This Will Not Be Fun

It seems unclear when we'll start to feel the crunch, but we're very much in line to expect increases in the cost of just about everything we buy. Duh.

And part of that problem is that some companies whose stuff isn't imported - or are selling stuff that's impacted just a little - will see the tariffs as an opportunity to jack up their prices right along with everybody else.

And I'll go out on the limb here and say there are politicians just itchin' to use the potentially backbreaking effects of the tariffs as leverage to kill taxes altogether (some have talked about this for a long time, and we're getting it from Trump now too). We may start to hear about attempts to re-animate some variation on the stupid idea that a flat tax is the fairest way to do things.

Also - there have been proposals floated that we should ditch income tax and go with a universal sales tax, or a value-added tax. This is all regressive as fuck and pushes what's left of the middle class down - and keeps everybody down - while benefiting only people who're making more than 3 or 4 hundred K.

I hate this shit. When we had a graduating, progressive tax schedule, it helped drive the societal machinery that made for a strong and stable middle class, which build up the best overall system ever.

Fake lord knows it wasn't perfect - far from it - but by the middle 60s it seemed like everybody was going to have a shot at the dream. And we'd begun to understand that when everybody has a shot, and everybody understands that everybody deserves it, then we're making the whole thing better for ourselves.

I sound like a sad old man waxing nostalgic, so back to the point:

This latest bullshit feels like more coercion. If they make us miserable enough, we'll bend to their will and sign on for whatever might ease the pressure.

So here's a look at what WaPo thinks is headed our way.

Here’s where prices could rise the most and least under Trump’s tariffs

Shoppers will see uneven price increases on goods.

The global tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump this week will cause prices to rise on a broad array of food, household items and electronics, economists warn.

But the increases won’t be applied equally — some items are likely to see much higher price hikes than others. Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on imports from nearly every country and imposed higher rates on goods coming from about 60 specific countries.

Consumer goods will be more exposed to higher tariffs than food and drinks

That means products that the United States commonly gets from Vietnam, such as clothing and shoes, would be subject to a new 46 percent tax, whereas goods from Colombia, like flowers, would see a lower new 10 percent levy. Imports from Mexico, such as avocados, will have no new tax. In any case, shopping is about to get more expensive for Americans.

“There’s no way this is going to be absorbed by firms alone,” said Michael Pearce, deputy chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This will be felt by consumers.”

The vast majority of consumer goods — almost 80 percent — brought into United States will be subject to tariffs of at least 20 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis of international trade data from the Census Bureau.

Canada and Mexico weren’t included in the latest round of tariffs, though a 25 percent tax was placed earlier this year on some of the goods they export to the United States.

“I think Mexico is breathing a sigh of relief,” said Michael Camuñez, president and CEO of Monarch Global Strategies, which advises businesses in international trade.

Mexico and Canada are the United States’ largest trading partners for food, and imports can avoid tariffs entirely if they are compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) agreement. Still, experts expect food prices to rise somewhat with the new tariffs.

“The bottom line is, it does mean more inflation,” said Tom Bailey, a senior consumer foods analyst at Rabobank.

The prices of food products from other parts of the world, such as tea from Vietnam, could increase much more sharply with the high tax rates.

“Some retailers might just hang up a sign to consumers in shops and say, ‘price plus tariff,’” said Judy Ganes, president of J Ganes Consulting, which works with food and agricultural industries.

Bailey cautioned that prices will not rise exactly in line with the percentage of tariffs — a 46 percent tariff does not mean the final product will cost 46 percent more. Actual increases on finished goods are expected to be much less because some of the cost of the product comes from distribution and operations in the United States.

Countries in Asia are facing some of the highest rates, including goods from China, with tariffs of at least 54 percent, and goods from Vietnam, with a new 46 percent tax. That’s sure to mean higher prices for electronics such as phones, computers and video game consoles, which are often imported from the continent. The tariff imposed on goods from China could add roughly $250 or more to the cost of a $1,000 iPhone, though it’s not clear yet how much of the tariff costs would show up in consumer sticker prices.

The United States Fashion Industry Association said in a statement it was “disappointed” that the Trump administration imposed tariffs on the industry’s trading partners.

Most of the clothing sold in the U.S. is imported from abroad, and even clothing made domestically often relies on fabrics and yarn that are brought in from other countries, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware.

Apart from paying the new tariffs, clothing companies could also face a pullback from consumers, as people grow increasingly wary about their personal finances.

“If consumers do not feel safe about their financial outlook, they may stop buying clothing,” Lu said.

It Won't Get Better

Near the end of this piece, Steven Rattner hits the mark by identifying the problems of income & wealth disparity, and the long slide from middle class prosperity into stagnation.

But he fails to fully acknowledge that the causes lie, in large part, with short-sighted corporate policies, and the lopsided advantages handed to big companies and their management teams.

None of this gets better until we burn a few CEOs at the stake.

    IF WE TAX THE RICH NOW

WE WON'T HAVE TO EAT THEM LATER

Coming Soon (ish)

I was there - it sucked.

Stagflation on the radar for the US economy, but no repeat of the '70s

• Stagflation risks appear higher in response to Trump tariff policies
• Unlikely to fully repeat the high inflation and joblessness of the 1970s
• Fed official: 'Nothing more uncomfortable' than a stagflationary environment

WASHINGTON, March 25 (Reuters) - Recent economic projections from Federal Reserve officials had shades of "Stagflation-lite," in the words of one economist, a sentiment increasingly echoed among other observers of the U.S. economy and central bank wondering if the country's outperformance during the pandemic is about to slide.

So what is stagflation and why is it suddenly on everyone's mind?

THAT (BAD) 70s SHOW

Stagflation, or a period of both high inflation and high joblessness, hit the U.S. notably in the 1970s, which may have featured the worst U.S. economic leadership since the Great Depression. Fed officials had their data and their framework wrong, and elected officials flailed against inflation with price controls and what now seem quaint public relations efforts, most notoriously the Ford administration's "Whip Inflation Now (WIN)" button campaign.

