(March 25, 2017) US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin already finds himself hemmed in on all sides.
Domestic constraints come from the promises that he and President Trump have made and the laws of arithmetic. How, for example, is he ever going to be able to reconcile the specific tax proposals that candidate Trump campaigned on with the promise of the “Mnuchin rule” that taxes won’t be cut for the rich?
(Jan. 2, 2017) Five journalist’s questions about the economic outlook in the New Year and my answers:
1. In the first year of Trump’s presidency, what do you predict for the US economy in 2017?
The US economy is currently at or near full employment, for the first time in 9 years. So there is limited capacity for an acceleration of growth in the medium term. Mr. Trump is fairly likely to follow through with his proposals for massive tax cuts and spending increases (which the economy needed 5 years ago, but were blocked by Republicans). In the short-term, it may contribute a bit to faster growth. But the economy is likely to run soon into capacity constraints, in which case the fiscal stimulus will show up more as inflation, interest rate rises, and bigger trade deficits.
(May 20, 2016) The ITC Wednesday released its mandated report on the economic effects estimated to result from the TransPacific Partnership. As is usual in standard trade models, the estimated welfare gains may sound small: on the order of ¼ % of income. But that would still be way worth doing. Furthermore the ITC study, by design, leaves out a lot. For example, the Petri-Plummer study from the Peterson Institute estimates income gains from TPP that are twice as large, in part because it takes into account Melitz-style opportunities for more productive firms to expand.