Latest news with #Krugman
USA Today
13 hours ago
- Business
- USA Today
Liberals play partisan games with economic news
Will Democrats put politics aside and applaud as the American economy shows a strength and resilience that so many of them doubted? Probably not. Thanks to President Donald Trump's bold policies, it appears that the United States will avoid a recession this year − one that so many liberals were predicting only months ago. Will Democrats put politics aside and applaud as the American economy shows a strength and resilience that so many of them doubted? Probably not. The Bureau of Economic Analysis on July 30 released more good news about our nation's vibrant economy. Gross domestic product grew a healthy annual rate of 3% in the second quarter after recording a less than 1% decline in the first three months of this year. Fears of a recession should now dissipate like morning haze after the sunrise. Nearly all markers of a strong economy are in top form. Unemployment is low, hovering at 4.1%. The past three months have seen steady job growth. Average hourly earnings for U.S. workers grew 3.7% over the 12 months ending in June. Consumer spending is expected to rise, and there's been a modest uptick in consumer confidence. The Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation, increased 2.7% over the 12 months ending in June, far below the 40-year high recorded in President Joe Biden's term. Even the average price of eggs has dropped dramatically, to $3.31 per dozen, down from a spike to $8 in February and back to roughly the same price level as a year ago. Stock indexes continue to grow at a strong pace, recovering from the sell-off this spring driven by concerns over Trump's tariffs. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 have set multiple record highs in July, a boon to millions of Americans with retirement accounts and other investors. On the tariff front, Trump's new trade deal with the European Union should be a catalyst for further economic growth, particularly in the energy and construction sectors. If this is what a recession looks like, let's keep it coming. Critics said Trump was destroying the economy Despite such healthy economic markers, I doubt I'll see many kudos offered to the Trump administration for powering past a recession, which the left predicted in doomsday terms. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in May that Trump and "MAGAnomics" were "destroying the economy and waging war on the middle class and the poor." The headline thundered that Trump was "making America backward again." Opinion: Trump's EU trade deal ushers in a golden age for blue-collar workers Interestingly, Krugman claimed that the U.S. economy was in good overall shape when Biden left office in January. He charged Trump with wrecking the economy in a mere three months. Now, that the data clearly shows otherwise, will Krugman admit his errors? I doubt it. Krugman, to be fair, wasn't the only so-called expert spouting off about our supposedly crumbling economy. CNN published an analysis in April with a headline that claimed "Trump took the US economy to the brink of a crisis in just 100 days." That same month, the Center for American Progress bemoaned that "President Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally launch a global trade war could be one of the worst economic statecraft blunders in American history." Opinion newsletter: Sign up for our newsletter on conservative values, family and religion from columnist Nicole Russell. Get it delivered to your inbox. I read these articles in the mainstream news media and wonder if we share the same universe. Do progressives not see the same healthy economic markers that millions of other Americans and I see? The answer, of course, is that they do see − but they are too blinded by partisanship to admit it. Good economic news should be nonpartisan I don't have a problem with liberals criticizing Trump. Sometimes he deserves it. But when it comes to obvious wins like a blossoming economy, the constant derision is tiresome and pedestrian. A robust economy under any president is good news for Americans, regardless of their party affiliation. Right? I didn't care for Biden's leftist policies. But I didn't cheer when the economy struggled. It was bad news not just for Biden but, far more important, also for our nation and its citizens. More than a year after Biden entered the White House, annual inflation spiked to 9% in June 2022, the highest rate in four decades. Americans were hit with sudden increases in food, housing and transportation costs. Opinion: Nvidia CEO says Trump gives America an advantage. Hear that, progressives? Compounding the pain, the Federal Reserve acted to cool inflation by raising interest rates, which pushed up consumers' payments for auto, housing and credit card loans. Democrats tried to blame decisions made in Trump's first term, including federal spending used to fight consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Biden spent more even as the pandemic began to wane. In 2024, more than half of American voters said the economy was the issue that mattered to them the most. It's why Trump won more than 77 million votes and returned to the White House. Now, he is delivering on his promises to rebuild our nation's economy. But not everyone is happy about it. It's too bad liberals can't separate economic success from Trump's party affiliation. I can't help but wonder if they wanted a recession so they could blame Trump even more. Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
Yahoo
11-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Rages at Nobel-Winning ‘Deranged Bum' in Late-Night Meltdown
