sources, including total CO2 emissions in 2023, change in this total since 2000, and change in emissions intensity since 2023, with positive trends colored green and negative ones red:

Country	2023 Emissions (billion tons)	Change 2000-2023	Emissions/GDP ratio change since 2000
World	39.0	+13.3 billion tons	-27%
China	13.3	+9.6	-44%
United States	4.7	-1.2	-50%
India	3.0	+2.0	-24%
EU	2.5	-0.9	-52%
Russia	2.0	+0.4	-36%
Japan	0.9	-0.3	-36%
Iran	0.8	+0.4	+10%
Indonesia	0.7	+0.4	-26%
All other	8.1	-0.2	-44%**

* Using EDGAR data released last week. Other estimates, such as those by IEA, differ slightly but not fundamentally.  

** Not available in EDGAR; PPI estimate using World Bank GDP data.

Final point: The Ireland/Singapore/Sweden/Switzerland 5-grams-per-dollar intensity standard is much better than any very large emissions source country has achieved.  But their diverse economic mix — Ireland and Singapore with lots of high-end manufacturing and big computer servers; Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland with big farm and livestock sectors; Sweden with its six auto plants; Switzerland and Singapore as services and logistical centers — suggests that bigger countries should be able to match their record.  Had the world’s top 8 emissions sources done so, their emissions would have been 5.8 billion tons rather than 28 billion tons last year, and as a group, they would have been 80% of the way to net zero. So, that’s not an impossible goal, or even an unrealistic one.  The ice bulletins say clearly that the ‘battle’ isn’t now being won. But it isn’t yet lost.

FURTHER READING

Ice at the Pole –

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports on this year’s Arctic ice minimum.

… and for a look at the mountains, the National Park Service on Glacier Park.

Emissions data sources – 

The European Union’s EDGAR (“Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research”) database, out last Thursday.

The International Energy Agency’s report for 2023, from last March.

Direct reports –

German scientist Markus Rex recounts the two-year “MOSAIC” mission, in which a specially equipped icebreaker sealed itself into the Arctic ice in 2022 north of Svalbard, and came out on the other side near Greenland two years later.

Fridtjof Nansen’s wooden Fram did the same thing in the first successful Arctic Ocean research and survey mission, from 1893 to 1896. The Fram bogged down (though it was later recovered); Nansen, after making the first estimates of Arctic ice thickness, ocean depth, and wildlife diversity, got to Greenland by sled and kayak.

Trade & policy –

The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

The International Maritime Bureau on efforts to cut ship emissions (which, per EDGAR, are about 0.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly equivalent to seventh-ranking Iran).

Policy and research from top performers and one of the most threatened countries –

Singapore, with Asia’s most efficient emissions intensity, looks at climate change impact at home.

Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Sweden’s Bolin Institute at the University of Stockholm.

Switzerland’s climate strategy.

And Bangladesh’s Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change.

FACT: Trump-era tariffs raised prices but did not ‘bring manufacturing back’.

 

THE NUMBERS: Manufacturing share of U.S. GDP –

Year	Percentage
2023	10.3%
2020	10.1%
2016	10.9%

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Here’s Vice Presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance, pitching higher tariffs in late July and saying no price for toasters would be too high. And there was the same Mr. Vance, a week earlier, denouncing high prices and their toll on middle-class family budgets: “Many of the people that I grew up with can’t afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent.”

Visionary poets like Walt Whitman can get away with this sort of thing. (Song of Myself, verse 51: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”.) Politicians struggle. Challenged in a TV interview a few days later, Vance tries hard to have it both ways, with a claim about earlier Trump-era tariffs:

“[M]anufacturing came back and prices went down for American citizens. They went up for the Chinese but went down for our people.”

