In my 15 years in Silicon Valley, I found venture capitalists to be the shrewdest and smartest individuals there. The best of them have had previous experience as engineers or managers, sometimes both. They had experience at some of the best, most successful companies but also experience at some of the worst-managed companies (which far…
The economy is moving from growth to contraction, as Thursday’s 0.9% decline in GDP tells us. The debate over whether we are in a recession today is mostly pundits rehearsing their political messages for television, with the November election looming. We are almost certain to be in recession by year-end or early next year. I’m…
This article is an expanded version of testimony delivered by Mr. Ferry to the U.S. International Trade Commission on July 22, 2022. The Section 232 steel tariffs have benefited the U.S. steel industry and its workforce American steelworkers earned an average of $117,200 last year, making steel one of the best-paying industrial sectors in…
By Jeff Ferry, CPA Chief Economist, and Roslyn Layton, Ph.D., Co-Founder, China Tech Threat This Policy Paper, co-written by Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) and China Tech Threat (CTT), highlights the dangers of an impending decision by Apple to begin using Chinese-made memory chips in the iPhone 14. The paper outlines how this creates…
Press reports say that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is arguing for repealing a broad set of U.S. tariffs, allegedly as a way to fight inflation. Her argument is said to rely on a set of reports[1] published in March by the Peterson Institute that claimed that cutting tariffs would cut 1.3 percentage points off the…
For years, mainstream politicians and economists have pooh-poohed America’s huge and growing trade deficits and tried to argue they don’t matter. In the first quarter of 2022, those commentators got a wake-up call from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. On April 28, the BEA issued a press release pointing out that U.S. gross domestic product…
Thirty years ago, Clint Eastwood held a gun to his rival’s head and asked the question: “Do you feel lucky, punk?” That is what the Chinese solar manufacturers are doing today, with President Biden at the other end of that Magnum 44 six-shooter. On March 28th, Biden’s Commerce Department decided to pursue an anti-circumvention case…
P&O Ferries is the largest operator of ferryboats between the British Isles and the European Continent, a $1.1 billion company carrying 10 million passengers a year. Two weeks ago, on March 24, P&O shocked its 800 employees by firing all of them. But it was less what it did than how it did it. On…
Summary Sanctions on Russia are devastating to the Russian economy Power of the sanctions is due to concerted international action, not to the US role as world’s “reserve currency” U.S. economic power owes more to the size of U.S. economy than to dollar’s reserve status Dollar overvaluation continues to be a huge problem for U.S.…