Trade structured to support production raises productivity, and rising productivity raises the incomes that fund consumption durably, out of earnings instead of borrowing. That is the only durable answer to the cost-of-living crisis: paychecks that can carry the price of housing, healthcare, and childcare.
Last week, the White House declared an emergency under Section 318 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and suspended, for eight months, the collection of anti-dumping and countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer from the Kingdom of Morocco.
The goods deficit for May is the worst looking deficit on paper, at $106.4 billion, but might not be as bad as that number suggests.
Before USTR borrows the tin cartel’s playbook, it should look to the American tradition of minimum import pricing — and beware the foreign imitations that ended in ruin.
Former member of the Federal Reserve Board, Stephen Miran, did not waste much time post-government to come out publicly in favor of tariffs. In a June 28th thread on X, Miran made the market case for tariffs – centered on the “optimal tariff,” failed economic models, and revenue tariffs to curb or cut taxation.
U.S. beef prices continue to climb, with May 2026 prices already 22% above January 2025 levels. This is a serious cost-of-living issue for American families, but it is also a crisis signal for the beef industry.
New bill protects American agricultural markets from further import displacement with inflation-indexed specific duties — assessed against volume, rather than declared value — as well as new tariff-rate quotas to stop further displacement towards imports and give farmers and ranchers certainty.
New report finds nearly one in five dollars of diverted Chinese trade is being rerouted back into the U.S. market through third countries.
One year after Liberation Day, the most aggressive tariff escalation since 2018, the United States collected just half of what its own policy prescribes.
USTR says the U.S. goods deficit with China fell 46 percent. But the goods didn’t stop coming — importers just declared them worth less. Treating customs “value” as an appraisal hides the undervaluation now driving the numbers.
