“Donald Trump doesn’t think Americans deserve stuff. The right number of pencils for a family? Five. The right number of dolls for a little girl? Two, maybe three. His comments in recent interviews bear a striking similarity to those of left-wing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), who in 2015 famously bemoaned that consumers have too many deodorant options.
How did Trump—who campaigned on a promise of reducing inflation—become so eager to have Americans pay more for everyday commodities? While Trump may have made overtures to reducing prices, he’s long supported the kinds of economic interventions most likely to lead to inflation. And if you believe that protectionism is the path to prosperity for everyday Americans, your definition of prosperity starts to change pretty quickly.”
China’s electric car industry was built on a battery developed in the U.S., but the U.S. didn’t consistently support electric vehicles, and China did, so the Chinese built a massive industry off of it instead of the Americans.
“Even in the relatively short term, developers will respond to higher demand by building more units, so long as land-use policy is permissive enough to allow additional supply.
Vance acknowledges this point himself in his speech in referencing Austin, Texas.
Said Vance, “In Austin, you saw this massive increase of people moving in. The cost of housing skyrocketed. But then, Austin implemented some pretty smart policies, and that brought down the cost of housing, and it’s one of the few major American cities where you see the cost of housing leveling off or even coming down.”
If new supply can mitigate the upward housing cost pressure created by population growth in Austin, it can do the same for the country as a whole. That’s true even if it’s immigrants creating the population growth.”
“U.S. egg prices increased again last month to reach a new record-high of $6.23 per dozen despite President Donald Trump’s predictions, a drop in wholesale prices and no egg farms having bird flu outbreaks.”
“Wednesday’s announcement elevated tariffs on three of America’s five largest agricultural trading partners—China (34 percent), the European Union (20 percent), and Japan (24 percent). Mexico and Canada, which are America’s two largest trading partners, were exempt from the list but have faced 25 percent duties on certain products since March.
Together, these five markets account for more than 60 percent of American agricultural exports and retaliatory tariffs have already been enacted by some. China has implemented a 10 percent to 15 percent tariff on American soybeans, cotton, pork, and poultry. In March, Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on a number of American goods, including $5.8 billion worth of agricultural products. The European Union, meanwhile, is considering a suite of tariffs that will impact the agricultural sector.
As these tariffs make it harder for American farmers to access foreign markets, thus decreasing revenue, they could also increase production costs and the price of fertilizer, which is one of the largest expenses involved in farming. Imports of the three most commonly used nutrients in fertilizers—potassium (potash), nitrogen, and phosphorus—topped $10 billion in 2023, $5 billion of which came from Canada. Potash, which “is an irreplaceable component of modern agricultural production,” according to the Fertilizer Institute, is sourced predominantly from Canada. Nitrogen, meanwhile, is imported mainly from Canada (the country meets 10 percent of American nitrogen needs), Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago (10 percent tariff).”
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“The damage that this policy will cause is not lost on the Trump administration. On Monday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told the Des Moines Register that her agency is ready to make farmers affected by tariffs “whole” through cash assistance programs. Under the first Trump administration, the Agriculture Department also hedged against its poor trade policy by issuing $28 billion in bailouts to farmers.
Monetary compensation may provide farmers a reprieve, but it will be at the expense of taxpayers, who are going to have to pay more for their favorite products because of Trump’s trade war.”
“The relief comes after a construction boom added tens of thousands of new units to the metro area last year alone, largely in its urban core. Builders rushed to Denver to meet demand from a population boom before and during the pandemic and are now completing them as growth has slowed.
“Everybody that wanted to move here because of remote work has moved here,” said Brian Sanchez, chief executive officer of Denver Apartment Finders, a locator service. “The demand is not keeping up with the supply.”
Between 2010 and 2020, the Denver region grew by more than 16% to nearly 3 million people. Since 2020, its growth has slowed to about 1% annually.
Rents for apartments of up to two bedrooms in the Denver metro area dropped 5.9% last year, according to Realtor.com. That’s a faster decrease than several other onetime hotspots for pandemic-era migration and construction, like Austin and Nashville. There, rents fell 5% and 4.4%, respectively in 2024.”
“Inflation climbed in February as consumers braced for the potential onslaught of higher prices from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that prices rose at a higher-than-expected annual rate of 2.8 percent last month, excluding food and energy items, a signal that prices could spike even further in the coming months.”
“The markets understand the basic truth about tariffs, which are taxes consumers in our country pay for imported goods. They raise prices, reduce our access to foreign goods and spark reciprocal tariffs that then punish our country’s farmers and manufacturers. They lead to less growth and more unemployment. They increase bureaucracy by requiring officials to calculate duties and enforce them. They create hostilities and have led to actual war.
As economist Robert Higgs explains, “Fiscally, protectionism is a poor source of government revenue that dries up completely as tariffs are increased so much that they reduce trade flows to zero. Morally, protectionism is vicious because it coercively substitutes the ill-informed and ill-directed judgment of government officials for the judgment of people making deals with their own private property.””
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“Trump threatened them to gain ill-defined concessions from our friendly, highly developed and peaceful allies to the north. Then, after it was clear Canada had already conceded to whatever it was our president demanded, he suspended them. His supporters claimed tariff critics didn’t understand that this was just a brilliant negotiating tool. But then this month the president imposed them anyway. True to form, MAGA shifted back to arguing that tariffs are great policy in and of themselves.”