That shit was the lamest of the lame.

As economists in recent weeks have begun marking down their estimates of economic growth and marking up estimates of inflation in the face of dramatic economic policy shifts under President Donald Trump, it has sparked debate about whether that could be unfolding again now.

In theory, a weak economy with rising unemployment undercuts inflation, so the two should not coexist. But as with oil price shocks in the 1970s that drove prices higher, the tariff shock anticipated from Trump's trade policies now has the world guessing.

The Trump administration says the tariffs are part of what they bill as a transition for the economy that, coupled with other efforts to deregulate industry and cut taxes, will produce both plentiful jobs and lower inflation.

The hints of stagflation in current forecasts aren't near as bad as the 1970s, a decade in a league of its own when a surge in the so-called "misery index" combining the unemployment and inflation rates still stands out in charts of postwar economy.

But the direction of travel for major aspects of the economy has caught economists' attention. When Fed officials this week assessed the risks they see ahead they pointed uniformly towards higher inflation and higher unemployment than previously expected.

"Stagflation-lite," is what RSM chief economist Joe Brusuelas titled his analysis of the Fed's meeting last week. Policymakers' forecasts "implied mild stagflation ahead in the near term as growth slows and inflation increases," he said, noting the "pervasive uncertainty around the size and magnitude of the trade shock."

'NOTHING MORE UNCOMFORTABLE'

Fed policymakers last week left interest rates unchanged but still anticipate two quarter-point cuts by year-end. Their new economic projections, however, laid bare their conundrum. Growth is anticipated to slow, unemployment to rise a bit more than expected, and inflation to accelerate in the face of existing and widening tariffs.

Implied by their forecasts of rate cuts and higher inflation is a belief that tariff-triggered price increases would be one-off jumps, the same assumption the Fed made early in the pandemic when it called rising prices "transitory" - and was proven wrong.

Things are different now. Factories and ports are open and goods are flowing.
But given the scope and breadth of what Trump is planning, officials say the outcome remains unpredictable.

Hard macroeconomic data, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell noted in his press conference last week, remain solid. The misery index is rather low in fact.

But softer measures like sentiment are sliding, something policymakers feel could cause businesses to stall investment and hiring and households to cut back, even as tariffs lead prices to keep rising. Fed officials note growing concern among business contacts, and have begun discussing the difficult choice moments of stagflation pose for a central bank tasked with controlling inflation while sustaining employment.

“There is nothing more uncomfortable than the stagflationary environment...where both sides of the mandate start going wrong. There is not a generic answer...Which is worse? Is it bigger on the inflation side? Is it bigger on the job market side?" Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said Friday on CNBC. "Higher tariffs raise prices and reduce output so that is a stagflationary impulse."

NOTHING TAKEN FOR GRANTED

If the Fed is caught in the middle, their priority is clear: To ensure that not just inflation, but public expectations about inflation, remain under control.

Perhaps the key mistake of the 1970s was a failure to understand better the role that public psychology plays in future inflation. Scarred by rising prices, Americans' belief that costs would keep on rising kept pushing prices higher even as the economy weakened.

It took punishing interest rates and two successive recessions under Fed chief Paul Volcker to begin to establish the Fed's credibility and reset expectations through the rest of the 1980s and into the 1990s.

That's a lesson Powell has said he takes to heart, and one he says he won't repeat.

"I don't see any reason to think that we're looking at a replay of the '70s or anything like that...Underlying inflation is still running in the twos, with probably a little bit of a pickup associated with tariffs," Powell said at a press conference after the Fed's most recent meeting. "I wouldn't say we're in a situation that's remotely comparable to that.

But stable inflation expectations are "at the very heart of our framework," he said. "We will be watching all of it very, very carefully. We do not take anything for granted."

Bob Reich

Connect the dots.

Last week, Trump’s social media corporation — Trump Media and Technology Group, in which Trump personally owns a majority of shares — announced plans to sell financial products, including a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), aimed at what Trump calls the “patriotic economy.” Its shares jumped 6 percent on the news.

Devin Nunes, Trump Media’s CEO, said the Trump ETFs give investors a chance to put money into “American energy, manufacturing and other firms that provide a competitive alternative to the woke funds and debanking problems that you find throughout the market.”

Woke funds? Debanking problems?

Two weeks ago, Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to direct the FBI, was given 25,946 shares in Trump Media, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. They are now worth about $840,000. What was this a payoff for?

Last weekend, the Trump-Musk regime shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The federal government is no longer protecting consumers of financial products. Trump-Musk ordered all work to stop at the CFPB. Its X account was deleted and its homepage unplugged. CFPB employees who went to the building Sunday to retrieve things they needed to work remotely were turned away by security.

Keep connecting the dots.

The shutting of the CFPB was welcomed by the crypto crowd, including Musk, and by those issuing Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, such as Trump.

Besides his financial interest in crypto, Musk has stated publicly he’s seeking to create an “everything app” that could be used for all financial transactions. Mark Zuckerberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are aiming for the same thing.

The CFPB had proposed that such apps be supervised the same way banks are supervised. Well, scratch that now. No supervision. And no insurance by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Brace yourselves for fraud and bank runs.

Musk, Zuckerberg, and Andreessen — all Trump backers and lapdogs — had claimed that the CFPB was trying to “debank” or remove them and other Trumpers from the banking system. In fact, the CFPB proposed the first-ever rule to block debanking.

Andreessen is invested in companies like Synapse, which have cost many people’s life savings. Some firms in his portfolio were shut down by the CFPB for scamming people. Zuckerberg says Meta is not a bank, although it has a payments business and Zuck wants to start a currency.

Now, connect all the dots and what do you see? An oligarchy unleashed and in the open. Their extraordinary wealth is buying the power to make them even wealthier.