Is he right? In fact, manufacturing growth slowed down while prices went up. The two main Trump-era tariffs went onto steel and aluminum in March 2018 (“Section 232”), and most Chinese-made goods (“Section 301”) — though toasters were exempted — in three pulses from September 2018 to mid-2019.  Overall, this raised average “trade-weighted” U.S. tariff rates from 1.4% to 3.0% as of 2019. Since then, the figure has dropped back to 2.4%, as some purchasing shifted from China to Vietnam and other countries.  Here’s the price and output data afterward:

Prices: The U.S. International Trade Commission’s 2023 report on the Trump-era tariffs is the standard source here. It finds prices up for families buying consumer goods and also up for manufacturers, construction firms, and others buying metal.  The representative quotes:

Steel and aluminum (pg. 124): “The increase in tariffs on steel and aluminum imports increased the relative price of imports and led consumers of steel and aluminum to increase sourcing from domestic suppliers. This increase in demand for domestic production of steel and aluminum resulted in increases in the price of domestically produced steel and aluminum and the quantity of domestic steel and aluminum production in these industries. However, the higher prices of steel and aluminum translated into higher costs of production inputs for downstream industries. This effect negatively impacted the downstream industries that purchase steel and aluminum because costs increase per unit of production.”

Chinese goods (pg. 145): “[T]he tariffs did not have a significant impact on the price received by Chinese exporters. On the other hand, the elasticity of the importer price with respect to the tariffs is close to one, indicating that importer prices rose about 1 to 1 in response to the tariff increase. This is consistent with the recent work of Amiti et al. (2019), Fajgelbaum et al. (2020), Carvallo et al. (2021), and Jiao et al. (2022), who also largely estimate full pass-through of recent tariff actions from exporters to importers.”

Academic literature, along with reviews by Federal Reserve staff economists, concurs.  These generally converge on a finding that the tariffs raised overall U.S. prices in a range of 0.3% to 0.5%, with the highest estimate a bit above 1.0%.

Output: With respect to manufacturing trends afterward, the ITC’s report concludes that (as of 2021) the steel and aluminum tariffs had raised the two metals’ output by about $2.2 billion, and shrunk the output of auto parts, machinery, tools, and other metal-using manufacturers (including household appliances such as toasters) by about $3.5 billion. On net, therefore, an overall slight shrinking of U.S. manufacturing. (They didn’t do a similar estimate of the China tariffs’ impact on consumers and firms buying inputs.)

More broadly, the post-tariff trend has been somewhat slower growth in manufacturing output and employment, though not an overall contraction. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which calculates U.S. GDP stats, reports that in 2017, manufacturing made up $2.1 trillion of a $19.6 trillion American economy — that is, industries making planes, cars, semiconductor chips, frozen meat, refined petroleum, medicines, plastics, etc. accounted for 10.9% of overall output just before the tariffs. By 2019, their $2.2 trillion output was 10.5% of a $2.2 trillion economy; after a sharp drop to 10.0% in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, it rebounded to 10.3% in 2023 ($2.29 trillion of a $22.38 trillion economy). So manufacturing continued to grow, but makes up a somewhat smaller part of the U.S. economy than before the Trump-era tariffs.

Alternatively, in terms of “real,” inflation-adjusted growth, U.S. manufacturing grew by $33.5 billion on average per year during the Obama presidency, measuring from the financial crisis low of 2009 to 2017.  Since 2018 it has grown by $30.2 billion per year, again slightly more slowly after the tariffs than before.

Employment: The employment story is similar – a slowdown in net manufacturing job creation, and a somewhat smaller share of total employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in July of 2017, manufacturers employed 12.5 million of 146.8 working Americans, or 8.5% of all jobs.  As of July 2024, the figure is 13.0 million of 158.7 million jobs, or 8.2%. Alternatively, again looking back to the Obama era, from the financial crisis low in mid-2009 to mid-2017, manufacturers added a net of 795,000 jobs. This was an average net gain of 99,500 jobs per year. Since mid-2017, they’ve added another 480,000, for 68,600 jobs per year. Or, in terms of wages, BLS’ stats find manufacturing workers earning about 27 cents more per hour than the national average in 2017 (a 1.0% advantage), and 29 cents per hour less (a 1.0% disadvantage) by 2021.

So: A lot goes into these big numbers – economic shocks and booms, career choices of young workers, innovation and adaptation of new technologies, etc. But the overall data from BEA and BLS make ITC’s conclusion that the 2018/19 tariffs raised prices and slightly shrank U.S. manufacturing look pretty strong. Vance’s backward-looking claims of ‘lower prices’ and ‘coming back’ don’t hold up. You can, however, be pretty confident about his promise that with an added tariff of 10% or 20%, toasters – along with other home appliances, groceries, gas, TV sets, refrigerators, cars, medicine, toothpaste, and consumer goods generally – will cost more.

