Live interview with Valerie on the economy/tariffs, recessions, and the impact on communities of color.
CNN
April 7, 2025
The Economic Policy Institute argues that the bill is nothing more than a gimmick aimed to favor high earners and employers who can game the system. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the No Tax on Overtime Bill could cost $866 billion over the decade and may increase to $1.3 trillion if payroll taxes are also included. That’s a hefty price tag the Federal government will have to pay in the end.
HR Digest
April 7, 2025
Citing an article by the Economic Policy Institute, the White House says “The tariffs implemented by President Trump during his first term ‘clearly show[ed] no correlation with inflation’ and had only a fleeting effect on overall prices.”
It’s a mistake to confuse price increases for tariffed goods with inflation, which refers to overall price level increases. The 2018-2019 tariffs applied to imports worth less than 2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product and were phased in gradually. No, the tariffs did not drive overall inflation, as they were not large or disruptive enough to do so, but the tariffs clearly raised import prices and led to higher prices for domestic alternatives, which hurt Americans.
Reason
April 7, 2025
Investopedia
April 7, 2025
Since OSHA’s establishment in 1970, the agency has helped dramatically improve workplace safety. That year, roughly 14,000 workers died on the job, per the Economic Policy Institute. By 2022, that number dropped to 5,486, even as the American workforce grew, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Construction Dive
April 7, 2025
The escalating costs of child care have become a significant barrier for many families, often consuming a substantial portion of household income. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average annual cost of full-time child care in Florida for a four-year-old is $7,287.
Sarasota Herald Tribune
April 7, 2025
Today’s conditions are a “perfect storm” for a recession, said Adam Hersh, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal-leaning think tank. “We’re going to have a supply-and-demand shock. The supply shock is going to be coming from these unprecedented, broad-based tariffs, as well as the mass-deportation policy as that progresses. The demand shock is going to be coming both from those two things, as well as the contraction in government spending and the government layoffs that are unfolding.”
MarketWatch
April 7, 2025
But to get a better idea of what might be in the offing, I reached out to a few economists: Jesse Rothstein, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute. None was certain what Republicans might do, but they suggested some possibilities.
While Republicans might try traditional strategies such as expanding unemployment insurance and food stamp benefits — in other words, sending help to the people who need it most — none of them saw that as the first item Trump and the Congress would order off the menu. Bivens said, “There’s a small chance that some kind of boost to the Child Tax Credit might be possible in a recession,” since some Republicans have supported that in the past.
Paul Waldman's Substack
April 7, 2025
WOOD: Federal laws are weaker, but Florida already loosened some child labor laws last year, and the state isn’t alone. Nina Mast is a policy and economic analyst at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, which seeks to improve wages for working people. She says dozens of states have considered similar bills and several passed some last year.
NINA MAST: What we are seeing, especially coming out of the pandemic, is really just a push that is led by the business industry and some right-wing think tanks to be able to make it easier to hire young people at lower wages for longer hours and in more hazardous jobs under the guise of wanting to address a so-called labor shortage.
WOOD: Mast says the changes are intended to drive down wages that went up in lower-paying industries during the pandemic, meaning jobs like servers in restaurants and delivery drivers.
MAST: This is really a concerted, nationwide effort to essentially create a permanent underclass of disempowered, low-wage workers.
NPR
April 7, 2025
This move by the administration could be the second version of the 1981 PATCO strike where air traffic controllers were fired by then-President Ronald Reagan, which in turn strongly influenced the subsequent precipitous decline in the power of unions in the U.S. to raise wages and living standards for all, the Economic Policy Institute noted.
Forbes
April 7, 2025