All posts tagged "Economy"

Trump officials looked the other way as the president's allies apparently cashed in at everyday Americans' expense, an economic analyst warned.

Economics columnist Catherine Rampell laid out the case in a Thursday piece for The Bulwark, arguing that what she called "beet-red flags" around a string of suspiciously well-timed trades this spring were waved away by Trump appointees.

In March, roughly 15 minutes before Trump announced he was backing off threats against Iran, traders placed billions of dollars' worth of contracts betting oil prices would drop and the stock market would climb. They were right. Federal commodities regulators opened a preliminary review, but Bloomberg reported this week that a senior adviser to the Trump-appointed chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered staff to pull back a referral that could have triggered a full investigation....

A prominent economist warned that fears of election interference under President Donald Trump pose a serious threat to America's economy.

Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist who hosts "Platypus Economics," told Molly Jong-Fast in a Wednesday episode of "Fast Politics" that the biggest risks aren't in the latest GDP or jobs numbers but in slower damage that will grow "like a slow-burning cancer, destroying a beautiful living organism."

"What is America's position in the world? Are we a trusted partner? Do we believe in the rule of law anymore? Are contracts enforced and enforceable?" Wolfers asked. He questioned whether businesses are shifting toward competing "at Mar-a-Lago, each competing for favors from the White House" instead of on price and quality....

President Donald Trump's boast that allies agreed to a "massive" fuel release falls apart on close inspection, according to an economist.

Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, argued in an article for his Platypus Economics newsletter on Tuesday that the 100 million barrels of oil and fuel the Group of Seven pledged last week are largely what's left over from an emergency release promised in March.

Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday that Europe had agreed to release a "massive amount" of diesel right away, casting it as a concession won in exchange for dropping his threat to ban U.S. diesel exports....

Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson said President Donald Trump is squandering the very issue that returned him to the White House in historic fashion.

Carlson made the remarks on Saturday on a CNN panel hosted by Kasie Hunt that also featured TV host Cari Champion, former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, and former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. Carlson argued Trump has lost the trust he once commanded with voters on the economy and inflation.

"We all know that the economy is the number one thing followed closely by inflation," Carlson said. "And ironically, those two things that Trump used to poll the highest at. And that's why he won reelection."...

President Donald Trump is flashing ominous signs that he is gearing up to turn on the Federal Reserve chair he handpicked, an economic analyst warned.

In a Saturday analysis for The Guardian, economics writer Eduardo Porter credited the Federal Reserve under Chairman Kevin Warsh with having "acquitted itself well" through a week of pressure from the White House, but warned "the signs are ominous" that Trump will "turn on Warsh in the way he did on his predecessor, Jerome 'numbskull' Powell."

Porter tracked the widening rift between the president and Kevin Warsh since Trump elevated him to the job. He noted that Warsh presided this week over a unanimous decision to raise interest rates for the first time in three years, a direct rebuff to a president who has spent months demanding cuts....

President Donald Trump publicly dismisses AI safety concerns as a "HOAX" — but behind closed doors, his own administration is quietly wrestling with a far messier and more urgent debate about whether the technology could destabilize the economy.

According to The New York Times, insiders privately say his combative public stance is really about market anxiety: he fears any pause in AI-driven growth could send the broader economy tumbling. Venture capitalist David Sacks has been especially influential in shaping that thinking, having successfully lobbied earlier this year to gut a planned executive order that would have forced new AI systems through government safety checks.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia's Jensen Huang echo similar warnings to Trump directly, arguing that losing ground to China matters more than any domestic safeguards....