FURTHER READING

Rhetoric –

Whitman’s Song of Myself (see verse 51).

Sen. Vance on toaster prices being too low.

… but prices are also too high.

… and for a longer tariffs-and-prices exchange, an August 25th “Meet the Press” interview transcript.

Data –

USITC’s March 2023 report on Trump-era tariffs (with modeling and evaluation through year 2021).

GDP-by-industry data from BEA.

… and employment and wage stats from BLS (in “Employment, Hours, and Earnings”).

And some more on toasters –

Vance’s toaster-price rhetoric appears to have contaminated the kitchen-appliance Internet with a moldy spread of opportunistic ‘made-in-USA toaster’ false positives. Discarding these, our search finds that no small home pop-up toasters appear to be made in the United States at the moment.  U.S. factories do, however, produce kitchen and other home appliances – according to BLS, about 61,500 people work in appliance production – and several firms (e.g. Tennessee-based Holman Star) make big conveyor-type toasters for restaurants and hotels.  They sell for $1,000 and up. Alternatively, the UK’s Dualit makes its “Classic” line by hand in Sussex, starting at £170 (=$222).

BLS on home-appliance industry employment and pay.

And tariffs appear to be making it harder, not easier, to make these things here. From the political right, National Review’s Dominic Pino reports on toasters and American kitchen appliance-makers’ unhappy experience with Trump-era metals tariffs.

FACT: World infant mortality rate cut by half since 2000; in the U.S., by only 22%.

THE NUMBERS: Infant mortality rates, 2000-2022* –

Country	2000	2022	Decline
Sierra Leone (highest rate 2022)	138.3	76.0	-45%
Estonia (lowest rate 2022)	8.7	1.5	-83%
Least-developed countries	108.6	42.3	-61%
World	53.0	27.9	-47%
High-income countries	6.9	4.1	-41%
United States	7.1	5.6	-22%

Deaths in the first year of life, per thousand live births. World Bank for world and regions; CDC’s most recent release for the U.S. rate in 2022.  Note that the CDC has recalculated the U.S.’ 2000 figure to 6.9 per 1000.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

“Natalism,” the view that governments should encourage people to have children, can come in modest and supportive forms: child tax credits, cash subsidies for child care, and so on.  Few are extremely successful.  More exotic approaches — e.g. Vice Presidential candidate Vance’s haranguing of childless couples as in some way letting down the country — aren’t at all likely to do better.  An alternative suggestion: improve the protection of children once they’re born.  Here a remarkable 21st-century international success — a sharp drop in infant mortality almost everywhere, fastest on average in poorer countries but also clear in Europe, Australia, and Japan — highlights an area where Americans should do better. The background and the contrast:

20th-century success:  In the very long view, American infant mortality has declined drastically — by 99.4% — since 1915, when the Labor Department’s newly formed Children’s Bureau first estimated a national infant mortality rate. Their statisticians found 99.9 deaths in the first year of life per every 1,000 births that year, for a 10% infant mortality rate.  Earlier rates were likely even higher — Michigan’s health department, for example, reported 15.7% state infant mortality in 1900 — and the Bureau believed 30% of all deaths in the U.S. were of children five years or younger. To put these figures in perspective, the death rate for soldiers in the Union Army was 13.4%; and according to World Bank tables, the highest national infant mortality rates today are Sierra Leone’s 76 per 1,000 and the Central African Republic’s 74. Or, to move from data to family life, early childhood death was common, and neither power and wealth, nor education, nor medical education seem to have been defenses: three of Abraham and Mary Lincoln’s four children died young, as did four of Karl and Jenny Marx’s seven, three of Louis and Marie Pasteur’s five, and two of Charles and Emma Darwin’s ten.

The causes were fairly simple: (a) bad sanitation, especially contaminated milk and water; (b) no vaccines, anti-inflammatory medicines, or antibiotics; and (c) poor or non-existent primary health care. Over the next decades, with public health and sanitation laws, new medicines, vaccination campaigns, Medicaid insurance for the poor, and other policy innovations, the figures collected by the Children’s Bureau and its successors at the Centers for Disease Control steadily improved: 60 deaths per thousand births by 1930, 40 by 1940, 26 by 1960, 10 by 1980, and 7.1 (since recalculated to 6.9) as CDC published its “Achievements in Public Health ” retrospective in 2000.