It’s bad enough that Trump and Musk are making room for their own personal financial products and those of their major backers.

Trump’s financial products also invite people and corporations seeking to curry favor with him to invest in his products. Outright bribery.

Who will be left holding the bag? Surely anyone gullible enough to put their savings into one of these initiatives. Worst case, all of us if the stock market crashes and pulls the economy down with it.

This, my friends, is pure corruption. Mark my words: It will blow up in Trump’s and Musk’s faces. I just hope it doesn’t blow up in ours.

About Those Tariffs

On products and materials we import from Mexico and Canada:

• Cars & Parts
• Electrical & Electronics
• Machinery & Boilers
• Dirty fuels
• Pharmaceuticals
• Opticals, Photographic, Medical Equipment
• Furniture & pre-fab buildings
• Beverages & Vinegars
• Fruits, Nuts, & Veggies
• Fats & Oils
• Fertilizers, meats, other farm/farming products
• Plastics
• Iron & Steel
• Precious metals & gems
• Rubber
• Cereal grains & flour
• Paper products
• Aircraft & Spacecraft
• Aluminum
• Lumber & wood products

Add them all up, and you've got almost $732 billion worth of imported goods from just those 2 countries.

Multiply that by .25 (25% tariffs), and that's $183 billion in additional cost to American consumers (not including the "downstream" costs like packaging and packing materials, added costs for housing and transportation, and the rise in prices just in case things get even worse, and let's face it, this Donald fucking Trump we're talking about here - things will get worse).

Divide that $183 billion by 127 million households, and we all get to pay $1440 more than what we're paying now, plus whatever extra we'll have to pay for everything because of the inflation caused by something as fucking stupid as Trump's tariffs.

Wanna talk about the stuff we import from China?

Illustration

Today's Belle

There's trouble in MAGA paradise.

BTW - notice how MAGA loves to bitch about American kids not being taught the good STEM stuff, while they diligently avoid talking about the problems caused by 45 years of GOP attacks on public schools.

 

It's the same as their constant griping about the loss of the "nuclear family structure" while ignoring the fact that Republicans have stripped everything out of the economic system that made it possible for the average one-income family to survive.

Simple translation: Hey, MAGA, do y'all just never get tired of being played like a cheap banjo?

MAGA civil war breaks out over American "mediocrity" culture

A MAGA-world civil war erupted over Christmas when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class.

Why it matters:

The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants.

• It also sets up a tense MAGA vs. DOGE moment that could infect the early stages of President-elect Trump's second presidency.
• While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work.

Catch up quick:

The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy.

• Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards.

Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a post on X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers.

• "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style "Sputnik moment" to prioritize "nerdiness over conformity."
• "That's the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence," he said.

Between the lines:

Elon Musk's X is the town square for the MAGA movement, and by stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet.

• Musk spent most of the afternoon trying to defend his DOGE co-leader and explain his argument, framing it as using immigration to supplement, rather than replace, American workers.
• "Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning," Musk wrote.

The problem for many MAGA adherents, though, was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America.

• It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who "perform services in a specialty obligation" but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth.
• In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated.

What they're saying:

"The Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B's. Then why did everyone want to come here?" right-wing personality Mike Cernovich responded to Ramaswamy on X.

• "There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers," Nikki Haley, the former GOP presidential candidate and herself a daughter of Indian immigrants, wrote.
• "I want the little guy to matter too. Not everyone has $1 million but they still love their country and want to MAGA and close the border," far-right activist Laura Loomer posted.
• Loomer posted a series of missives throughout the afternoon, calling out Ramaswamy, Musk and anyone else in Trump's orbit who isn't fully committed to closing the borders.

Zoom out:

The fracture was familiar to anyone who's seen a movement expand — early adopters criticizing the latecomers for bringing different ideas.

• "Tech bros who took 8+ years to figure out that President Trump is not the bad guy and is in fact, the solution to America's problems, are really out here pontificating to MAGA patriots who figured it out a decade before them?" conservative streaming host Brenden Dilley posted on X.

The bottom line:

For now the fight is mostly confined to X. But it's sure to raise difficult questions in the coming days about what Trump's administration will mean for immigration, labor and the American worker.

• It will also potentially settle a looming conflict over who has the most influence in Trump 2.0 — his historic base or his new-found techno-libertarian allies.

Today's Belle

What's to stop him?

If he does what he says he intends to do (admittedly, always a big if), and it stands to trigger the kinda of global shit storm they say it will, who's there to stop him this time?

And if it gets to be as bad as they say it's bound to get, how fast can the Republicans move to finish totally fucking up the elections process so 'we the people' can't do anything about it either?

The explainers from Impartial Points:

Today's Vic

Book mark this one for your MAGA friends on social media.

Booming Right Along

WaPo puts the usual razor blades in this apple, but one thing that sticks out for me that's barely hinted at here:

Pressure from "conservatives" to get the US to retreat - and to hide from both the opportunities afforded by a global economy, and from the responsibilities that the US needs to shoulder because of our "dominant" position - makes their shitty little plans a bit more obvious.

So I think maybe I see why there is such a strong push for isolationism. If we back off, it may push our allies to step up their game (not a bad thing in general), but it leaves them out there on a limb, while at the same time giving Putin and Xi a better shot at recovering just as we've got those two biggest assholes on the planet kinda pinned against the ropes. MAGA and MAGA-like dickheads all over the world would love to see us pull back.

Surprising U.S. economy is powering better global outlook, World Bank says

High interest rates and trade tensions pose risks to a newly upbeat forecast, though.

The global economy is in better shape than it was at the start of the year, thanks largely to the performance of the United States, the World Bank said in its latest forecast Tuesday. But the sunnier outlook could cloud over if major central banks — including the Federal Reserve — keep interest rates at elevated levels.

Global growth is expected to reach an annual rate of 2.6 percent this year, up from a January forecast of 2.4 percent, the bank said. The global economy is drawing closer to a “soft landing” after recent price spikes, with average inflation dropping to a three-year low amid continuing growth, bank economists said.

