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Paul Waldman: Has Any Other President Done As Much to Damage the Economy?

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2026 //
6

Paul Waldman was one of my favorite reporters at The Washington Post. He left and started his blog, “The Cross Section.” In this post, he says that most of Trump’s economic setbacks are the result of his own disastrous policies, not forces beyond his control.

I do think Walkman is unfair to Hoover. Unlike Trump, Hoover had a distinguished career and tried to make the right decisions for the right reason.

Waldman writes:

As spring arrives and the cherry blossoms bloom around Washington, Donald Trump’s approval ratings are officially in the toilet:

There are many reasons why he keeps falling lower and lower, but the single most important is likely that Trump has utterly failed on what the foolish and gullible believed was his great strength: the economy. While he does a lot of distasteful but symbolic things like demolishing the East Wing and plastering his name on everything in sight, all of Trump’s most consequential screwups and authoritarian abuses have an economic component. And they all make things worse.

In fact, you’d have to go back to Herbert Hoover to find a president whose decisions were so directly and willfully disastrous for the economy. That’s not because this is the worst economy since the Great Depression; it isn’t, not yet anyway. But in all the downturns and crises we’ve had over the last century, the causes were largely outside of the president’s control.

Those presidents might have made some different decisions or found a way to improve things more quickly, but one wouldn’t say that George W. Bush created the economic crisis of 2008, or that the inflation that crossed the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter happened only because of the decisions they made. Most of the judgments we make of them in retrospect were about how they responded once the crisis arrived. They may have been blamed when things turned bad, but one could argue in every case that it wasn’t really their fault. The latest example is from 2022, when inflation spiked all over the world and here at home Joe Biden got the blame.

But what’s happening now is different. Consider the major policy initiatives of Trump’s second term:

  • Tariffs: Trump believes fervently in the power of tariffs to produce boundless prosperity, and so he has imposed an ever-shifting program of tariffs on foreign materials and products. The nearly universal conclusion of economists is that this policy has been a failure; not only hasn’t it created the manufacturing boom Trump promised, it has increased prices for American consumers and led our trading partners to begin constructing a new global trade system to circumvent the U.S.
  • Immigration: Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration — both deporting immigrants already here and making it all but impossible for new immigrants to come — has been an economic disaster. As a Brookings Institution report notes, “Reduced migration will dampen growth in the labor force, consumer spending, and gross domestic product” in years to come. Multiple economic sectors from construction to agriculture are facing labor shortages, and job growth has slowed to a crawl. And because the crackdown is motivated by naked animus toward all immigrants but especially non-white ones, it extends to a large and growing number of policy areas. For instance, the Small Business Administration just announced that it will cut off loans to green card holders, despite the fact that immigrants start more businesses and create more jobs than native-born Americans. One could hardly imagine a dumber economic own-goal, done for no reason other than the fact that the Trump administration hates immigrants.
  • Energy: Trump has waged an outright war on renewable energy, one of the most dynamic and fast-growing sectors of the world’s economy. As a result, we’ve ceded the green manufacturing sector to China, which now makes most of the world’s wind turbines, solar panels, and lithium-ion batteries. While the Chinese electric car industry is leaping ahead, ours is pulling back, a direct consequence of Trump’s decision to kill EV subsidies. In its lust to prop up the fossil fuel industry, the administration is literally forcing utilities against their will to keep coal plants open so customers can pay more for electricity and get dirtier air in the bargain. And speaking of fossil fuels…
  • The Iran War: We don’t know how long this war will go on, but the economic effects are already being felt. Gas has now crossed $4 a gallon (which will cause a broad increase in prices for all kinds of goods), farmers are facing a spike in the cost of fertilizer, and as Paul Krugman points out, the real effects of the constriction in oil supplies haven’t even been felt yet, which is why some energy analysts are predicting that this could be a worse crisis than the oil shock of the 1970s. The Pentagon wants an additional $200 billion to fund the war, and congressional Republicans are considering health care cuts to pay for it. There are now serious worries that the war could produce a global recession.

He’s a business guy, he knows the economy and stuff

To call this a record of economic incompetence would be too kind. In every case, Trump chose to do what he did for the most stupid, petty, and malicious reasons, despite the fact that the economic effects his decisions would produce were obvious and predicted by anyone with half a brain. It’s especially notable given that in his first term, Trump operated with a kind of benign neglect on many economic fronts, the consequence of which was that before he utterly screwed up his response to the covid pandemic, things were going pretty well. Yes, he restricted immigration and imposed some tariffs, but it was on a much smaller scale. For the first three years of his term, job growth was reasonable, inflation was low, and the economy largely rolled along.