Donald Trump has lashed out at Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman in a late-night rant after he weighed in on the president's tariffs and the drama surrounding his jobs report. In a typically irate post on Truth Social, Trump attacked the former New York Times columnist, who was awarded the Nobel in economics in 2008, as a 'Deranged BUM' while urging people to adopt his own trigger-happy approach to lawsuits. 'Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been predicting Doom and Gloom ever since my great election success in 2016. In other words, he has been wrong for YEARS, as ALL markets have been hitting new HIGHS, and are now higher than ever before,' Trump posted just before midnight ET on Sunday. 'People stayed out of the 'BEST MARKET IN HISTOY' [sic] because of this Trump Deranged BUM. Sue them!' In response, Krugman told the Daily Beast he is 'flattered' by the attention from Trump. 'He must think people are listening,' Krugman added. 'I might add 'Deranged BUM' to my profile.' Trump didn't specify exactly what about Krugman, an economist at the City University of New York, set him off, probably because there are plenty of recent possibilities to pick from. Speaking to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, Krugman blasted Trump for instantly dismissing accurate jobs data the moment it turned negative. 'If you actually know anything about how they [jobs reports] are put together, it would require basically hundreds, if not thousands, of people to be in on the conspiracy,' Krugman said. 'This is just silly stuff, and it's clear that if Trump sees a number or a fact he doesn't like, he claims that it's a conspiracy against him.' Krugman has also warned that Trump's latest wave of tariffs, which took effect Aug. 7, could hammer the U.S. economy. 'We're definitely seeing a slowdown in the economy. Whether it actually crosses the line into a recession is less clear, but… it's going to feel pretty bad,' he told NPR. In his Aug. 5 Substack newsletter, Krugman condemned Trump for firing Erika McEntarfer as commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the agency reported the U.S. added only 73,000 jobs in July, far below expectations. Without offering evidence, Trump called the damning report 'rigged' and politically motivated. 'Claiming that economic data you don't like is fraud perpetrated by a deep state conspiracy has been standard practice on the right for a long time, going back to the 'inflation truthers' of the Obama years,' Krugman wrote. Jealousy might also be fueling Trump's fixation on Krugman. The president has repeatedly stated he wants and even deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and has been put forward for the prestigious honor several times. His trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has even floated the idea that Trump's tariff strategy warrants a Nobel Prize for economics, the same honor Krugman won in 2008 for his work on trade theory and new economic geography. 'I'm thinking that since he's basically taught the world trade economics, he might be up for the Nobel in economics,' Navarro told Fox Business in late July. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
Gulf Today
02-08-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
Brazil's Pix raises hopes of digital payments system
Brazil has a new instant payment system, which is backed by the central bank. It is called Pix. Majority of Brazilians are using it to buy vegetables as well as do high-end shopping with it. When people offer to pay, the immediate question the vendors ask is, 'Do you have Pix?' To use it requires a simple registration process. It requires a bank account, email and a phone number. One registers for Pix through a tax identity number, akin to the social security number in the United States. Usually, such instant payments systems are managed by a consortium of banks. But in Brazil, the central bank is the chief backer of the payment mode. It was launched in 2020, and it picked up momentum during the Covid period. While it has digitized transactions, Brazil seems to have made the Big Brother in the neighbourhood, the United States, hostile. Meta was planning to launch a WhatsApp payment system around the same time in Brazil, but the Brazilian authorities delayed in granting permission until 2021. The WhatsApp payment system could not match the popularity of Pix. The Office of the US Trade Representative had issued a statement in July saying that it was investigating whether Brazil had indulged in 'unfair trade practices' by privileging its own digital payment system over that of the American big tech companies like Meta. It said that Brazil through Pix 'may harm the competitiveness of American companies'. Brazil hit back when a government-run social media ran a campaign with the slogan 'Pix is ours, My Friend.' And an Instagram message of the government said, 'Seems like our Pix is causing a lot of jealousy abroad, you know.' American Nobel Prize winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman is all praise for Pix. He has quoted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which said that the transaction costs of Pix are lower and free for individuals. For merchants and firms, the transaction cost is 0.33 per cent, while it is 1.13 per cent for credit cards and 2.34 per cent for credit cards. Individual users do not have to pay any transaction costs. He also said that the Pix processing time is three seconds, while it takes two days for debit cards and 28 days for credit cards. While Krugman speculates on the possibility of creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and the obstacles in the way of US Federal Reserve to implement such a plan, Brazil is moving towards a digital currency of its own called Drex. This is seen as a way to complement Pix. Nathalie Janson, professor of economics at NEOMA in France, says that there is no demand for a mode of digital payment like Pix in Europe as most Europeans have bank accounts. In Brazil, Pix is open to people without bank accounts. She says, 'Pix was a voluntary project by the Brazilian authorities to expand banking access.' It is interesting that the Indian digital payment system, UPI, has become popular too and widespread, but there is competition through the privately-managed PayTM. And the Indian digital payment system is becoming acceptable in some other countries like Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, France, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Oman, UK, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). So, the digital payments system is gaining acceptance in the Global South. Whether this will lead to a digital national currency remains to be seen. The United States is interested in pushing cryptocurrency. But the risk factor is greater in it. Only when a central bank backs a digital currency that it will gain trust and confidence of market players, and not just the speculators.
