Private sector economist. Former professor at China's Tsinghua University and Columbia SIPA. Author of “Cleared for the Option: A Year Learning to Fly”, now available on Amazon. Visit me at http://patrickchovanec.com
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Pure distillation of Trump's view that positive-sum trade is literally impossible—buying = losing & selling = winning, automatically But also a good view into the inconsistencies of his trade "demands". He's mad at India for its tariffs, but even zeroing them wouldn't be enough?
By the way, we didn’t emerge unscathed. Over a million Americans died and the economy saw a historic collapse. That’s not to say Trump caused this, per se, but he certainly presided over it.
I made this point over and over again in 2024.
52 of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm him.
Isn’t bragging about passing your cognitive impairment test in itself a sign of cognitive impairment? 🤔
They gave me a cognitive impairment test and I passed with flying colors. People say no one has ever done that before.
You heard the man. Start patting.
Every time Trump brought up Biden’s age, I was like “dude, you’re just three years younger”. I don’t know why anyone didn’t say this. It wasn’t like there was some kind of generational gap between them.
Ukraine needs to name its military bases after Vladimir Putin and his generals. by Pete Hegseth
Sept. 1, 1925: People gather at the former Army Clothing Depot in Tokyo to commemorate the over 100,000 victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake on the second anniversary of the disaster.
This morning 9 former CDC Directors, whose tenures date back to 1977, published this warning in the NYT: RFK Jr is a danger to public health. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
It looks like you’ve got the knife!
I’m like “I cannot live with this dishonor” and then they back down.
Also when Benihana started pushing this “yum-yum” sauce nonsense. Every time I go I have to threaten to commit seppuku if they don’t give me the old mustard sauce.
Thank you President Trump!
One of the most famous “you can’t major in that there” references of all time.
This is how I felt when Arby’s stopped serving potato cakes.
Suddenly “Risky Business” references are popping up all over the place.
That didn’t stop Joel Goodsen from majoring in business at Princeton.
Sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.
This, btw, is why it's not always bad for a country's cultural relics to be on permanent display in other (potentially more stable) countries. Eggs <---> more than one basket.
Nothing to see here, just the President's family cashing in on his name and office, in ways Hunter Biden could only dream of.
counterpoint:
You could argue that the government spending and debt funded by those capital inflows - especially with entitlement spending eating up more and more of the budget - mostly prop up consumption by non-asset-holders.
“By shutting down the Foreign Malign Influence Center, Gabbard stripped away America’s shield against foreign meddling. Moscow and Beijing couldn’t ask for a bigger gift.” Robert Morton #NationalSecurity #ForeignInterference #counterespionage
There is no such pattern. There are simply a variety of very emotionally disturbed people of all stripes who seem to have no difficulty getting their hands on a firearm. Shouldn't responsible firearm owners want to prevent this?
No matter what @MarshaBlackburn keeps saying, it’s not criminals they’re targeting. www.cnn.com/2025/08/30/u...
Look, all Donald Trump is saying is that if you want to vote, you better show up with your license plate, like he does.
So every civilian US citizen living, working, or studying abroad is hereby disenfrachised.
Yeah it's not exactly subtle what's going on here
When I go to the ER, the first person I have them contact is my business partner. (?!)
Ok, so let's say that happened. Isn't there a better way to handle this from a PR point of view? Just say he was rear-ended, and let the (positive) details leak out once established.
Like any of us even care who's tooting Rudy's horn.
Let's say the first incident unfolded exactly as he described. Then why even put it in the press release? It would be as completely irrelevant to the car accident as who he had lunch with, right? Including it makes it sound weird and suspicious.
let's go
Is mayo a condiment or a sauce?
Is this a long-winded way of trying to explain why there was a woman in the car with him? Otherwise I can't figure this out.
It certainly has distribution effects, but I don't think it simply boils down to asset vs wages, not when much of the capital inflow is going to prop up consumption.
I don't think I said that. But getting your currency to depreciate when the rest of the world wants to hold it as a reserve currency, and Americans are wedded to the benefits of it being so, is not easy to accomplish. Nor is it a cure-all to the underlying issue of an increasingly competitive world.
A Chinese military aircraft warned a U.S. Air Force RC-135 operating in international airspace off southwestern Taiwan in the morning of 8/30 that it had entered China's national territory.
"I look forward to watching the videos of soldiers entering Chicago" An American government official actually said this.
But I know, people want to believe that if we had only elected different leaders and made different laws, we'd be living in a paradise where the US blue-collar worker was still king of the global roost.
And my point is that these are symptoms, not causes.
As for the capital account, the main driver wasn't speculation, but investment in US debt, much of it government debt. And with that came a lot of (temporary) advantages, including the ability to consume more than we produce.
And it's not at though the US didn't try to make that happen, for instance via the Plaza Accords.
But all you're really saying here is that US incomes and purchasing power could have been allowed to decline in real terms through other mechanisms (the exchange rate).
The other answer is that unions were strong when they controlled access to a limited resource. When that resource became less rare, they lost much of their leverage and their relevance. This wasn't some conspiracy of capital vs labor - the world simply changed, in irresistable ways.
I suspect I'm one of those (former) Republicans whose answers you wouldn't like.
You really think union-busting was something new in the 1970s or 80s, when those trends kick in on the chart? The question is why such tactics became more effective and unions less able to resist them. I think policy is the tail here, not the dog.
NAFTA only appears quite late on that chart, once the trends have already been well established. And is the answer really to keep Mexico and other countries perpetually poor and uncompetitive?
But I hear there are still brown people there, so I'm afraid to go out of my house.
This is the way
If I had to identify a single factor that drove the weakening of unions in the US since the 1950s, it would be a dramatic reduction in transportation costs.
