Dean Baker

We saw millions of workers displaced in manufacturing, as our trade deficit ballooned from 1997 to 2007. Communities across the industrial heartland were devastated as the factories that supported them downsized or shut altogether. We can have lengthy debates about the motives of working-class people who switched from Democrats to Trump voters, but the fact that Democratic presidents pushed trade policies that destroyed millions of good paying jobs for non-college educated workers is not really in dispute.

Last week, Delaware Senator Chris Coons, the chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, made an assertion about the nature of patents that

If the U.S. is not going to be a reliable trading partner for at least the next four years, and possibly many more years into the future, Europe would be wise to look elsewhere. And there is one obvious elsewhere: China.

One development for 2025 that can be seen clearly in the crystal ball is improving trade ties between China and Europe. The reason this is a virtual certainty is Donald Trump is doing everything he can to convince the world that, under his leadership, the United States is an unreliable trading partner.

It's been a while since we've had Mr. Arithmetic here, but with Donald Trump coming back to the White House, we may need him around.

The New York Times had a lengthy piece giving a story on how the Democrats lost the support of working-class voters over the last three decades. The

Dean Baker Catherine Rampell gave a rather gloomy assessment of Biden's economic legacy in a Washington Post column this week.

Donald Trump seems confused about how tariffs work, but that doesn't mean the rest of us need to be also. It actually is fairly simple, let's take the case where we are shopping at Temu.

Ben Casselman has an interesting piece in the New York Times about how economists have lost standing with both politicians and the public at large.

Dean Baker I've already given my Biden economy retrospective , but I want to come back and double down on the main point there, because I think it is incredibly important and largely overlooked.