Which probably reinforced the widespread and completely false notion that because Trump was a business guy who knows business stuff, he would be skilled at managing the economy. Even if Trump had been a traditional business leader and not a scam artist with a checkered record of successes and spectacular failures (including multiple bankruptcies), that wouldn’t have meant he knew anything about macroeconomic policy; as I’ve been shouting for far too many years, government and business are not remotely alike, and the skills and knowledge one needs to succeed in one do not transfer to the other.

Yet despite the crushing weight of all available evidence, one still heard voters in 2024 say that because Trump knows business, he could come into office, business away all that inflation (which was largely gone by the time of the election anyway), and bring us to a new age of prosperity. The fact that people thought that is a tribute to the propagandistic power of repetition: Say a thing often enough, no matter how ridiculous it is, and at least some people will believe it. (The same is true of the idea that Trump is a great deal-maker, when in fact he is the world’s worst negotiator.)

To their credit, Americans are now giving Trump dreadful ratings on the economy; in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll (which was taken a week ago, before the national average for gas topped $4 a gallon), his economic approval was only 29%, worse than Joe Biden’s at the height of the 2022 inflation:

It would be nice if this were the result of the American public’s discerning judgment, but it almost certainly isn’t. That’s not to say that a majority of them favor fascism, because they don’t. But to drive your approval as low as Trump’s has gotten, you have to really muck up the economy. And on that score, we haven’t seen anything yet.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Economy, Extremism, Stupid, Trump

Julian Vasquez-Heilig: When AI Becomes Your Boss

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2026 //
18

Julian Vasquez-Heilig describes a future in which AI is not merely doing the work that humans used to do, but hiring humans to do work that AI used to do. He calls this the “rent-a-human” future of AI. He details a future in which AI hires humans to do menial work and evaluates them.

It’s a fascinating essay which might be science fiction or might be an uncanny look into a dystopian future.

What follows is the essay’s opening paragraphs.

Vasquez-Heilig wrote:

The Uber and Lyft gig economy was just the rehearsal. There are already now websites where AI can give you a command to do a job or task it can’t do and then pay you without any human intervention… rent-a-human.

The most important shift in work is not coming with a new job title or a new credential. It is arriving quietly, through notifications, prompts, and website job offers that appear on screens. A task shows up. A payout is listed. A clock starts ticking. You accept or you don’t get paid. In that moment, AI is not a tool assisting labor. It is a management system deciding who works, when they work, and what they are worth.

This is not a future scenario. It is already happening. A new era of labor began with ride sharing and food delivery is expanding into something broader and more structural. AI systems are already hiring humans to perform work. They route tasks. They price labor. It turns out, the gig economy was not just about flexibility. It was the training ground for a world where your AI boss is invisible, automated, and deeply informed about your behavior. Once you recognize this transition, a lot of cultural anxiety about AI suddenly makes sense.

AI is already hiring people

When people talk about AI and jobs, they often focus on replacement of workers. Machines taking over human roles in law, business, medicine, education and more resulting in layoffs and reduced numbers of entry level workers. This is a very important trend that is being discussed extensively in the public discourse, but misses another reality that is already underway. AI’s next step is independently coordinating and controlling the hiring of workers for tasks. 

This is the future across digital platforms: AI systems will generate work that requires human action. It treats you as a probability. How likely are you to accept. How quickly will you respond. How reliable have you been in the past. You could easily find yourself working for a website that instructs you to do plumbing, take a photo, or babysit a child. Drive here. Deliver this. Review that. Like this content. Perform this task. It is unknown what the AI request would be for a certain day. Of course, you will even have to pay a subscription to the website for the privilege of receiving work from your boss.

What I just described is the AI ultra gig economy. The gig economy, first successfully pioneered by platforms like Uber Eats and Lyft, were largely transactional and limited to transportation and delivery. Over time, however, that underlying logic has spread. As humans design AI systems that can assign work and tap into vast pools of labor, the gig economy will not stop at rides and meals. It will expand into other areas such as manual labor, creative labor, and even political participation. AI does not need to know you personally to manage you effectively. It only needs your data trail and need.

Please open the link and keep reading.

Categories Economy, Jobs

Mark Carney’s Speech at Davos

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2026 //
3

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech at Davos that was widely hailed as a realistic response to the disintegration of the old world order.

Carney’s speech received a standing ovation from the audience of global leaders, diplomats, and corporate executives. This is a rare occurrence at Davos, where most speeches are received with polite applause.