But more recently: Placed against this 20th-century achievement, the U.S.’ 21st-century record looks mediocre at best. CDC’s most recent calculation of the national infant mortality rate (for 2022, out in late July) is 5.6 deaths per 1,000 births.  This is 22% below the rate of 2000 and actually up from 5.4 deaths in 2021 – the largest jump in 20 years.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has cut infant mortality by nearly half.  It’s tempting to put the relatively poor U.S. performance in a good light by noting that the high worldwide rate reflects remarkable successes in lower-income countries, and/or assuming that public health policy might have a diminishing rate of return, with infant mortality reduction slowing naturally as rates fall and at some point stopping.

The first of these points is true. Most of the low- and middle-income world has cut infant and childhood deaths deeply and fast since 2000. Uzbekistan, for example, has cut infant mortality by 77% since 2000, Cambodia by 76%, Armenia and Morocco by 66%, Bangladesh by 62%, Ethiopia 61%, Egypt 59%, El Salvador 57%, Indonesia 56%, Honduras 55%, Timor-Leste 53%, and Ghana 51%. But the second isn’t.  The U.S.’ rate was near the ‘developed’-world average in 2000, is now clearly higher, and has fallen more slowly than most. As an example, Japan’s 3.2 per 1000 rate was the world’s lowest in 2000, and has fallen at exactly the world average rate to 1.7 per 1000.  A representative table of large and advanced economies:

Country	2022 Infant Mortality Rate	Drop since 2000
China	4.8	-84%
Australia	3.2	-63%
Korea	2.5	-63%
Ireland	2.7	-60%
India	25.5	-62%
Italy	2.2	-53%
World	27.9	-47%
Japan	1.7	-48%
Spain	2.5	-43%
United Kingdom	3.6	-39%
Germany	3.0	-32%
United States	5.6	-22%
France	3.3	-19%
Canada	4.3	-19%

What explains this?  And what might be done?

One explanation comes from internal disparities: differing experiences by geography, by race, and ethnicity, and differing rates of change over time. Some comparisons:

* State and region: By state, Massachusetts has the lowest U.S. infant mortality rate at 3.2 per 100 births; Mississippi’s 9.1 per thousand is the highest. By region, rates in New England, the mid-Atlantic, and the West Coast are well below the national averages and within a standard rich-country range. Rates in the deep South and Vance’s Ohio-Indiana-West Virginia region are typically above 7 per thousand.

* Race and ethnicity: Infant mortality rates range from 3.7 per thousand in Asian American families through 4.4 in non-Hispanic white families, 4.8 in Hispanic families, 7.5 in Native American, and 10.6 in African American families.

* Change over time: By race and ethnicity, declines over time are not vastly different.  Regionally, however, some parts of the country have cut infant mortality noticeably faster than others. The best state record since 2000 is the District of Columbia’s 60% reduction, followed by drops of 45% in New Jersey and North Dakota, 39% in Rhode Island, 36% in Massachusetts, and 35% in New Hampshire.  Recent studies suggest a couple of commonalities in the latter group.  One is non-participation in the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, which improved access to prenatal and maternal care for lower-income moms.  Another is the imposition of abortion restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, often vaguely written and applicable to many different situations, which may be both keeping patients from seeking care and deterring providers from working in the relevant areas.
Perhaps related to both of these themes is an ominous trend in rural health care: maternity care seems to be getting steadily harder to find, and both expectant mothers and infants therefore face rising risk. Health consultancy Chartis summarizes:

“More than 400 maternity programs closed nationwide between 2006 and 2020. In rural communities, the disappearance of OB services has been particularly impactful. Between 2011 and 2021, 267 rural hospitals closed OB services, representing 25% of all rural OB units in the United States.”

To put these figures in context, there are 2,168 maternity hospitals in the United States.  So at least in remote areas, health care options are fewer and further away than they were a generation ago. And bringing this from policy and data to family life, the CDC reports 20,577 infant deaths in 2022. Had the U.S. achieved Japan’s world-standard 1.7 per thousand infant mortality rate, 14,300 of them would have lived. The EU’s 3.1 per thousand rate — which is certainly possible, since it’s not far away from the New England average — would have kept 9,200 alive.

