The question becomes whether the Trump factor will continue to be enough to compel companies to keep up the “Made in the USA” patter. Some are already lining up to say they’ve seen enough. “I do not believe it will be feasible or represent good policy for the president to strong-arm individual companies into making business decisions that are not in their best economic interests,” says Michael Farr, CEO of Farr, Miller & Washington, a money-management firm. No matter what side you’re on, what we’ve seen so far is likely just the beginning. “This is the opening salvo,” says Josh Bivens, research director for the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. “We will be seeing much more coming out of the Trump administration.”
USA Today
January 18, 2017
Chinese imports entering the country through Walmart totaled nearly $50 billion in 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute, although the company has since pledged to purchase more from U.S. producers.
Mic
January 18, 2017
Elaine Weiss, national coordinator, Broader Bolder Approach to Education campaign, Economic Policy Institute “Decades of rigorous evidence make clear that the majority of factors driving achievement gaps are based outside of schools and are associated with family and community poverty and segregation. The 1966 Coleman Report suggested that roughly two thirds of race-based gaps were attributable to these factors, and no serious research since has indicated otherwise. Given that reality, what should top priorities be for education policy and changes to it? In particular, how should we broaden education policy to address the larger set of factors impeding academic success for many of our children, especially in a time of such high poverty rates among them?” Weiss would also like DeVos to discuss whether and how she’ll follow Obama administration efforts to end racially disproportionate discipline practices and expand early-childhood education. She’s also interested in DeVos’s views on how to remedy teacher shortages and how states can use ESSA to improve equity in schools.
The 74
January 16, 2017
In a new report, researchers from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argue that mass incarceration is a chief contributor to the racial gaps in academic performance between black and white students. The study outlines a wide array of adverse effects for children of incarcerated parents and underscores how criminal-justice policy and education policy are linked. “Education policymakers and many educators continue to insist that in order to narrow the achievement gap, we must tinker with what is happening in the classroom … improve the way schools are functioning,” said the EPI research associate Leila Morsy, the report’s co-author and a lecturer at the University of New South Wales. “[Yet] making changes to criminal-justice policy can make as much, if not more, of a difference [for children].”
The Atlantic
January 16, 2017
In all, 19 states raised their minimum wage on Jan. 1, the most states ever in a single year. That boosted the earnings of nearly 4.3 million workers by $4.2 billion total, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute. While the minimum wage rose in seven states because it’s automatically adjusted for inflation each year, in the other 12 it came thanks to ballot measures or legislative votes. Voters approved the two largest – a $1.95 hike in Arizona and $1.53 in Washington state, according to the study.
Sacramento Bee
January 13, 2017
By raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the Massachusetts Legislature has the opportunity to not only provide low-wage workers with a living wage, but also give a boost to the state’s economy. Studies by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank focused on the needs of low- and middle-income workers, show that a minimum-wage increase directly benefits local economies because, unlike millionaires and billionaires, low-wage workers are far more likely to spend their wages.
The Boston Globe
January 13, 2017
“Trump might dispute that his plan would require raising more in taxes,” said Hunter Blair, federal budget analyst with the liberal Economic Policy Institute, “but it will certainly cost money through tolls and other user fees.”
The New York Times
January 13, 2017
Jobs data released last week put the white unemployment rate in December at 4.3 percent, compared with 7.8 percent for African Americans and 5.9 percent for Hispanics. “Even just looking at one month, we can say that the economy disproportionately has worse outcomes for workers of color,” said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute… And while the gap between the black-white unemployment rate has narrowed in past decades, the gap between wages earned by black and white workers has not. Another report on the wage gap authored by Valerie Wilson and William M. Rodgers III of EPI in December showed that the black-white wage gap has actually grown in the United States compared with what it was in 1979.
The Washington Post
January 13, 2017
College graduates, on average, earned 56 percent more than high school grads in 2015, according to data compiled by the Economic Policy Institute. That was up from 51 percent in 1999 and is the largest such gap in EPI’s figures dating to 1973. Since the Great Recession ended in 2009, college-educated workers have captured most of the new jobs and enjoyed pay gains. Non-college grads, by contrast, have faced dwindling job opportunities and an overall 3 percent decline in income, EPI’s data shows.
The Associated Press
January 13, 2017
Seattle’s neighborhoods and suburbs have long been segregated by race. That was no accident – it was carefully engineered by the government, says Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, and the author of a new book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.”
KUOQ
January 13, 2017