While Americans’ unhappiness with high prices remains a key vulnerability for President Biden’s reelection bid, the World Bank now expects the U.S. economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.5 percent, nearly a full percentage point higher than it predicted in January. The United States is the only advanced economy growing significantly faster than the bank anticipated at the start of the year.

“Globally, overall things are better today than they were just four or five months ago,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist. “A big part of this has to do with the resilience of the U.S. economy.”

The bank credited “U.S. dynamism” with helping stabilize the global economy, despite the highest interest rates in years and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Employers added 272,000 jobs in May, topping analysts’ estimates, the Labor Department reported last week.

Expected global growth this year and next, however, will remain below the pre-pandemic average of 3.1 percent. Three out of four developing countries are now expected to grow more slowly than the bank forecast in January, leaving them little hope of narrowing the income gap with richer nations.

Despite their mostly upbeat tone, bank officials warned that central banks including the Fed are likely to move slowly to begin reversing the past two years of interest rate increases. That means global interest rates will remain high, averaging around 4 percent over the next two years, roughly twice the average recorded during the two decades before the pandemic.

Global inflation should ease to 3.5 percent this year, before dropping to 2.9 percent next year. But the decline is proving more gradual than the bank anticipated. And any deterioration that causes monetary authorities to delay cuts in borrowing costs could strip 0.3 percentage points from the forecast growth rates.

“This is a major risk confronting the global economy — interest rates remaining higher for longer and an already weak growth outlook becoming weaker,” Gill said.

Bank officials also flagged global trade — which is on course this year to complete its weakest half-decade since the 1990s — as a concern. Trading nations in 2024 have implemented more than 700 restrictions on merchandise trade and nearly 160 barriers to services trade.

“Trade restrictive measures have skyrocketed. They have more than doubled since the pre-pandemic period,” Gill said.

Rising protectionism risks becoming a drag on the global economy’s already modest pace of growth. Popular support in many countries for tariffs on imported goods and industrial subsidies that favor domestic production could further constrict trade flows that are already under pressure from the U.S.-China rivalry and other geopolitical risks.

“The world might become stuck in the slow lane,” said Ayhan Kose, the bank’s deputy chief economist.

Among those likely to suffer if key interest rates stay higher for longer are the 40 percent of developing countries at risk of a debt crisis. Many borrowed heavily to fund pandemic-related health care and subsequently to cover food and fertilizer bills that soared following the war in Ukraine.

They have little immediate prospect of securing debt relief and now risk losing out on trade gains as larger economies turn inward, Gill said.

We have to keep working on the wealth equity problem. A booming economy doesn't mean we're all enjoying a nice ride that's just getting better for everybody. The plutocrats are working hard to get an even bigger advantage over normal people.

That bit about "a rising tide lifts all boats" is just peachy as long your boat isn't chained to the fuckin' bottom.

Today's Uncle Bob

What kind of society do we want to live in?

Myth #1: Economics is objective

Today's Lesson

@RyanStygar 

Overheard

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in Denmark makes about $21 an hour.

They're in a union. They get 5 or 6 weeks paid vacation every year. They can take up to a year paid maternity leave. They get life insurance, healthcare insurance, and a pension plan if they're over 20 years old.

A Big Mac in Denmark will run you about $5.50

Somebody working at a McDonalds franchise in USAmerica Inc makes about $9.50 an hour with no benefits.

A Big Mac in the US goes for about $5.50

McDonald's gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $14,563,000,000 - 14½ billion dollars - a 10.26% increase year-over-year. And they paid the CEO almost $20 million.

Confirming

60% of inflation increases can be directly attributed to corporate profits.

So Far So Good

... but

a) don't count on the weather

b) don't count on ending the shit in Ukraine any time soon (it could happen, but don't count on it, cuz Russia will go on fucking with everything as long as Putin stays in place

More Trump Lunacy

Tariffs are almost universally considered a monumentally stoopid idea. Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum (et al) - primarily aimed at China - ended up costing us trillions of dollars because American consumers paid more for imported manufactured goods, American farmers lost some primary markets due to retaliatory tariffs (which meant we had to subsidize them), and on top of all that, Trump's trade policies damaged the relationships with dozens of our historically vital allies.

And they're planning on doing it all again - but even more this time.

These assholes won't quit until they've torn us down completely, in order to put us on an equal footing with their fellow assholes - like Putin and Xi and Orban - dividing the world into nuclear-armed corporate entities - operating the whole planet as one big worldwide conglomerate.

And the rubes go right along with it, cheering on this self-destructive version of globalization even as they constantly bitch about "the globalists".

Trump trade advisers plot dollar devaluation

Advisers close to the former president — particularly his former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — are considering policies that would weaken the dollar relative to other currencies, which could juice U.S. exports but also fuel inflation.

Economic advisers close to former President Donald Trump are actively debating ways to devalue the U.S. dollar if he’s elected to a second term — a dramatic move that could boost U.S. exports but also reignite inflation and threaten the dollar’s position as the world’s dominant currency.

The idea is being discussed by former trade chief Robert Lighthizer — a potential Treasury secretary pick for Trump and the architect of the former president’s bruising tariff campaign against China — and policy advisers allied with him, according to three former Trump administration officials granted anonymity to discuss confidential policy plans.

Purposely devaluing the U.S. dollar by pressing other countries to alter their own currency values would represent the most aggressive proposal yet in Trump’s attempts to reshape global trade. The potential moves would go beyond the tariffs of Trump’s first term and the expansive industrial subsidies for clean energy enacted by President Joe Biden. A weaker dollar would make U.S. exports cheaper on the world market and potentially reduce the U.S.’ yawning trade deficit.

“Currency revaluation is likely to be a priority for some members of a potential second Trump administration, mainly because of the viewpoint that [an overvalued dollar] contributes to the trade deficit,” said one former Trump administration official, adding that Lighthizer and his team are the primary advocates for the approach.