So: For those wanting more American children, Vance’s “browbeating” approach is pretty certainly useless, and more prosaic things — child tax credits and child care support, better access to prenatal and perinatal care, primary health in general, “keeping clinics open in places where they’re closing” — are good ideas. We can, really, do a lot better.

Source: OECD

FURTHER READING

U.S. –

CDC has infant mortality rates, overall and by race and ethnicity.

… a state-by-state map.

Chartis on closures of rural maternity wards.

NIH on Medicaid expansion.

… and a study looking at Medicaid expansion, post-Dobbs abortion restrictions, and changes in infant mortality rates.

World perspective –

The World Bank has rates for 1990, 2000, and 2014 through 2022 across all countries and for regions and income groups.

… and a sample of its data:

Country	2000	2022	Decline
China	29.9	4.8	-84%
Estonia	8.7	1.5	-82%
Uzbekistan	51.4	11.9	-77%
Mongolia	48.4	11.5	-76%
Turkey	30.9	8.5	-73%
Cambodia	79.0	22.3	-72%
Armenia	27.0	9.2	-66%
Australia	5.1	3.2	-63%
Bangladesh	63.0	24.1	-62%
Least-developed countries	108.6	42.3	-61%
Ethiopia	87.4	33.9	-61%
El Salvador	24.6	10.5	-57%
Indonesia	40.9	18.1	-56%
Honduras	30.5	13.8	-55%
Ireland	6.0	2.7	-55%
Italy	4.7	2.2	-53%
Timor-Leste	87.3	41.5	-53%
Mexico	23.6	11.5	-51%
Japan	3.3	1.7	-48%
European Union	5.9	3.1	-47%
World	53.0	27.9	-47%
Jordan	22.6	12.2	-46%
Sierra Leone	138.6	76.0	-45%
High-income countries	6.9	4.1	-41%
United States	7.1	5.6	-24%
Canada	5.3	4.3	-19%
Jamaica	17.5	16.1	-8%

 

Success stories –

In 2000, the capital’s infant mortality rate, at 13.5 deaths per 1,000 births, was nearly twice the national average. As of 2022, it was 5.5, down by 60% and equal to the national average. Mayor Bowser’s health division, with links to perinatal and infant health services and reporting.

UNICEF looks at newborn health care in Uzbekistan.

FACT: Tariff increases raise prices.

THE NUMBERS: Estimates of price increases from –

2018/2019 Trump tariffs:	~0.3% – 0.5%*
Trump 2024 campaign (10% option):	$1,500 to $1,820 per family**
Trump 2024 campaign (20% option):	$3,900 per family?**

FACT: The ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act’ expires next year.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. imports from Africa, 2000 and 2023 – 

	2000	2023
Total	$22.1 billion	$29.6 billion
Crude oil	67.7%	29.3%
Unworked diamonds & precious metals	8.4%	16.9%
Ores, slag, and ash	1.8%	1.8%
All else	22.5%	52.0%

 

FACT: Tiger population estimates for Thailand’s Western Forest Complex are up from 40 in 2007 to a range of 189-223 this year.

THE NUMBERS: World wild tiger population estimates –

2024:	5,574
2022:	4,500
2010:	3,200
1980:	~35,000?
1900:	~100,000?

WHAT THEY MEAN:

From Thai newspaper Khao Sod last week:

“The Department of National Parks, Wildlife, and Plant Conservation released on December 19 the first photos of two tiger cubs and their mother in Slap Phra Wildlife Sanctuary, Kanchanaburi Province. … Over 420 automatic camera traps have been installed in 7 protected areas of the southern part of the Western Forest Complex to record the population of tigers and other wild cat species, including predators, from early 2023 to date. The area is a large wildlife corridor in a dry evergreen forest and is located near a large river. Analysis of the data from the automatic camera traps revealed that 3 tigers were photographed, an adult female listed in the tiger database under the code TWT128F, which is the mother tiger, and two cubs (with the codes SLT_Unknown003 and SLT_Unknown004).”

Is this an everyday event? A significant sighting? Probably the latter, and a very hopeful one.