Richard Haas, former chief executive at the Council on Foreign Relations, said this about Carney’s speech:

The most important speech delivered at the Davos enclave was not that of Trump but rather Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Reportedly written by Carney himself, the speech was steeped in realism, both as to the state of world order and how small and medium powers, such as Canada, must adapt. Early on he made his basic point, one that provides the title for this week’s newsletter: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition…Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid…Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

Carney was no less direct as to what Canada needed to do: “When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength…To help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It’s building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

There is much talk of regime change within countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, but the most fundamental form of regime change taking place is at the international level. A post-American world is fast emerging, one brought about in large part by the United States taking the lead in dismantling the international order that this country built and underwrote and that served this country and the world well for eight decades. It is being carried out in a manner reminiscent of two characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that held them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” All of which, I am sad to say, applies to this president and his administration—and to their many enablers in the Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, and throughout American society.

Categories Economy, International

WSJ: New Study Shows That U.S. Consumers Pay Tariffs, Not Other Nations

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2026 //
2

The Wall Street Journal gave front-page coverage to this new study, which concludes that American consumers are paying for Trump’s tariffs. This is a direct refutation of Trump’s claims that other nations are paying to access American markets, that the trillions collected for tariffs will eventually replace income taxes and pay for all the government’s expenses.

Guess who is paying for tariffs? We are!

FRANKFURT—Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his historic tariffs, deployed aggressively over the past year as both a revenue-raising and foreign-policy tool, will be paid for by foreigners. Such assertions helped to reinforce the president’s bargaining power and encourage foreign governments to do deals with the U.S.

A relatively brisk growth and moderate inflation last year, even as growth in Europe and other advanced economies remained sluggish.

The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices.

The findings don’t mean that the tariffs are a win for Europe—on the contrary. German exports to the U.S., which have rocketed in recent years, have contracted sharply in the past year.

The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign producers.

By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the qpart burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

Categories Economy, Trump

How Trump Policies Hurt Families

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2026 //
4

The Trump administration is making life harder for young parents, says blogger “Home of the Brave.” Trump’s boasts about the economy don’t help families who are struggling to pay for groceries and to buy a home. Trump has even slashed funding for in vitro fertilization, which some families need to have children.

Donald Trump has dubbed himself “the fertilization president” and stacked his administration with self-described pro-natalists—most notably JD Vance—who say they’re concerned with increasing America’s birth rates. Trump has bragged, falsely and bizarrely, about being the “father of IVF” and said on the campaign trail that “we want more babies.”

Here’s the reality beyond the rhetoric: Trump’s presidency is a disaster for new parents and young families. If you’re looking to start a family today, Trump’s making that harder. And if you’re a new parent, Trump’s going out of his way to make that harder, too. Here are just some of the ways they’re doing it:

1.) Cutting funding for family planning.

Trump’s DOGE cuts have gutted federally-funded IVF programs. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eliminated its Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance program, firing six researchers who tracked IVF effectiveness nationwide. People involved with the program told NBC News it was “a tremendous resource” and called its closure an “immediate loss.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, since 1978 more than 8 million children have been born thanks to IVF, making it the most common type of fertility treatment available, and one of the most effective. Roughly 5 percent of couples experiencing infertility turn to the treatment, and it can offer life-changing results. For millions of Americans, IVF is their best hope for starting a family.

Far from being the “father of IVF,” Trump has made the treatment harder to get for ordinary Americans. When he originally came out in favor of IVF, many of Trump’s social conservative allies in the Republican Party were outraged, calling on him to “walk back” his remarks. They can rest easy now that they know that—as in so many other cases—Trump was lying.

2.) Driving housing costs through the roof.

Houses have become costlier year over year due to limited housing supply. With fewer houses on the market, demand from buyers—especially growing families—outpaces supply. This imbalance drives up prices, freezing out younger and less established homebuyers. To combat this, there’s bipartisan agreement on the need for millions of units worth of new home construction—and fast.

But Trump’s policies are making it harder to build anything. A large portion of the lumber used in American home construction comes from Canada. Steel, another critical building material, is imported predominantly from Japan. Trump has imposed steep tariffs on both countries, making the foundational materials needed to build homes more expensive, which drives up production costs and increases the final price. Regular American families bear the brunt of these increases.

On top of that, as many as 30 percent of construction workers in the United States are immigrants, and Trump’s campaign against immigration is shrinking the available labor supply for construction projects. Masked ICE agents are conducting jump-out raids on unsuspecting contractors and construction workers, in some cases trapping them on freezing cold job sites for hours. As a result, the construction industry is starting to see worsening labor shortages.

Trump built his image on being a real estate magnate, promising on the campaign trail that his administration would be “cutting the cost of a new home in half.” Instead, he’s the biggest obstacle to young parents and new families getting a roof over their heads.

3.) Making everything your child needs more expensive.