But weakening the dollar could have other far-reaching consequences, from sending consumer prices for imported products soaring, to inviting retaliation from other countries and threatening the dollar’s role as world reserve currency, which would undermine U.S. sanctions on adversaries like Iran and Russia.

The potential policy shift during a second Trump term could further fragment the global economy — a post-pandemic trend top finance officials are already grappling with as they gather in Washington this week for the yearly Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Each of the former officials stressed that all of the “nuances” of the currency policies are not worked out yet, and could shift before or after the election. Among other things, Lighthizer is considering ways to weaken the dollar unilaterally or through negotiations with foreign nations using the threat of tariffs, the former officials said.

Lighthizer — one of the few Cabinet members to survive Trump’s full first term — retains significant influence on the former president’s trade and economic policies from his post as the trade chief at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up to devise policies for a second Trump administration.

But such efforts would face stiff opposition from Wall Street and its supporters in Washington because a weaker dollar could make assets based on the currency less valuable. Should Trump tap one of the finance executives he’s also considering to lead the Treasury Department, it’s much less likely he would pursue currency devaluation.

“This would only happen if Bob [Lighthizer] was the Treasury secretary,” a second former Trump administration economic official said.

Trump’s first administration dabbled in currency policy back in 2019 by taking the rare step of designating China a currency manipulator, meaning it was unfairly devaluing its currency, the yuan, to make its exports cheaper and gain an advantage in global trade. But that designation took place after Trump had already imposed tariffs on the Chinese economy, and his White House never went further to address the currency imbalance with policies like the ones that Lighthizer is considering today. Biden did not renew China’s designation as a currency manipulator when he took office.

The former president’s allies in Congress say they would not be surprised if a new Trump administration — particularly with Lighthizer in a position of influence — tries to do more.

“The perspective that I know [Lighthizer] brings is that when countries like China manipulate their currency, we should address that,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), who was ambassador to Japan under Trump and worked closely with Lighthizer. “That sort of inherent unfairness is what Bob was constantly talking about, and I respect his position.”

Lighthizer declined to comment, and the Trump campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. But the former trade adviser endorses the idea of dollar devaluation in his 2023 book, No Trade Is Free, writing that it is “clear” that the dollar is “well overvalued” and that the U.S. could make a number of moves to correct that imbalance.

Lighthizer “frequently” brought up currency devaluation during Trump’s first term, said one former administration official with knowledge of the discussions, as did Trump economic adviser Peter Navarro. But they faced opposition from Wall Street-aligned officials like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, and the idea never got off the ground. Trump even reportedly squashed a dollar devaluation proposal from Navarro during a White House meeting, POLITICO reported in 2019.

“Lighthizer brought that up all the time because he felt like tariffs weren’t enough to achieve the objective” of rebalancing trade with the rest of the world, said one of the former Trump administration officials. “Mnuchin didn’t want to do it.”

Mnuchin is not alone. Wall Street banks and large U.S. retailers would also oppose efforts to weaken the U.S. dollar, arguing it would hurt U.S. consumers and drive up already problematic inflation. Other corporate actors worry about the ripple effects if the U.S. government moves into currency markets aggressively, concerned it could spark a global trade conflict.

Robert Lighthizer testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on Capitol Hill.
Lighthizer’s ideal situation is to try to strike a grand bargain with foreign governments on currency, similar to the Plaza Accords struck by the Reagan administration in 1985 that weakened the dollar relative to the Japanese yen and European currencies. | Susan Walsh/AP

The ultimate effects of an “orderly and durable devaluation” of the dollar would be “uncertain” for American business, said Jake Colvin, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents dozens of the largest U.S. companies. But, he added, “there is the additional risk that pursuit of a weaker dollar could spark a number of unintended consequences including inflationary global currency and trade wars.”

National security hawks also worry that weakening the dollar could take the bite out of U.S. sanctions on foreign countries like Russia and Iran. Those sanctions rely on the dollar’s use as the dominant currency in world trade and finance. If the dollar was devalued enough to make other nations switch to using another currency in international transactions, the U.S. Treasury would no longer have the ability to freeze those assets, as it has done with officials in adversarial nations.

“Sanction effectiveness depends on the U.S. having a world reserve currency,” said the first former Trump administration official, “and so I think there’s a clear tension there between two objectives — one of reducing the trade deficit and two of ensuring that there’s sanctions effectiveness.”

In theory, dollar devaluation could happen through multiple avenues. Lighthizer’s ideal situation, as outlined in his 2023 book, is to try to strike a grand bargain with foreign governments on currency, similar to the Plaza Accords struck by the Reagan administration in 1985 that weakened the dollar relative to the Japanese yen and European currencies.

It’s “very clear” that such a pact will be “an objective of folks like Lighthizer” if they retake the White House, said the former Trump administration official.

When the Plaza Accords were negotiated in the 1980s, the implicit threat of tariffs from the U.S. government — then, pushed by Democratic members of Congress — helped push foreign governments to renegotiate their exchange rates.

World governments should expect the tariff threat to be more explicit if Lighthizer is empowered in a future Trump administration, said the former officials with knowledge of the plans, noting that Lighthizer endorses the idea in his book, saying that it’s “hard to believe” other nations would have agreed to the Plaza Accord “if they had not been concerned about the possibility that Congress would raise tariffs.” The administration could even impose tariffs preemptively and then offer currency negotiations as a way to get the duties reduced, the former officials added.

Short of a multilateral agreement, the Trump administration could use the threat of tariffs to force individual countries — especially China — to the table for bilateral currency negotiations, said the former officials. One legal tool that’s been floated is Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes tariffs of up to 15 percent against countries that have “large and serious” trade surpluses with the U.S.

The Trump administration could also impose across-the-board tariffs on imports, making them more expensive for U.S. consumers, the former officials said. Trump is considering a 10 percent universal import tariff, the former administration officials said, and one result of that policy could be to make the dollar weaker relative to other currencies.