USA Today
30-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
GDP soars and Trump's economy roars. Liberals still won't give him credit.
Will Democrats put politics aside and applaud as the American economy shows a strength and resilience that so many of them doubted? Probably not. Thanks to President Donald Trump's bold policies, it appears that the United States will avoid a recession this year − one that so many liberals were predicting only months ago. Will Democrats put politics aside and applaud as the American economy shows a strength and resilience that so many of them doubted? Probably not. The Bureau of Economic Analysis on July 30 released more good news about our nation's vibrant economy. Gross domestic product grew a healthy annual rate of 3% in the second quarter after recording a less than 1% decline in the first three months of this year. Fears of a recession should now dissipate like morning haze after the sunrise. Nearly all markers of a strong economy are in top form. Unemployment is low, hovering at 4.1%. The past three months have seen steady job growth. Average hourly earnings for U.S. workers grew 3.7% over the 12 months ending in June. Consumer spending is expected to rise, and there's been a modest uptick in consumer confidence. The Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation, increased 2.7% over the 12 months ending in June, far below the 40-year high recorded in President Joe Biden's term. Even the average price of eggs has dropped dramatically, to $3.31 per dozen, down from a spike to $8 in February and back to roughly the same price level as a year ago. Stock indexes continue to grow at a strong pace, recovering from the sell-off this spring driven by concerns over Trump's tariffs. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 have set multiple record highs in July, a boon to millions of Americans with retirement accounts and other investors. On the tariff front, Trump's new trade deal with the European Union should be a catalyst for further economic growth, particularly in the energy and construction sectors. If this is what a recession looks like, let's keep it coming. Critics said Trump was destroying the economy Despite such healthy economic markers, I doubt I'll see many kudos offered to the Trump administration for powering past a recession, which the left predicted in doomsday terms. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in May that Trump and "MAGAnomics" were "destroying the economy and waging war on the middle class and the poor." The headline thundered that Trump was "making America backward again." Opinion: Trump's EU trade deal ushers in a golden age for blue-collar workers Interestingly, Krugman claimed that the U.S. economy was in good overall shape when Biden left office in January. He charged Trump with wrecking the economy in a mere three months. Now, that the data clearly shows otherwise, will Krugman admit his errors? I doubt it. Krugman, to be fair, wasn't the only so-called expert spouting off about our supposedly crumbling economy. CNN published an analysis in April with a headline that claimed "Trump took the US economy to the brink of a crisis in just 100 days." That same month, the Center for American Progress bemoaned that "President Donald Trump's decision to unilaterally launch a global trade war could be one of the worst economic statecraft blunders in American history." I read these articles in the mainstream news media and wonder if we share the same universe. Do progressives not see the same healthy economic markers that millions of other Americans and I see? The answer, of course, is that they do see − but they are too blinded by partisanship to admit it. Good economic news should be nonpartisan I don't have a problem with liberals criticizing Trump. Sometimes he deserves it. But when it comes to obvious wins like a blossoming economy, the constant derision is tiresome and pedestrian. A robust economy under any president is good news for Americans, regardless of their party affiliation. Right? I didn't care for Biden's leftist policies. But I didn't cheer when the economy struggled. It was bad news not just for Biden but, far more important, also for our nation and its citizens. More than a year after Biden entered the White House, annual inflation spiked to 9% in June 2022, the highest rate in four decades. Americans were hit with sudden increases in food, housing and transportation costs. Opinion: Nvidia CEO says Trump gives America an advantage. Hear that, progressives? Compounding the pain, the Federal Reserve acted to cool inflation by raising interest rates, which pushed up consumers' payments for auto, housing and credit card loans. Democrats tried to blame decisions made in Trump's first term, including federal spending used to fight consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Biden spent more even as the pandemic began to wane. In 2024, more than half of American voters said the economy was the issue that mattered to them the most. It's why Trump won more than 77 million votes and returned to the White House. Now, he is delivering on his promises to rebuild our nation's economy. But not everyone is happy about it. It's too bad liberals can't separate economic success from Trump's party affiliation. I can't help but wonder if they wanted a recession so they could blame Trump even more. Nicole Russell is a columnist at USA TODAY and a mother of four who lives in Texas. Contact her at nrussell@ and follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @russell_nm. Sign up for her weekly newsletter, The Right Track, here.