Any parent will tell you that you’re always buying something for your kids: babies grow out of clothes constantly, toddlers break toys, you’re forever restocking diapers and formula. It’s a never-ending cycle that is hard to budget for even in the best of times. Trump’s tariffs have made essential baby items—clothes, formula, cribs, strollers, car seats, toys—even more expensive than they already were.

Prices for toddler clothes have gone up 3.3 percent in recent months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose non-political and widely-respected commissioner Trump recently fired for reporting accurate statistics. Other baby essentials have experienced similar jumps thanks to Trump’s tariffs. The Baby Center, a digital resource for parents, wrote that, unless diapers and other goods “are excluded from the tariffs, prices could increase … because manufacturing equipment, packaging, and materials may all be imported.”

Despite Trump’s “America First” monomania, we can’t source every single part of every single baby product here in the United States. It would make everything prohibitively expensive and undercut businesses’ bottom lines. And even if businesses were onboard with this scheme, it would take years or decades to re-shore all the necessary components to US soil. This is what happens when Trump’s economic illiteracy meets reality….

Trump has boasted about his lack of involvement in his children’s lives. He said tasks like changing the kids’ diapers were “just not for me” and he admitted in 2005 that he “won’t do anything to take care of” his children. According to Vanity Fair, his son Don Jr. told him, “You don’t love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money.”

The pattern is clear: The “fertilization president” and “father of IVF” is systematically making it harder and more expensive for American families to have and raise children. He’s gutted IVF programs, driven up housing costs, made baby essentials more expensive, and even taxed parents’ coffee—all while breaking his campaign promises.

American parents shouldn’t have to suffer because Trump was a lousy dad and an even worse president.

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Economy, Extremism, Parents, Trump

Bloomberg News: Trump Is Reshaping the Economy

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2025 //
7

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-capital-flow-trump/

This is a gift article that appeared in Bloomberg News. It describes the dramatic changes that Trump has made by executive order to redirect the flow of money.

It’s unlikely that Trump wrote these orders or even understood their implications. He is surrounded by people who know precisely what they are doing: windfalls for the rich.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Economy, Ethics, Inequality, Trump

What Happened at the Lovefest at the Trump-Mamdani Press Conference

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2025 //
1

Jonathan Larsen reported the details of the press conference held by Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani and President Trump after their private meeting. Everyone was expecting fireworks since the two had traded insults. But their friendly, even warm, exchange surprised everyone.

Maybe I’m fascinated in this meeting because I live in NYC, but mostly I’m fascinated for what this meeting shows about Mamdani and Trump.

Jonathan Larsen wrote on his Substack blog (whose name is unprintable on this blog):

It was built up as the next Rumble in the Jungle. The Ado on Pennsylvania Avenue, or something.
But CNN ended up calling it “bizarrely chummy.” Or, in British speak, “surprisingly cordial,” as the BBC put it.

It actually wasn’t bizarre. Professional journalists shouldn’t have been surprised and should be embarrassed to admit they were. After all, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani asked for Friday’s meeting with Pres. Donald Trump.

Trump, obviously, agreed. Setting the meeting without being open to cordiality and chumminess is what would be bizarre and surprising. But even with that in mind, the extent of Trump’s cordial chumminess was, admittedly, remarkable.

Trump ended up beaming in pictures with Mamdani on the same day he gave Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) a kick in the ass as she headed out the door.

“It was a great honor meeting Zohran Mamdani, the new Mayor New York City!” Trump posted afterward, erasing still Mayor Eric Adams.

On point after point — communism, Israel, crime — Trump without a second thought brushed off right-wing and centrist-Democratic priorities and fear-mongering and even his past bellicosity.

Along the way, Trump explicitly tossed a Republican ally under the bus, essentially saying she’s lying about Mamdani because, hey, campaigning, amirite?

The meeting itself was peppered with more Trump positivity than any one media account conveyed, so I broke down all the Trump love for Mamdani into categories1:

Defending Mamdani

On Mamdani calling him a despot: “I’ve been called much worse than a despot, so it’s not, it’s not that insulting, but maybe — I think he’ll change his mind after we get to working together.” The whole exchange is worth watching:

[it appears on TikTok.]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Uj92YT/

•“That’s another thing I think we have in common, we want to see peace in the Middle East.”

•Trump: “You said a lot of my voters actually voted for him and—:
Mamdani: “One in ten.”
Trump: “—and I’m OK with that.”

•“He may have different views, but in many ways, you know, we were discussing when [Sen.] Bernie Sanders [I-VT] was out of the race. I picked up a lot of his votes and people had no idea because he was strong on not getting ripped off in trade. And lots of the things that I’ve practiced and been very successful on — tariffs, a lot of things — Bernie Sanders and I agreed on … But no, I feel very comfortable, I would be, I would feel very, very comfortable being in New York [under Mayor Mamdani] and I think much more so after the meeting.”

