Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“No serious person mourns the offshoring of apparel employment. Clothing production is a low-tech industry that even in its heyday mostly employed immigrants who, despite being represented by a powerful union, were paid low wages and often faced harsh working conditions. For a poor nation like Bangladesh, apparel jobs are a big step up from the alternatives. But American workers have better, and better-paying, things to do. As I said, no serious person wants the apparel industry to come back. But Donald Trump’s economic team aren’t serious people.” (03/13/25)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/making-sweatshops-great-again

Source: Independent Institute
by Allen Gindler

“President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order renaming the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge after Jocelyn Nungaray, a Houston girl whose tragic murder at the hands of two unauthorized Venezuelan immigrants, captured national attention. The decision, while framed as an honor to the young victim, raised eyebrows. It marked yet another instance in which Trump leveraged symbolic renaming as a political tool. Previously, in a move that defied geography, diplomacy, and common sense, President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming a section of the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America.’ But what exactly has been renamed? … While it was clearly intended as a symbolic assertion of American sovereignty, the renaming not only violated international conventions but also flew in the face of basic geographical principles.” (03/13/25)

https://blog.independent.org/2025/03/13/gulf-of-america-is-a-geographical-absurdity

Source: Law & Liberty
by John O McGinnis

“America’s central economic problem is preserving the nation’s capacity to sustain growth vigorous enough to counteract an impending fiscal crisis of escalating national debt. Part of the reason that growth has declined in the last decades is the stifling force of over-regulation. The new administration’s sweeping agenda for regulatory rollback thus need not represent merely political posturing, but has the potential to address one of the most profound threats confronting contemporary America. To understand its rationale and architecture is to grasp a bold attempt at putting the nation’s financial house in order and preserving its future prosperity.” (03/13/25)

https://lawliberty.org/strategic-deregulation-to-spur-economic-growth/

Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker

“Past recessions have been the result of policy errors or disasters. The most typical policy error is when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too much to counter inflation. That was clearly the story in the 1974-75 recession, as well as the 1980-82 double-dip recession. Then we have recessions caused by collapsing financial bubbles, the 2001 recession following the collapse of the stock bubble, and the 2008-09 recession following the collapse of the housing bubble. And of course, we had the 2020 recession because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession — not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession.” (03/13/25)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/03/13/the-trump-musk-recession-because-they-can/