Background: A 2018 National Academies of Science study guessed that, excluding fish, all the world’s vertebrates together weighed (in “dry carbon”) about 170 million tons. Humans and farm animals make up about 160 million tons of this. Vertebrate wildlife — that is, all the eagles, cobras, elephants, condors, whales, jaguars, deer, sea turtles, mice, frogs, bison, etc. — comes to a bare 10 million tons. From another perspective, Our World in Data summarizes three research papers and concludes that wild mammals weighed about 10 million tons (again in dry carbon) in 1900, and were down to 3 million tons by 2015.

Tigers’ sad modern history is part of this larger decline in wildlife and biodiversity. Zoologists guess that, when wildlife weighed 10 million tons in 1900, about 100,000 tigers patrolled a roughly triangular forest-mountain-steppe range with Korea at the top right, Indonesia at the bottom, and Iran at the top left. By 1980 the population was down to 35,000; by 2010 tigers were gone from Central Asia, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and three of the nine “subspecies” (the Caspian, Javanese, and Bali tigers) were declared extinct. The remaining 3,200 included a large group of about 2,000 Bengal tigers in India, 450 Amur tigers in Siberia, 400 Sumatrans in Indonesia, 200 Indochinese and South China tigers in Thailand, and smaller refuges of 100 to 200 in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China, and Malaysia. The roughly 14,000 zoo and farm tigers distributed around Asia, Europe, and the United States likely outnumbered wild tigers by four or five to one.

The principal issue, for tigers as for other large wild animals, is a massive loss of habitat through conversion of wild areas to agriculture, pasture, and urban land; logging and road- and town-building, with attendant chopping up of forests into “fragments” and “islands”; and most recently climate change. As the pre-1900 tiger range contracted by about 95%, and the number of tigers shrank with it. Trade and economic factors, though a secondary concern, mean that as with elephants, rhinoceros, and Caspian sturgeon, tigers have declined faster than less “charismatic” wildlife: hunting for sport and pelts in the 20th century, more recent collection of cubs for exotic pets and tiger farming, and sale of tiger bones, blood, and organs for ill-founded medicinal purposes throughout.

Against this unhappy background, last week’s “Global Tiger Day” assessment provides, cautiously and tentatively, some reason for optimism. Since the 2010 low, wild tiger populations appear to have been growing, with surveys reporting worldwide populations of about 4,500 in 2022 and 5,574 this year. This isn’t because the estimates of the 2010s were too pessimistic or missed populations, but because of confirmation that tiger populations in several countries are beginning to rise.

Khao Sod’s report on the newly photographed cubs is an example of this. Thailand’s Western Forest Complex, a group of 12 national parks and seven wildlife sanctuaries, was thought home to around 40 tigers in 2007. By 2022 the population, tracked by the Forestry Department’s batteries of cameras, had grown to a range of “148 to 189,” and in 2024 it is “179 to 223.” Reasons: habitat has improved as government programs release prey species such as sambar deer into the sanctuaries; protection against poachers; and a program of joining disconnected sanctuaries and parks through protected “tiger corridors” – like the riverbank evergreen forest in which the mother and cubs turned up — which at least partially reverse past fragmentation of habitat into areas too small to support significant populations. Outside, meanwhile, the international environmental agreement CITES (“Convention on Trade in Endangered Species”), amplified over the past 20 years to ban domestic trade of wild tigers for pets, farming, pelts, and medicines as well as international trade — which has been banned since 1973 — may also be helping. Nor is Thailand uniquely successful: Nepal’s tiger count has risen from 121 to 355, and India’s from 2,967 in 2018 to 3,682 this year.

These are, of course, still small numbers — dozens and hundreds rather than the thousands necessary for a durable recovery. If threats of habitat loss and poaching are receding at least in some countries, climate-change concerns continue to grow. But for the first time in quite a while the trends have turned up, suggesting that tigers’ future may still be in forests rather than zoos. Perhaps, though later than you think, it’s still probably not too late.

FURTHER READING

Rebound:

… Khao Sod reports, with Western Forest Complex photos.

… Enthusiastic comment from the Thai government.

… The BBC looks at Nepal’s modestly recovering tiger population.

…The Hindu on rising tiger counts in India.

… And India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority.

