Douglas Holtz-Eakin

At midnight yesterday, the Trump Administration's across-the-board 10-percent tariffs expired. These were in response to the Supreme Court invalidating the original tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and were done under the auspices of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That statute only allows for tariffs up to 15 percent, for a maximum of 150 days – which arrived yesterday, and the tariffs are no more.

Nobody has ever confused Eakinomics with a fan of the drug provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Its central feature is price-fixing for drugs in parts B and D of Medicare, cynically labelled “negotiation.” The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is armed with confiscatory taxes and the ability to unilaterally ban a firm's drugs from Medicare. CMS can (and does) essentially dictate the final price. And there is more. A reasonably comprehensive list of gripes is

By now, presumably every American knows the president has imposed new tariffs ranging from 10–12.5 percent on 60 trading partners (covering 99 percent of imports). These replace the temporary Section 122 tariffs, and are levied under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The countries are accused of failing to prohibit goods made with forced labor, with the size of the tariff based on the degree of effort.

'Tis the season of lists. Lists of things that the House wants to do before the end of the fiscal year. Things the Senate wants to do before recess. Things that won't get done before the elections. Wish lists of things that Congress promises to do in a lame duck session. List after list after list.

Apologies, loyal readers of Eakinomics. Someone must have scheduled IRA Rage Week without informing me. Here we go again.

On this episode of the AAF Exchange, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Director of Trade Policy Jacob Jensen discuss the latest on the economy and the Federal Reserve, ongoing developments involving Hugging Face, and why new tariffs may lead to the same familiar challenges.

Yesterday at 8:30 a.m., a flood – maybe not a tsunami, but a flood – of data was released by the statistical agencies. The warmup act was new claims for unemployment insurance (UI), which rose to 197,000 from 187,000 the week before. As it turns out, the 187,000 claims was the lowest number since September […]

This past week, the U.S. Treasury intervened to prop up the Japanese yen. Mechanically, the Treasury used its holdings of euros to buy the yen, raising the value of the yen. This is really, really unusual and raises a number of questions.

The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus is credited with (the sentiment if not) the phrase: “The only constant in life is change.” It now appears that Heraclitus was wrong. The only constant in life is the Boeing-Airbus World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute. The conflict between Airbus and Boeing dates to 2004, when the United States filed a WTO complaint […]

Even casual followers of federal legislation will be unsurprised to learn that the recently enacted 21st Century ROAD to Housing Ac t contained a provision unrelated to housing. Yet even sophisticated observers might be surprised to find out that the provision amended the Federal Reserve Act to temporarily prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). In the spirit of TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, popularized by the great Robert Heinlein beginning in The Moon I s a Harsh Mistress ), we will refer to this as TAGBNSTAACBDC (There Ain't Gonna Be No Such Thing As A Central Bank Digital Currency; also a lovely village in Wales).