But even economists that support a currency revaluation stress that those approaches have drawbacks — even from the perspective of reducing the trade deficit, one of Lighthizer’s clear goals. Unless there is a multilateral grand bargain like the Plaza Accords — which even Lighthizer’s allies acknowledge will be difficult — trading partners could negate efforts to weaken the dollar by cutting their own interest rates, imposing their own tariffs or subsidizing their domestic producers, all of which could undermine the effect of U.S. policy shifts.

“One of the problems with many of these solutions is that countries that are determined to implement mercantilist policies can get around the solutions very quickly,” said Michael Pettis, a Beijing-based economist influential among economic advisers to both Trump and Biden. “It’s the countries that don’t ‘cheat’ that pay the cost.”

No - we don't want government

to be run like a business.

Because no business is a democracy.

Every business is a dictatorship.

And Plenty More To Do

An awful lot of the jobs available aren't great jobs. And an awful lot of Americans aren't prepared to step into the really good jobs because we've spent better than 25 years allowing Republicans to fuck up our school systems.

So there's lots and lots we need to do yet. The article below points out some of the glitches.

But when the number of jobs overtakes the number of people available to fill those jobs, the labor market should tip in favor of paying people a better wage (eg). Plus, with a president who stands with unions and wage-earners in general, employers should start to feel some heat to bring back some of the benefits we used to be able to count on.

It's appalling to me when I remember my days as an hourly guy and compare it with what youngsters are going through now.

• It was a given that we'd work 40 hours a week
• We got overtime pay for anything over 40 hours
• We had 10 days paid vacation time
• We got 10 paid holidays a year
• We got paid 2½ times our regular rate for working a holiday
• Healthcare insurance
• The company matched dollar-for-dollar whatever you put into your retirement plan

Employers added 303,000 jobs in March, soaring past expectations
The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent

Employers in the United States added 303,000 jobs in March, soaring past expectations and reflecting renewed strength in a labor market that continues to prop up the broader U.S. economy.

The unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent last month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, extending the longest stretch of unemployment below 4 percent in five decades.

The jobs market is charging ahead in 2024, churning out more jobs per month on average than before the pandemic. The March job growth was notably higher than the average monthly gain over the past year, which was around 231,000, according to the agency.

“This was a very strong jobs report across a variety of metrics,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director at the jobs site Indeed. “It gives really positive implications for the short-term of health of the labor market and labor market’s capacity to bounce back from the pandemic.”

President Biden has been making an election-year case that economic gains made during his administration help all voters, and he trumpeted Friday’s jobs report.

“Today’s report marks a milestone in America’s comeback,” Biden said in a statement about the job gains. “Three years ago, I inherited an economy on the brink. With today’s report of 303,000 new jobs in March, we have passed the milestone of 15 million jobs created since I took office.”

Recent data indicates that Americans’ gloomy mood about the economy, consumer sentiment in March was up 28 percent from a year earlier, but those better vibes have yet to translate into political enthusiasm. Biden is trailing former president Trump in six of the seven most competitive states in the 2024 election, according to a Wall Street Journal poll from late March, due in part to voter dissatisfaction with the economy.

Major stock indexes all edged up after markets opened Friday, as investors cheered on the good news.

Workers benefited in March from rising wages and more work hours. Average hourly earnings accelerated in March to $34.69 per hour, which is up 4.1 percent from the previous year. Wages have consistently beat inflation since last May 2023, after years of falling behind.

Service-related industries continue to prop up the greater economy and contribute to low unemployment that has benefited workers.

Health-care job growth accelerated, adding 72,000 jobs in March largely in hospitals and residential care facilities and nursing homes in a reflection of surging demand from the aging baby boomer population. Government payrolls expanded by 71,000, mostly in local and federal government, as the sector has remained flush with cash.

And leisure and hospitality also grew by 49,000 jobs, and in a major milestone, finally caught up to its February 2020 pre-pandemic levels, as demand for dining out and other experiences has continued to swell.

Job growth has also begun to spread into industries that had gone slack over the past year.

Construction added 39,000 jobs in March, more than double its monthly average gain of the past 12 months, surprising experts because that industry tends to be sensitive to higher interest rates. Nonresidential specialty trade contractors led gains. Retail added 18,000 jobs mostly in general merchandise employers, such as big box stores.

“There’s a pocket of strength in the U.S. labor market right now,” Bunker said. “Part of it could be some sectors have slowed down from 2022 to 2023 and are starting to grow again. They’re working through some of the constraints of higher interest rates.”

Still, many rate-sensitive industries appear to remain cautious about hiring as they wait for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates this year. Employers in manufacturing, wholesale trade, warehousing and transportation, information, professional and business services, which includes parts of tech, and financial services saw little or no growth in March.

The latest job figures will shape Federal Reserve’s review of how the economy is performing. For the past two years, the central bank’s overwhelming focus has been on fighting inflation, namely through an aggressive interest rate campaign that brought borrowing costs to the highest level in more than 20 years. But officials are also keeping close watch for any signs that their moves have put too much pressure on the economy, like if the job market starts to weaken, or employers pulling back fearing tougher times ahead.

Inflation has come in higher than expected since the start of the year. If that turns out to be a lasting trend, the Fed may end up changing their plans for three possible interest rate cuts this year, which markets expect could start in June.

Consistently, the message from Fed leaders is that they need more time to see how the data unfolds. Friday’s report was no exception.

“There is no weakness in the job market which would impel the Fed to quickly cut, but no tightness which would prohibit a cut either,” Preston Caldwell, chief U.S. economist at Morningstar, wrote in an analyst note. “Fed decisions in upcoming meetings will hinge mainly on the inflation data.”

Lately, Americans have been spending big on vacations, dining out and entertainment. And that demand is driving employers to hire in those sectors.

Hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector is vastly outpacing the overall labor market. Employers made the most hires on record in arts, entertainment and recreation in February, according to a separate report by the Labor Department released Tuesday.

The leisure and hospitality industry has added 458,000 jobs in the past year, accounting for nearly 1 in 6 new jobs across the country.

More than 53,000 restaurants opened last year, up 10 percent from 2022 and exceeding pre-pandemic levels, according to data from online review site Yelp. That has helped boost hiring across the board, in entry-level positions as well as managerial roles.

Restaurateurs say it is finally becoming easier to find employees, after years of worker shortages, relieving the pressure to raise wages. A major pickup in immigration has also helped fill many long-standing openings, with 3.3 million immigrants arriving in 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Brent Frederick, who owns five restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Paul, has hired 40 people in the past month.

“There have been pullbacks in tech and other industries, and we’re noticing that a lot of people are landing back in hospitality,” he said. “There’s been influx in the pool of people available to us.”

Franco Campilongo, a restaurateur in the Bay Area, has hired seven new workers, including servers, cooks and dishwashers, in the last few weeks. Recent layoffs at tech firms and downtown cafeterias rocked by work-from-home norms have made it easier to recruit employees, he said.

“When Google and Apple started laying off, we got more people,” he said. “We used to have to negotiate — people would say ‘Facebook gives me $35 an hour’ — but that’s changed. Now I have a stack of applications.”

The industry has also been changing, with restaurants following remote-work customers who moved to suburbs from cities.

That shift to the outskirts of town is expected to fuel brisk hiring in hospitality this year. Che Fico, one of San Francisco’s top restaurants, recently expanded to Menlo Park. Perry’s Steakhouse & Grille, which has 21 locations nationwide, is heading to Vernon Hills, outside Chicago. And Old Ebbitt Grill, a D.C. institution near the White House, is opening its first spinoff in Reston, Va.

“We’re calling it our ‘sexy sister in the suburbs,’” said Jeff Owens, chief financial officer at Clyde’s Restaurant Group, which operates 11 Washington area restaurants. (Clyde’s is owned by Graham Holdings, which owned The Washington Post until 2013.)

Last month, Jaime James of Minnesota picked up a second job as a bartender on top of her day job in health care. The single mother said she hadn’t worked in the service industry in a decade but that she needed the extra cash. She rents a $2,000-a-month apartment in a safer and cleaner building than her previous mice-infested one.

“As a single mom, it’s very tough to survive right now on one income for two people,” James said. “The service industry appealed to me because of the possibility of immediate cash after every shift with tips.”

But James struggled to find an employer that would schedule her around her day job, as well as child-care needs. She applied for 24 restaurant jobs between November and March and got only two callbacks before she landed her current position.

And in case you're one of those hard-ass jerks who loves to piss on anybody you think doesn't measure up to your phony standards:

If you want people to suffer

because you suffered,

and you turned out OK,

I've got news for you:

You did not turn out OK

Econ 201

Capital is free to go where the highest profit potential is.

Labor is chained to the country of its origin.

Opinion

If you want to know where the world economy is headed, look at the bottom of this toy car

What if I said you could read real world history on the underside of your kids’ Hot Wheels?

In my Philippine childhood in the 1970s, my brother Hector and I played with die-cast toy cars. I remember the first time I looked at the underside of these cars, soon after I had learned to read, and realized they had been made in different countries in different years. Some were made in the United Kingdom and the United States; the newer ones were made in Japan. Decades later, as my work as an economist brought my family to the United States, my two children got toy cars nearly identical to mine — first made in China and, later, Vietnam.

We now have a small collection of these cars, and occasionally I use them as a teaching tool. I ask students in my economics classes to inspect the cars’ undersides, and together we trace the gradual movement of toy car manufacturing: from England and the United States in the 1960s to Japan in the mid-1970s, from South Korea in the mid-1980s to China in the late 1990s and Vietnam after.

I tell them the process of making die-cast toy cars is nearly unchanged since the 1960s and has been steadily passed from one country to another, marking the beginning of the transformation of entire economies. We observe how toy-export data mirrors worldwide trends in industrial sector employment over the past 60 years: the gradual rise of toy manufacturing and toy exports in developing economies, the expansion of light manufacturing in those countries, followed by the growth of more complex production and the entire industrial sector, soon dwarfing the traditional agriculture sector and lifting people out of low-paid, low-productivity work.

And then we see, almost as rapidly, the decline of the industrial sector in a now-richer economy, as production at lower prices becomes available from the next industrializing country. In the graphical representation of this phenomenon, individual countries’ data looks like hills all over the world and over time; it is a beautiful, astonishing understatement of how countless lives have been changed in the process.

This much world history reflected in a handful of toy cars.

Several years ago, at the end of those class conversations on economic transformation, I would boldly tell my students: If you would like to know where the world economy is headed, go to a toy store and look at the underside of a die-cast car. I was confident they would find some from Vietnam, considering my children’s cars and the country’s rapid industrial transformation. Or maybe from fast-growing Bangladesh or Ethiopia.

I was wrong.

Then came the covid-19 pandemic, and the industrial world reeled from massive supply chain disruptions. In early 2022, Mattel — which makes Hot Wheels and Matchbox toy cars — made a move to “near-source” some production, bringing its supply chain closer to the United States and away from Asia and China: It announced an injection of $50 million to its factory in Mexico. So I expected to start seeing toy cars manufactured in Mexico.

Wrong again. In two years, sometimes things change, sometimes things remain the same.

This past holiday season, my children and I took turns visiting the toy section of a large store just outside Washington. It was like a game: find a random car, take a picture of the box and the car’s underside, send it to our group chat. We found none from Bangladesh, Ethiopia or Mexico. They came from Malaysia, Thailand and, surprisingly, China, still. In the journey toward the inevitable transformation of economies, it seemed the world had taken a few detours.