Outside the forests:

How reliable are “zoo and farm tiger” estimates? Since the early 2000s, press and NGO reports have frequently used a figure of 5,000 in the United States, and sometimes suggested higher estimates of 7,000 or 10,000. A conservation group, the Feline Conservation Foundation, attempted a direct count in 2021. They identified 4,103 “big cats” including 1,538 tigers, 862 lions, 487 cougars, and 425 cheetahs. This doesn’t disprove hypotheses of the larger zoo and farm populations, but does put some question marks around very high numbers.

Policy:

… The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service explains CITES.

… Immigration and Customs Enforcement estimates ~$7.8 billion to $10 billion in annual illicit wildlife trade, along with $7 billion in illegal timber trade and $4.2 billion to $9.5 billion in illegal/unreported/unregulated fishery trade.

… CITES next steps.

… And the World Wildlife Fund on tigers and climate change.

Two gloomy wildlife reports:

… Our World in Data summarizes trends in land mammal biomass.

… And PNAS looks at the big picture. Excluding nematodes and microorganisms, all world animal life weighs about 2.2 billion tons (in terms of “dry carbon.”) Bugs of various sorts — more technically, “arthropods” including insects, crustaceans, arachnids, mites, and so on — make up a bit less than half of this total. Fish at 700 million tons make up most of the rest. Humans and farm animals (including ducks and chickens) nearly equal worms, and there isn’t much space for vertebrate wildlife:

All animals	2,200 megatons
Insects, spiders, crustaceans	1,000 megatons
Fish	700 megatons
Worms	200 megatons
Farm animals	100 megatons
Jellyfish, coral, & spongse	100 megatons
Humans	60 megatons
Mollusks	20 megatons
All wild mammals, birds, & reptiles	10 megatons

 

PNAS’ study.

And two more modestly hopeful big-cat stories:

Asiatic lions remained at large in the wild from Iraq to India as recently as the 1940s, but are extinct outside western India. They also seem to be rebounding — though the numbers are nearly an order of magnitude smaller than those for tigers — with about 700, up from 400 20 years ago, in Gir Forest.

Closer to home, a wildlife biologist shot the last known U.S. jaguar in 1964. The jaguar population is much bigger than the tiger and lion groups, with about 175,000 of them living from Brazil and Peru to Mexico. Ten Mexican jaguars have been photographed exploring Arizona and New Mexico in this decade, so maybe there’s a return in prospect.  NGO Panthera explains.

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: U.S. public debt 99% of GDP and rising above 166% by the time November’s 18-year-old voters turn 50.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. debt/GDP ratio –  

2024:	99%
2054 (baseline):	166%
2054 (PPI “Paying for Progress” budget blueprint):	48%

 

WHAT THEY MEAN:

PPI’s 160-page budget blueprint, out last week and entitled Paying for Progress, assesses the next 30 years’ fiscal choices — taxes of all kinds, debt buildup and interest payments, health and retirement programs, national defense and “America in the world,” bridge repair and fiber-optic cable deployment, “discretionary” spending on everything from housing and science to pre-kindergarten and apprenticeship — proposes lots of ideas, and opens with a warning about the future of American government:

“Every election, we choose leaders who are supposed to levy taxes and use the revenues they collect to fund programs that benefit society as a whole. The principle that our leaders allocate public resources consistent with the values of the people who elect them is often known as “fiscal democracy.” Regrettably, in the United States today, fiscal democracy has deeply eroded.”

Authors Ben Ritz and Laura Duffy give us a way to measure this, by tracing the share of budgets that are mandatory and automatic — that is, interest payments and entitlement programs — and the share that’s ‘discretionary’ over time.  A generation ago in 1994, the ratio was 63% mandatory to 37% discretionary.  Now it is 73% mandatory, and 27% discretionary. And assuming no change, according to the August Congressional Budget Office, by 2054 it will be 82% to 18%. CBO also believes that in this “no-change” scenario, we will be spending 6.3% of annual national income — more than goes to Social Security, Medicare, or any other budget “line” — simply to pay down the national debt.

