“the trade deficit increased—not decreased—by nearly 37 percent in November, the most recent month for which data are available. Through the first 11 months of 2025, the trade deficit was 4 percent higher than it had been in 2024. That is literally the opposite of what Trump is claiming.
…
“tariffs led to both rapid and gradual retail price increases.” The study found that “prices began rising within days of the March announcements and continued to increase steadily over subsequent months,” and also that “imported goods rose roughly twice as much as domestic goods relative to pre-tariff trends.”
There is no getting away from this fact: tariffs are pushing prices higher. The Harvard Business School, Trump’s favorite source on the matter, recently noted that prices for imported goods are up 9.7 percent from their pre-tariff trends, while domestic prices are up 4.4 percent. Those increases have added an estimated 1 percentage point to inflation as measured by the consumer price index.
…
Trump repeatedly backed down and eased tariff threats in the face of negative shocks from both the stock market and the bond market. The “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on April 2 were postponed a week later after a huge stock market sell-off, and those that were later imposed were at lower rates. A threatened 130 percent tariff on Chinese goods never materialized. No wonder “TACO”—”Trump Always Chickens Out”—entered the political and financial lexicon last year.
As the Yale Budget Lab’s data show, Trump raised the average U.S. tariff rate from less than 3 percent to more than 25 percent with his Liberation Day tariffs and other moves in the first half of 2025. But those rates declined in the second half of the year and settled around 17 percent. That’s still very high, but not as high as it could have been—so it makes sense that the consequences were less severe.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/02/trump-claims-his-tariffs-have-brought-america-back-here-are-3-things-he-got-wrong/
“The social impact of the housing affordability crisis is huge: fewer marriages, less household formation, lower birth rates, lower economic growth. The prices of stocks and bonds can go up indefinitely with few consequences. But housing is something people need, in addition to being an asset. It is an asset you also consume.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/02/trump-i-want-to-drive-housing-prices-up/
The job growth was good compared to recent months, but not actually good. The job growth was heavily concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. These are jobs caused by our aging society, but not good underlying economic growth.
The jobs numbers for 2025 were revised, and job growth was very low for 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSNZGWfitjM
“USCIS currently has 11.3 million pending
applications, “the largest immigration backlog in its history,” reported Newsweek in November. While officials say green card and visa processing are getting faster, “agency data from January through March shows that processing times for several key immigration forms have continued to rise, leaving applicants waiting months or even years longer than expected.” The “closure of consulates abroad” and “planned firing of State Department staff,” the MPI noted in April, were also “expected to lengthen visa wait times.””
https://reason.com/2026/02/03/trumps-bureaucratic-war-on-immigrants/
“Creating true housing affordability for homebuyers would require an expansion of housing supply to lower overall housing prices—the thing Trump said he did not want to do.
The good news is that the federal government does not have too much direct influence over the number of homes that are built in the country. It’s local and state governments that decide what’s allowed to be built where.
…
it’d also be a mistake to completely dismiss the idea that we can lower buyers’ housing costs and raise property values at the same time. Contra the president, that can easily be accomplished by allowing more homes to be built on existing residential land.
Free markets are generally win-win institutions. One should expect that free market reforms in the housing sector would produce win-wins for homeowners, buyers, and builders.
When local officials “upzone” land to allow more housing to be built on it, one expects the value of that land to increase to reflect the additional development potential. If a single-family property is upzoned to allow apartment construction, the current owner will see a windfall increase in the value of their property.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/03/housing-policy-can-be-win-win/
“”Since June 2025, the Administration has deployed National Guard personnel or active-duty Marine Corps personnel to six U.S. cities: Los Angeles, California; Washington, D.C.; Memphis, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; and New Orleans, Louisiana,” the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) responded to a query from Sen. Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.). “The Administration has also kept 200 National Guard personnel mobilized in Texas after they left Chicago. CBO estimates that those deployments (excluding the one to New Orleans, which occurred at the end of the year) cost a total of approximately $496 million through the end of December 2025.””
https://reason.com/2026/02/04/deploying-troops-to-u-s-cities-cost-half-a-billion-dollars-in-2025/
“In July 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order vowing to end “crime and disorder on America’s streets” caused, the administration asserted, by the record number of homeless people, many of them with mental illnesses. The president promised that, among other measures, involuntarily committing more Americans with mental illnesses would “restore public order.” The risks to civil liberties that executive order created are now impossible to ignore.
A recent lawsuit involving a man who has been involuntarily committed, despite the dismissal of his criminal charge, shows that involuntary commitment can lead to permanent federal detention for people who have not been convicted of any crime.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/04/how-involuntary-commitment-could-become-indefinite-detention/
TrumpRx, where Trump negotiated prices with drug companies, has lower drug prices for certain weight loss and fertility drugs, but outside of that, it won’t help much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtgVg7aZ7wI
“Trump quietly pulls National Guard from Chicago and Los Angeles after series of court losses”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-quietly-pulls-national-guard-163846290.html
“The grounding of aircraft at El Paso International Airport early Wednesday morning was in response to the U.S. military testing technology that can be used to take down drones, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
The testing was taking place in the proximity of the airport, raising concerns within the Federal Aviation Administration, which responded by issuing a Temporary Flight Restriction Notice, the sources said.
Three of the sources said the military testing, which was taking place near Fort Bliss, was of high-energy lasers that are designed to protect against drones from drug cartels that could cross over the U.S. border.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/flights-el-paso-airport-texas-091722608.html