Indian Express
04-06-2025
- Business
- Indian Express
What Trump America needs to understand: A country is not a corporation
Several years ago, Nobel-Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote an insightful article, 'A Country is not a Company', in which he argued that business leaders need to understand the difference between economic policy on the national and international scale and business strategy on the organisational scale. In other words, and to put it bluntly, CEOs who do not understand economic policy are ill-suited for the role. Little did many realise, including perhaps Krugman himself, that an article written in 1996 would command such resonance almost three decades on. After all, CEOs of firms that have enjoyed unbridled monopoly power — especially after the emergence of the modern corporation around the turn of the last century — have shown more than a passing tendency to use that market power to their advantage. Examples abound from Standard Oil, Exxon Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, and, more recently, big-tech companies to name a few. Firms engaged in market-based competition play a 'zero-sum game' — one gains at the expense of the other. Disciplining errant firms has been accomplished by a combination of market creativity and intervention of anti-trust authorities, but it has been a hard task. Do nations jostle for competitive advantage on the global stage the same way that firms do locally? Krugman thinks not. International trade, significantly, is not a zero-sum game. According to him, 'If the European economy does well, it need not be at US expense; indeed, if anything a successful European economy is likely to help the US economy by providing it with larger markets and selling it goods of superior quality at lower prices.' Historically, that has been the case for all economic development, and most recently in East Asia. Global interdependence and the emergence of deeply integrated value chains are proof that trade increases the size of the global economic pie. The whole point of modern trade is not to impoverish either partner(s), it is to enrich both; or else why trade at all? Colonists engaged in coercive trade; today's trade is entirely voluntary. A popular phrase attributed to George Mallory, a British mountaineer of the 1920s, captures the core motivation behind mountaineering. Why do people climb mountains? 'Because they are there,' he is famously believed to have retorted. Monopolies exploit their power because it's there; CEOs have the clout along with the capacity to get away with it. Doing the same as a country — that is, flexing muscles on the global economic stage because you have power — is entirely different. Because modern trade is a matter of choice, no one holds a gun to and forces nations to trade. Blaming 'unfair' foreign competition, therefore, for trade deficits as Donald Trump has been relentlessly doing, is politically expedient but economically disingenuous. Are trade deficits the right measure of a country's competitiveness? Krugman ponders that competitiveness cannot simply be measured by staring at trade balances and their changes. If you do that, the implications are quite dangerous — they lead to harmful steps like trade wars to promote so-called competitiveness. Trade wars often make the situation worse. Evidence of the recent madness emanating from the US in the form of tariff impositions on countries that it runs a deficit with shows that contrary to expectations, the tariffs actually weakened the US dollar. It lost nearly 10 per cent of its value since January, with over half the decline in April. The tariffs also disrupted the bond market by triggering a sell-off in the US treasuries, spiking yields and challenging its safe-haven status. This volatility forced a temporary tariff pause, highlighting the bond market's power. Interestingly, on May 28, the US Court of International Trade struck down Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs, ruling that they exceeded presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977. According to the verdict, these tariffs involved significant economic and political issues, requiring explicit congressional authorisation, which was absent. Poignantly, on the same day, Elon Musk officially quit his advisory role in the US administration, concluding his tenure at the Department of Government Efficiency. Even so, looming on the US horizon are inflation, recession and policy unpredictability. The Trump administration has already appealed the decision (it has been stayed by the appellate court) and the case may progress to the US Supreme Court, by which time data on the impact on the US trade deficit will be available. Economists refer to this lag as 'the J-curve effect', reflecting a nuance where financial markets adjust almost instantaneously to shocks, while goods markets adjust with a lag. In all likelihood, with the tariff retaliations we have witnessed from China, Canada, and Mexico among others, the US trade deficit could become worse. Own goal, anyone? Besides, the Triffin thesis suggests that the US must run trade deficits to provide the necessary dollars for global liquidity. So, if the US wishes to remain the hegemon and continue to enjoy the exorbitant privilege of printing dollars and importing goods and services for a song, it will need to run deficits. In fact, since 1971 when the US dollar was brusquely decoupled from gold by President Richard Nixon (the so-called 'Nixon shock'), effectively ending the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system, the US dollar has continued to meet the bulk of the global demand for liquidity. In only two years since 1973 has the US trade balance been positive. In this half-century, the US has been a most productive nation, innovation-intensive, 'competitive' and creative, enterprising and illustrious, all achieved in the presence of growing trade deficits. Blaming trade deficits for unemployment and low wages is therefore ineffective and, in many cases, unequivocally wrong, especially when they are caused by domestic factors. The US is a services-based economy — education, insurance, healthcare, banking, real estate, information technology, among other sectors contributing almost 80 per cent of GDP. Getting manufacturing back by erecting tariff walls is a futile scheme, destined to fail. The CEO of a country running economic policy must, therefore, distinguish between politically expedient rhetoric and the harms of making policy decisions based on careless arithmetic. The existence of trade deficits (or surpluses) reflects a complex interaction of many factors, especially for a country that provides global liquidity. These need to be understood clearly. Krugman's warning and the embedded advice, therefore, must be taken seriously, above all by the country that nurtured his clarity of thought. (The writer is dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Shiv Nadar University, and professor of Economics. Views are personal)