•“I think you’re going to have hopefully a really great mayor. The better he does, the happier I am.”

•“We had some interesting conversation and some of his ideas really are the same ideas that I have.”

•Q: “Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under a Mamdani administration?”

Trump: “Yeah, I would. I really would, especially after the meeting, absolutely. …We agree on a lot more than I would have thought.”

•“I think he’s different, all right? I think he’s different and that can be a very positive way. But I think he’s different than — you know, your typical guy; runs, wins, becomes mayor maybe and nothing exciting — because he [Mamdani] has a chance to really do something great for New York. New York is at a very critical point and he does need the help of the federal government to really succeed and we’re going to be helping him. But he’s different than, you know, your average candidate. He came out of nowhere. I said — he has a great campaign manager standing over there — he came out of, he came out of nowhere. What did you start off at, one or two? And then — I watched, I said, who is this guy? — he was at one, then he was at three, then he was at five, then he was at nine. Then he went up to 17. I said, that’s getting a little bit interesting, right? And then all of a sudden he wins the primary that nobody expected he was going to win. It’s a great, a great tribute. I mean, it’s an amazing thing that he did.”

That last one is where you can really see one of the pillars on which Trump’s obvious affection for Mamdani lies. He won. He beat the insiders, the ones who care about norms and tribal alliances.

It’s hard not to suspect that Trump’s affection for Mamdani was heightened by the fact that Mamdani beat disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) even after Cuomo’s last-minute endorsement from Trump himself.
Rejecting Media Bullshit

While Mamdani frequently ignored or instantly pivoted from questions premised on Let’s You and Him Fight, Trump, too, swatted away questions to avoid areas of conflict.
Look at the previous exchange about being a despot. Trump rescued Mamdani by stipulating that the media don’t get it.

Q: “Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?”
Mamdani: “I’ve spoken about—”
Trump: “That’s OK. You could just say yes.”
Mamdani: “OK.”
Trump: “It’s easier — it’s easier than explaining it. I don’t mind.”

Later, again, Trump refused to take the bait and handed off to Mamdani, who immediately ran with it, where he wanted to go. Amazingly, this question was about Trump’s opinion on Mamdani vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to face the international charges against him, something of huge importance to much of Trump’s base.

Since I’m tired of copying what Larsen wrote, I urge you to open the link.

The best part is that Larsen points out that Trump stabbed Elise Stefanik in the back. Stefanik is running for Governor against Kathy Hochul. Hochul endorsed Mamdani. Neither Chuck Schumer nor Hakeem Jeffries did, to avoid offending orthodox Jewish voters or the Wall Street crowd and powerful corporate interests.

Stefanik has been running TV ads based on terrifying voters about Mamdani, portraying him as a Muslim who will impose Sharia law and do all the horrible things to Jews and women that terrorists do.

But Trump really liked him! They have a bromance going.

Stefanik should join the Marjorie Taylor Greene club. Another MAGA woman tossed aside like a squeezed lemon.

Categories Economy, Elections, Mamdami, Zohran, New York City, Trump

Reagan Opposed Tariffs; Trump Exploded When Canada Played the Tape!

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2025 //
3

Canada paid for an ad showing that Ronald Reagan opposed tariffs. Since the U.S. Supreme Court is about to issue a ruling on whether Trump can impose tariffs without consulting, Trump was outraged by the ad and accused Canada of meddling in U.S. politics.

Bob Shepherd copied the Reagan speech and posted it here.

Here it is:

Here’s the transcript of the remarks on tariffs by Ronald Reagan used in the ad by the government of Ontario that Trump just pressured (blackmailed) them to remove:

PRESIDENT REAGAN: 

My fellow Americans:

Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan will be visiting me here at the White House next week. It’s an important visit, because while I expect to take up our relations with our good friend Japan, which overall remain excellent, recent disagreements between our two countries on the issue of trade will also be high on our agenda.

As perhaps you’ve heard, last week I placed new duties on some Japanese products in response to Japan’s inability to enforce their trade agreement with us on electronic devices called semiconductors. Now, imposing such tariffs or trade barriers and restrictions of any kind are steps that I am loath to take. And in a moment, I’ll mention the sound economic reasons for this: that over the long run such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer. But the Japanese semiconductors were a special case. We had clear evidence that Japanese companies were engaging in unfair trade practices that violated an agreement between Japan and the United States. We expect our trading partners to live up to their agreements. As I’ve often said: Our commitment to free trade is also a commitment to fair trade.

