EconoFact: “The Agricultural Implications of Mr. Trump’s Policies”

That’s the title of a new EconoFact memo written by me:

Nearly 70 percent of rural votes cast in the 2016 election went to Donald Trump. This phenomenon has been attributed in part to the declining fortunes of farmers. But rather than helping reverse this trend, several of the Trump administration’s policy proposals would negatively affect the fortunes of the agricultural sector by depressing the prices received by farmers, reducing the demand for American agricultural exports, and raising production costs. Moreover, that portion of the agriculture budget aimed at supporting farm prices and incomes is likely to be squeezed to accommodate the increase in defense spending.

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2017 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge

March Madness returns! All are invited to sign up for the world famous tenth annual Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge, in which you can demonstrate your inability to predict the outcome of the U.S. college men’s basketball tournament. If you want to participate, go to the Econbrowser group at ESPN, do some minor registering to create a free ESPN account if you haven’t used that site before, and fill in your bracket before Thursday at noon!

I see that a number of the more serious Econbrowsers have already joined the group before I even got this announcement up, including last year’s winner Jackiegee. So watch out, these guys are good at correctly anticipating!

“GOP Economist Concerned Data Quality May Be Hurt Under Trump”

That’s the title of an article in Bloomberg yesterday.

“I remain concerned, particularly in an environment where you’re talking about cutting the budget, that a victim in that exercise could be the production of good data,” Glenn Hubbard, who served as chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2001 to 2003, said Monday in Washington.

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