February 28, 2024
Originally published in The New York Times. Much to fear about another Donald Trump presidency: The existential threat to U.S. democracy. The potential abandonment of traditional allies in Europe and elsewhere. The cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin. And the danger he poses to our strong economy. Our economy? Yes, while Trumponomics 1.0 had major […]
January 9, 2024
The immigration problem Congress faces is large and complex. Let’s break it down. Between October 2022 and September 2023, there were 3.1 million attempted crossings along the U.S. southern border. Of that, an estimated 600,000 migrants were able to cross the border undetected, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. government had 2.5 […]
December 28, 2023
Some years are defined by a single event or person — a pandemic, a recession, an insurrection — while others are buffeted by a series of disparate forces. Such was 2023. The economy and inflation remained front of mind until the war in Gaza grabbed headlines and the world’s attention — all while Donald Trump’s […]
December 7, 2023
As a part-time commentator on things economic, I’m often asked a seemingly straightforward question: If the economy is so good, why are Americans so grumpy? By many measures — unemployment, inflation, the stock market — the economy is strong. Yet only 23 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction, a […]
September 20, 2023
Originally published in The New York Times. The United Auto Workers has taken to the picket lines in a particularly acrimonious strike, targeting, for the first time, all three of the big Detroit automakers simultaneously. Popular opinion appears to lie firmly on the union side. And I’m all for the auto workers getting paid more […]
July 10, 2023
Originally published in the New York Times. The workers were furious. Believing that new mechanical looms threatened their jobs, they broke into factories, seized machinery, brought it into the street and set it afire, all with widespread public support, even tacitly from the authorities. That was in 1675. And those English textile workers were neither first […]
May 31, 2023
Originally published in the New York Times. On my first trip to China in more than three years, I awoke to an uncharacteristically brilliant blue Beijing sky. The forsythia and cherry trees were in full bloom, and the city was sparkling. That, for me, proved to be a metaphor for at least part of my […]
March 22, 2023
Originally published in The Washington Post Last August, after heroic efforts by a bipartisan group of senators, critical legislation aimed at addressing the United States’ woeful weakness in producing high-performance semiconductors became law. An A-team led by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Michael Schmidt, an economic policy veteran, was given responsibility to dispense $39 billion to […]
March 22, 2023
Originally published in The New York Times Quiet quitting. Working from home. The Great Resignation. Whatever you want to call it, the attitude of many Americans toward work appears to have changed during the long pandemic — and, generally speaking, not for the better. This new approach threatens to do long-lasting damage to economic growth and […]
January 16, 2023
Originally published in the New York Times. Intent on reversing America’s decline in the world’s production of cutting-edge semiconductors, the federal government has begun what is arguably the government’s largest foray into the private sector since World War II. That’s just one piece of a larger, more muscular approach to industrial policy. It’s a road […]