But you know, in imposing these tariffs we were just trying to deal with a particular problem, not begin a trade war. So, next week I’ll be giving Prime Minister Nakasone this same message: We want to continue to work co-operatively on trade problems and want very much to lift these trade restrictions as soon as evidence permits. We want to do this, because we feel both Japan and the United States have an obligation to promote the prosperity and economic development that only free trade can bring.

Now, that message of free trade is one I conveyed to Canada’s leaders a few weeks ago, and it was warmly received there. Indeed, throughout the world there’s a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. Now, there are sound historical reasons for this. For those of us who lived through the Great Depression, the memory of the suffering it caused is deep and searing. And today many economic analysts and historians argue that high tariff legislation passed back in that period called the Smoot-Hawley tariff greatly deepened the depression and prevented economic recovery.

You see, at first, when someone says, “Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,” it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is: First, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars. The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.

The memory of all this occurring back in the ’30s made me determined when I came to Washington to spare the American people the protectionist legislation that destroys prosperity. Now, it hasn’t always been easy. There are those in this Congress, just as there were back in the ’30s, who want to go for the quick political advantage, who will risk America’s prosperity for the sake of a short-term appeal to some special interest group, who forget that more than 5 million American jobs are directly tied to the foreign export business and additional millions are tied to imports. Well, I’ve never forgotten those jobs. And on trade issues, by and large, we’ve done well. In certain select cases, like the Japanese semiconductors, we’ve taken steps to stop unfair practices against American products, but we’ve still maintained our basic, long-term commitment to free trade and economic growth.

So, with my meeting with Prime Minister Nakasone and the Venice economic summit coming up, it’s terribly important not to restrict a President’s options in such trade dealings with foreign governments. Unfortunately, some in the Congress are trying to do exactly that. I’ll keep you informed on this dangerous legislation, because it’s just another form of protectionism and I may need your help to stop it. Remember, America’s jobs and growth are at stake.

Until next week, thanks for listening, and God bless you.

Reagan hated tariffs. Trump did not want Republicans to know that great Ronald Reagan thought tariffs were stupid.

Even after Trump vindictively raised tariffs on our northern neighbor, the Canadians continued to run the ad during the World Series. Good for them.

Categories Economy, Extremism, History

Texas Farmers Can’t Find Laborers to Work Their Fields

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2025 //
8

Jack Herrera of The Texas Monthly asks whether farming can survive without laborers. His article is titled “Are We Living Through the End of Texas Farming?“

Didn’t anyone in the Trump administration think about the impact of their draconian deportation policies on farming, the tourist industry, and other sectors where immigrants are employed? Apparently not.

Trump claimed he intended to deport “the worst of the worst.” The murderers, rapists, repeat offenders. But in fact, ICE is deporting hard-working people who have not committed crimes and who have contributed to our economy.

Even though Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, has warned Trump about the impact of deportations on farmers, nothing has changed. ICE continues to round up farm laborers, threatening the nation’s food supply.

Herrera writes:

As we broiled beneath a relentless sun in the Chihuahuan Desert, next to countless rows of improbably green cotton plants, I expected Ramon Tirres to tell me that water is his most precious resource. In the valley south of El Paso, Tirres grows cotton and pecans, and for the past 23 years, he’s farmed in the midst of historic drought. But as the wiry 71-year-old toed the dirt next to one of the canals that waters his fields, Tirres told me he’s facing a more pressing shortage: “The big issue we’re having now is finding workers,” Tirres said. “God almighty, is it hard.”

Three years ago, Tirres began working to get an H-2A employment visa for a Mexican farmhand, one of a small pool of workers who could handle the massive John Deere harvesters, the sophisticated machines that use GPS to navigate down furrows without veering an inch off course. “I need him—I was looking forward to having him,” Tirres said. “Irrigation, hauling, driving the tractor, cultivating—he could do it all.” The visa process was going well, and around January, the worker received news that it was looking likely he’d get approved. Then in March, after President Donald Trump took office, the man called Tirres and told him that working as an immigrant in the U.S. now carried intolerable risks. “He got scared,” Tirres said. “He told me, ‘I hear the talk that [immigrants] are getting shipped out to Venezuela or El Salvador—and I don’t want that to happen to me.’” He gave up on the visa process. 

Labor shortages are crippling agriculture across the U.S., and they’ve got the attention of everyone from farmers in El Paso to top officials in the White House. For generations, farmers have struggled to find American-born workers, and in recent years, the number of Mexican farmworkers in the country has decreased, dangerously shrinking the labor pool. In 2022, a national survey of farmers found that close to half—46 percent—said they didn’t have enough workers and that they were struggling to hire more. “We are losing farms in America at a rapid pace and there is no question that our broken workforce system is partly to blame,” Zippy Duvall, the American Farm Bureau Federation president, said in March of that year. 