You really think that the only reason this US doesn't completely dominate global manufacturing like it did in the immediate aftermath of WW2 was due to foolish or selfish decisions? Nothing else you can think of that might have happened in the meantime?
Were labor unions strong (and capable of delivering higher wages for their members) in the 1950s US because policy favored them? Or did policy favor them because prevailing global economic conditions at the time gave them really strong bargaining power?
But the question is whether this is cause or effect. Are there global economic reasons, apart from policy, why unions are less viable than, say, in 1950s America? I can think of quite a few.
Fevered speculation about whether a political leader is dying seems to be part and parcel of authoritarian regimes. When you lose confidence in voting the bastard out, the fantasy that he's about to drop dead become extremely appealing.
"Absentee ballots" may not have been as prevalent as they are now, but they've been around for a very long time. When I was living and working abroad, it was the only way I could vote. Same for anyone who needs to travel or work or is having a medical procedure on Election Day.
“Black women lost 319,000 jobs between February and July of this year, the only major female demographic to experience significant job losses during this five-month period… Ms. Roy said that with the exception of the pandemic, Black women have never seen such staggering losses in employment”
There are many reasons why people in our society face despair and act out violently on it. This could certainly be one cause but is far from the dominant or defining feature that offers the key to addressing it.
I think we can have that conversation without distorting the statistics. Their goal here is clearly to define school shooters as "a trans thing", as though that was the unifying "common denominator" that accounts for them, as Speaker Johnson claimed.
The lies' laughable implausibility is a feature, not a bug. They're not trying to convince discerning, skeptical, fact-based people. They're trying to give supporters a fantasy that validates their feelings and creates a sort of loyalty test, while flaunting the absurdity in everyone else's faces.
"The ‘self-inflicted injury’ to US tourism that’s making some Americans angry and disappointed" www.cnn.com/2025/08/31/t...
This is absurd and sickening.
If the army is going to be our police, who is going to be our army?
To be able to say things like this with a straight face, you have to know with certainty that you are talking to babies
Exactly. Whatever the problem is - and every state, red and blue, has plenty of problems - dictatorship is not the answer.
I initially had a typo that said "condiment sentiment". I definitely think we need an economic number that measures this. Ketchup is up +10% from a year ago, but mustard is down -5%, while relish remains unchanged.
University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index was 74.0 in December, now 58.2 in August. Conference Board’s consumer confidence index was 104.7, now 97.4. Government officials shouldn’t go on TV and blatantly lie like this.
And Kansas’ GOP gubernatorial candidate now says he will do the same. C’mon, folks, wake up. www.kmbc.com/article/kans...
Missouri is now following in Texas’ footsteps. Of course Democrats have to respond. To say they shouldn’t is unilateral disarmament. www.kmbc.com/article/keho...
There is a point in life when you realize that the future belongs to younger people than yourself, and your job is to assist them.
What are we even doing?
I met Bill Buckley once. I was, maybe, 16 years old. I remember how you immediately felt like you had his full attention, and how his eyes shone and danced. He was also the only person in the room who could not only define "sesquipedalian" but use it in normal conversation.
As we all know, the United States is the biggest victim of the international system it designed, and a keen sense of that bottomless victimhood is indeed our greatest strength.
As we all know, our most consistent friends and allies are actually our worst enemies, and the mark of a successful foreign policy is earning the camaraderie, if not actual respect, of the world's worst dictators.
As we all know, countries that get invaded by larger, more aggressive neighbors really need to learn to stop picking quarrels.
As we all know, executives who surround themselves with people who do nothing but flatter and praise their every move make excellent, well-informed decisions.
As we all know, "community policing" involves bringing in heavily armed strangers wearing masks and combat gear making random ID checks, because that's the best way to build trust.
As we all know, the President's pardon power is meant to be exercised only for the benefit of people who buy enough of his personal crypto currency.
As we all know, the most reliable experts on health policy aren't doctors or researchers, but scions of wealthy families who get infected with brain worms because they get their medical information from Reddit.
As we all know, the best way to catch dangerous criminals is by arresting immigrants who voluntarily show up to court hearings to comply with the law.
As we all know, only a radical Marxist would oppose the government seizing an ownership stake in key industries, in exchange for giving them access to favored policies.
As we all know, the American Revolution was fought to ensure the chief executive could impose taxes without representation.
Here’s the plan: This year, the Nobel Committee awards the Peace Prize to someone it knows will cause Trump to have a stroke and/or heart attack. The following year, the Nobel Committee awards the prize to itself. Genius.
Every time I see masked ICE officers ripping a parent from their child, I think: “Americans chose this; they knew this would happen. A lot of people were happy at the thought.” And I feel that I do not at all understand the country I am in and the world around me.
At some point in the not too distant future the conventional wisdom will be that this was a period where the US focused on dumb shit while China took the lead in multiple domains
It’s bizarre that Norway has to prepare for a China-like response from the U.S. after the Nobel Peace Prize winner is awarded this year.
She exists because Members of Congress are reality TV show contestants now.
This is an actual Member of Congress, btw, making weird threats at the Nobel Peace Prize committee.
Nice committee you have there. Shame if something happened to it.
In Which Nadine Amuses a Dragon and Makes Autumn Happen
Nagini.
Folks are getting excited, but you’ve only destroyed 4 out of 7 horocruxes, you’ve got a long way to go.
This really doesn’t prove he’s alive, only that his corpse is animated.
Learn to decipher the codespeak.
I do not think Peter Thiel should have a personal uranium enrichment capacity. That’s asking for a Snow Crash future. No.
The warfighters in DC got the trash picked up, now time to mulch.
It’s treason to speak of the death of the king. That’s in Article 9 of the Constitution.
Trump is dead … inside. That we know for sure.