In more human terms, this November’s 18-year-old first-time voters will be middle-aged parents and homeowners in 2054.  The 82%-to-18% ratio means their taxes will overwhelmingly go to their parents’ retirement costs and interest payments, with a bit for national defense. Their ability to make other choices — tax rates, road-building, new telecom technologies to replace today’s fiber-optic cables and satellites, help for the poor, arts and environmental quality, international programs from PEPFAR to Peace Corps and embassy security, scientific research, workforce development — will be small and cramped.  One likely consequence is to further inflame the already great temptation to shift the electoral debate away from practical choices and into emotional culture wars. Another, again per the Congressional Budget Office, is that the 166% debt-to-GDP ratio in 2054 implies a fall of $5,400 in our 18-year-old’s income (in today’s dollars, using CBO’s per capita income projection) relative to the level it would reach were the current 99% ratio simply stable for 30 years.

PPI’s budget shows the way to do better, by (i) shifting taxation from work and investment towards consumption and unearned income; (ii) controlling “mandatory” spending by reversing debt buildup and saving costs on retirement; and while doing these things (iii) restoring the ability for a disciplined government to be an activist government. One among seven center-right-to-left think-tank blueprints* commissioned by the Peterson Foundation last fall, PPI’s plan is distinctive for three big results:

Fiscal democracy restored: Mixing savings in some areas, process and enforcement reforms in others, and thorough revision of the tax system, PPI’s plan by 2054 places the mandatory/discretionary spending ratio at 62%/38%, more or less the level of the mid-1990s and the most balanced ratio among the seven plans. The result puts discretionary spending at 6.5% of GDP, the highest among the seven plans, and sufficient to give the Americans of 2054 the chance to choose both an activist government and a low-debt government.

Interest burden reduced: Through tax reforms, savings in spending, and efficiency and process reforms, PPI’s plan brings the debt/GDP ratio down from today’s 99% to 48% in 2054. This debt level, last seen in 2009, is about the same as that achieved during the 1990s boom. The 48% ratio is easily the lowest among the seven plans; those in the other six range from 59% to 118%. The lower debt burden under PPI’s plan reduces interest payments by almost 75% (relative to CBO’s “baseline” projection), freeing up resources for other public purposes.

Tax policy made fairer, cleaner, and more pro-growth: To pay for the restored fiscal democracy lower debt/GDP ratio, and the reduced interest burden, PPI proposes a thorough revision of tax policy, fundamentally based on reducing taxation of work, shifting taxation towards consumption and pollution, and encouraging progressivity. This includes canceling the payroll tax and replacing it with a value-added tax and a carbon tax; replacing the antiquated estate and gift tax with a progressive inheritance tax; and replacing several regressive and inefficient tax expenditures, such as the state and local tax and college savings deductions, with better-targeted grant programs. Alone among the seven plans, PPI’s blueprint also looks hard at the tariff system, reducing hourly-wage families’ cost of living and stopping selective taxation of goods-using industries — e.g. manufacturing, retail, construction, farming — by cutting away most Trump-era tariffs and pre-Trump tariffs on industrial inputs and consumer goods not made in the United States.

In sum, a very ambitious plan with a lot of ideas: a restoration of eroded fiscal democracy; a shift in taxation from work to consumption and unearned income; a vote for disciplined but activist government; and a hope to lighten the burdens now accumulating upon hourly-wage families and this year’s young voters.

* In alphabetical though not ideological order, the American Action Forum, the American Enterprise Institute, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Center for American Progress, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Manhattan Institute.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s Budget Blueprint.

… From the New Liberal podcast, budget authors Ben Ritz and Laura Duffy explain.

… Ritz in Forbes.

… and the Peterson Foundation compares and contrasts PPI’s approach with 6 other plans.

And for those wanting a bit more tariff background:

Ed Gresser on inclusivity, regressivity, and bias in tariff policy.

Elaine Wei explains how, uniquely in the world, U.S. clothing tariffs tax women’s clothes higher than directly analogous men’s clothes.

Reps. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX and New Democrat Coalition Trade Task Force Chair) and Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) introduce the Pink Tariffs Study Act, directing the Treasury Department to review the tariff system for gender bias and regressivity.

And the Trump campaign’s Depression-like tariff proposal.

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FACT: The Paris Olympics has 329 medal events.

THE NUMBERS: National Anthems –

First adopted:	‘Het Wilhelmus,’ Netherlands, 1572
First ‘official’:	La Marseillaise, France, 1792
Longest continuous use:	God Save the King, UK, 1745
Oldest lyrics:	Kimi Ga Yo, Japan, c. 750
Newest:	South Sudan Oyee!, South Sudan, 2011