Brooke Rollins, Trump’s secretary of agriculture, is well aware of the problem. At a forum in February, she talked about meeting with farmers across the country. “Almost every single conversation, every single one, labor comes up, so it’s clearly a top issue,” Rollins said. She has had to contend with an inconvenient fact: More than 42 percent of farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented. As farmers raise the alarm about critical worker shortages, the Trump administration is actively deporting those workers—or scaring them away. In June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted huge raids in California, Nebraska, and Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. In the Valley, ICE raids have not come for farms, but the fear of them has been disruptive. According to the most recent survey from the National Center for Farmworker Health, as many as 80 percent of farmworkers in Hidalgo County are undocumented. Farmers have reported that fears of ICE raids have led many of their workers to stop going to work. Food has been left rotting in fields and warehouses. Over the summer, South Texas farmers told reporters that they weren’t just low on workers—they had zero workers left; even those with papers were afraid to show up. “One hundred percent, one hundred percent don’t want to come out of fear of being picked up even if they are doing it the right way,” one farmer told the Valley Central News. 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Economy, Texas

The Biggest Liar in Texas

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2025 //
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Michelle H. Davis writes a blog called “Lone Star Left,” where she chronicles the usually corrupt politics of Texas. In this post, she eviscerates Governor Abbott, who loves to brag about the economic success of his state. She calls him out for ignoring the people who are nott part of the state’s prosperity.

She writes:

Today, our feckless leader gave a State-of-the-State Address at the Baylor Club in Waco. Now, if you didn’t know, the Baylor Club is a prestigious private social club nestled within McLane Stadium, offering floor-to-ceiling panoramic views of the stadium, downtown Waco, and the Brazos River.

While many Texans are choosing between groceries and insulin, Abbott delivers big promises from an elite club perched over McLane Stadium. That should tell you all you need to know. 

It was about an hour long, so I watched it for you. Below, I’ve broken down everything he said and what he conveniently left out. 

He began the speech by bragging about having dinner with Governor Glenn Youngkin and then told him that Texas’ budget for building roads was $146 billion. He claimed Youngkin dropped his spoon, saying it was bigger than Virginia’s entire budget. He went on to say that Texas had the “largest road building fund in America.” 

It’s only partly true. According to TXDOT’s 10-year plan, we have allocated about $101.6 billion for projects and $45 billion for maintenance. But this road-building bonanza feels stupid without high-speed trains. Seriously, what are we doing? 

Trains would alleviate traffic, carbon emissions, congestion, and get us from Dallas to Houston in just 90 minutes. It’s faster and greener than driving, but we’re investing all our money in roads? 

Modern marvel, or not, no one likes this shit: 

But Republicans do it all for the fossil fuel industry. 

In related news, ConocoPhillips, headquartered in Houston, plans to lay off 25% of its global workforce. 

Then, he stoked the bigwigs in Waco for a little bit. 

Abbott discussed Waco’s significant economic success, noting its high job numbers and record-low unemployment. 

The unemployment rate in Waco in July was 4.1. In DFW, it was 4.0. In the Austin area, it was 3.5. So, really, it’s comparable to Texas. 

What he failed to mention at this invite-only event was that the poverty rate in Waco is about 24.3%, nearly double the state’s average. Or that in some neighborhoods in Waco, it’s as high as 38%. Meanwhile, 57% of Black children in Waco live below the poverty line.

And that’s the optics, right there. While Abbott spoke from his panoramic perch, over half of Waco’s Black children struggle to make ends meet. This is the story of what Texas has become under Republican control. 

It wouldn’t be a boastful Abbott speech if he didn’t brag about Texas’ economy. 

He always does this. 

Texas is the #1 state for doing business.

Texas is the #1 state for economic projects.

Texas is the #1 state for economic development.

Texas is the #1 state for exports.

Texas has a GDP $2.7 trillion.

But he never talks about how we’re the worst for basic health. Or how we have the most uninsured adults in America. Texas sits 43rd for overall child well-being. And 22% of Texas kids are hungry. In fact, over 5 million Texans don’t know where their next meal is coming from. He also forgot to mention that there’s a housing insecurity crisis, and that Texas cities rank the worst for air quality.

They wine and dine behind glass walls and chandeliers, as Abbott brags to the wealthy. The Baylor Club is a fortress of privilege where the powerful toast each other on gold plates, high above the city streets. 

