In the debate on Monday, Donald J. Trump comments on Nafta’s impact:
You go to New England. You go to Ohio, Pennsylvania. You go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacturing is down thirty, forty, sometimes fifty percent — NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere but certainly ever signed in this country.
From the Monday debate:
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate.
No more drought in Kansas. And yet, according to the Philadelphia Fed, Kansas again stands out in economic decline:
Source: Philadelphia Fed.
Earlier on, Moody’s Analytics took on the task of determining the likely impact of implementing the Trump economic pronouncements (tax cuts for the wealthy, massive deficit spending, increased defense spending, spending cuts on other discretionary components, and revocation of free trade agreements). Oxford Economics has taken up the task of evaluating the more recent incarnations of his pronouncements (to call it a “plan” is giving it too much credence).
Instead of zooming to 130% debt-to-GDP ratio, the new Trump plan only takes it up to 105%.
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Or, the continuing investigation of how drought does not explain the Kansas economic debacle, using conventional econometric techniques.
One argument for tightening monetary policy is derived from the argument the Fed needs to raise rates to close a “confidence gap”. Instead of psycho-analyzing the markets, I think it better to focus on data.
Christiane Baumeister and Lutz Kilian presented an interesting paper at the Brookings Institution last week that takes a detailed look at the effects on the U.S. economy of the dramatic oil price decline of 2014-2015.
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Updated 9/20 to reflect BLS state level employment data
The Kansas Department of Labor released some limited numbers regarding August labor market conditions today. These figures are consistent with an economic stall indicated in the Philadelphia Fed projections, discussed in this post.