Down below, children go to bed hungry, their bellies gnawing at them while Abbott gloats about GDP. Senior citizens, the same ones who built this state with their hands and backs, are being taxed out of their homes, cast onto the streets, the newest members of the unsheltered community.

How could you hear that and not burn with anger?…

Then, Abbott told the biggest, most monstrous lie of them all. 

I had to clip this 30-second video for you to see it. Otherwise, you might not believe a whopper this big. 

Abbott claimed that since the 2021 storm (Uri), they have bolstered the Texas electric grid, and it has remained perfect. He went on to say that since 2021, no Texan has lost power due to a deficiency in the grid. 

This is flat-out false. This is such a fucking stupid lie, do I even need to fact-check it? 

Ask the 2.3 million CenterPoint customers in Houston who lost power for over a week after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. Or the nearly 1 million Texans left in the dark by the Houston derecho just two months earlier in May 2024. Families sweltered in the heat, elderly neighbors died waiting for oxygen refills, and Abbott wants to call that a “perfect” grid?

What he’s really doing is splitting hairs. ERCOT didn’t order rolling blackouts in those disasters. The distribution system collapsed. In other words, the wires and poles failed instead of the generators. But tell that to the family sitting in the dark with spoiled food and no air conditioning. To everyday Texans, it doesn’t matter whether it’s ERCOT or CenterPoint. The lights are off, the fridge is warm, and the Governor is lying.

This isn’t a story of resilience. It’s a story of deregulation, neglect, and profit over people.

Abbott claimed the Legislature made a “generational investment” in water. 

Also, bullshit. We talked about this in June: Did the 89th Legislature Address Texas’ Water Problems?

Voters will decide in November whether or not we make that investment, which will not be nearly enough money to cover the extent of Texas’ water problems, but it’s a start. 

Abbott claimed that they prioritized small businesses with the new “DOGE law.” A spin if there ever was one. It’s a new bureaucratic agency added to the Governor’s office, which will look for “ways to make regulations more effective, streamline the regulatory process, reduce department costs, and increase public access to regulatory information.”

If you followed along with Lone Star Left during the weeks where we watched the Texas budget hearings, you may remember that every Texas agency is running on outdated computer systems (if they aren’t still using paper), they are all understaffed, they are in buildings that are falling apart, and most government employees aren’t even making a livable wage. 

Republicans have already run every inch of this state into the ground, and the idea that they are going to use a new government agency to run it into the ground even further is ludicrous. 

Running our state agencies in such an inefficient, broken-down way doesn’t save money. It raises costs. Outdated systems, paper records, and skeleton crews result in Texans waiting longer for services, errors piling up, and agencies paying more in overtime and contract work to keep the lights on.

Republicans are really bad at governing. 

The human toll is brutal. Employment turnover in some state agencies runs as high as 50%. Think about that, half the workforce gone, year after year. When you’re constantly training new people instead of keeping experienced staff, services collapse. And nowhere is this clearer than in our Health and Human Services agencies.

These are the people who process Medicaid applications, SNAP benefits, and health services for children and seniors. Understaffed offices and burned-out employees mean months-long backlogs. Families in crisis are told to wait for food assistance. Elderly Texans often lack home health care due to a shortage of caseworkers. Disabled children get lost in the system while Abbott’s donors laugh from the Baylor Club balcony.

This is intentional sabotage. Republicans have hollowed out the very agencies that keep Texans alive. Then they use the dysfunction as an excuse to privatize more, deregulate more, and funnel more contracts to their cronies. The suffering of everyday Texans is the plan.

Governor Abbott said the Texas Legislature fully funded public schools. 

The basic allotment (the base per-student funding) sat at $6,160 from 2019 through 2024. 2025’s package adds $8.5B with strings and only a modest BA bump debated (far short of inflation, per district leaders). Many districts still report deficits and cuts. “Fully funded” is another flat-out lie.

But when your audience is a bunch of wealthy CEOs who paid $2,000 a plate to get in to hear you speak, lies like that don’t matter. Surely all of those CEOs are sending their kids to private school, on the taxpayer’s dime, with the shiny new vouchers Mr. Let-Them-Eat-Cake got for all his wealthy donors. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to vote this motherfucker out. 

Every year he lies a little bigger, every year he sells us out a little deeper, and every year the gap between those sipping cocktails at the Baylor Club and those wondering how to feed their kids grows wider.

The truth is, the wealth inequality in Texas right now is more drastic than the wealth inequality in France shortly before their revolution. You know what happened then.

And I’ll leave you with this, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau: 

“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”

So let’s be ready. Let’s be angry. And let’s be organized. Because November 2026 is coming, and it’s time to flip this state.

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Deregulation, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, Inequality, Poverty, Texas, Vouchers
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