It turns out that near-sourcing is more complicated than expected, as recently documented in the case of Mexico. Part of the difficulty involves scaling and coordination: As more businesses seek nearby production facilities, the nearby economy, with its limited human and infrastructure resources, is quickly overwhelmed. And just as critical pieces in toy manufacturing are still imported from China, inputs from China more generally are integral parts of more sophisticated global supply chains.

In addition, toy manufacturing reflects not only the promise of industrialization but also its disappointments. In late 2022, Mattel commemorated its 40th year of manufacturing in Malaysia by announcing the growth of its Hot Wheels factory there, the world’s biggest. This was a positive development, but Malaysia’s economy reached middle-income status decades ago; in the familiar pattern, it would by now have progressed to manufacturing more complex, profitable products. Instead, the country has remained in what economists Indermit Gill and Homi Kharas defined as the “middle-income trap” — caught between developing and rich nations.

As my children and I inspected this generation of toy cars, I struggled to explain what we were seeing. Not because toy cars do not tell us something about the world but because they do. They reflect the world’s reality, including its surprises.

Workin' For A Livin'

I was never a fan of unions. Growing up in the 60s, there was always the perception that unions were mobbed up, and there was just something kinda dirty about the whole thing.

Then in the 70s, when things started to come apart, unions were seen as being a big part of the problem. They weren't really, but the prevailing narrative was that we were paying too much for everything because the unions were feather-bedding the crap out of American manufacturing, so the noble capitalists had no choice but to say 'fuck this shit, we're moving it all to Indonesia'.

Working people have been always been the targets of cynical manipulators who tell us the wrong thing is the problem, and that we need to blame the wrong people for it.

Maybe we're finally start to get wise, and maybe the pendulum has started to swing back in the other direction.

Union membership is growing in the state after years of declines.

Employee walkouts, work stoppages and union drives seemed like a big part of 2023. But you may not know it from national data released earlier this week. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said union membership was “little changed” last year, comprising 10% of the national workforce. In 2022, it was an iota higher, 10.1%.

Rates, of course, don’t tell the whole story.

“I can say that both phenomena are true: There has been a lot of union activity over the past year and the unionization rate hasn’t changed much,” said Johnnie Kallas, director of the Labor Action Tracker, which tracks work stoppages and other labor actions nationwide. The tracker, which Kallas helped develop while at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, documented 451 labor actions in the U.S. last year, 414 in the prior year and 270 in 2021.

A key explanation? “There were nearly 200,000 more union members in 2023 than 2022, but those increases did not keep pace with considerable job growth last year, hence a stagnant or very slightly decreasing unionization rate,” said Kallas, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.

While there have been worries of a recession for the past couple of years, there was no recession in 2023. The nation’s economy grew 3.3% annually in the fourth quarter and 3.1% for the year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department update Friday. And overall job growth continued to surprise economists.

Colorado experiencing more union activity

But Colorado was different. The state’s union membership rate ticked up, at least from a low point in 2021. Last year, the number of union members increased 6.2% to 189,000 workers. Union members make up 6.9% of the state’s employed population. A year earlier it was at 6.7%, which is below the national average.

The state added 11,000 union members last year, and 13,000 in the prior year. Those included baristas at Starbucks and staff at Urban Peak, the first unionized shelter for unhoused people in Colorado. Momentum, especially among service workers, continued this month with more filing with the National Labor Relations Board to start a union, including 238 employees at the Denver Art Museum, about 180 workers from Alamo Drafthouse Cinema locations in Westminster and Denver and five at the CobbleStone Car Wash in Lakewood.

But few, if any, actually have a contract.

“It takes a tremendous amount of new organizing to translate into increased union density,” Kallas said. “In some cases, workers have made important organizing gains, but have had difficulty achieving a first contract.”

Membership has thrived at the Service Employees International Union Local 105, which has increased membership by 50% in 10 years. About 70% was new growth of workers at companies seeking representation, said Stephanie Felix-Sowy, who helped 3,000 Kaiser Permanente health workers in Colorado get a new contract after a three-day strike in October. Local 105 also represents janitors, security staff and other service workers, including more recently, about 2,000 who work at Denver International Airport.

“Colorado historically is not a super union-dense state,” Felix-Sowy said. “Being able to do that work within those particular industries has been really game changing for our members and their ability to move their priorities forward.”

After COVID, the union saw even more interest in collective bargaining. It’s currently working with home care workers and expanding its reach into airport workers. Last month, it helped organize a walkout of dozens of Denver airport cargo workers seeking safer working conditions from their employer, Swissport International.

“It’s starting to come to light and workers in these industries are fed up with seeing record profits,” Felix-Sowy said. “Even through COVID, we saw airports getting millions and millions of dollars from the government and workers not seeing that, and then a few years later, seeing record profits again. It’s just like all of these pieces, specifically in Colorado, have really led to folks looking for an outlet. I think it’s the same way that we saw generations ago.”

➔ On the other hand … union membership has been in decline for years. During the early 1950s, about one-third of private sector workers belonged to unions. Now it’s 6%. The Associated Builders and Contractors said Friday that most construction workers employed by private companies aren’t in a union. Nationally, the industry reached an all-time high of 89.3% who are not part of a union. ABC is a trade group primarily for construction companies.

Housing: Rent or buy?

With mortgage rates still above 6%, buying a house hasn’t gotten any cheaper even as sales prices halted their spectacular rise in 2021 and 2022. Interest rates, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors, “defined the 2023 housing market.”

In 2023, potential sellers held on to their homes and “stopped the move-up market where a huge percentage of current homeowners have mortgages under 3.5% and don’t want to trade that in,” said Fort Collins Realtor Chris Hardy in a CAR update.

Last year, Colorado sellers listed 81,115 single-family homes for sale. Before the pandemic, there were 108,007, according to CAR data. Even just counting the past 12 months, the number of available houses for sale — or sold — fell by double digit rates from 2022. The median sales price in 2023? Up in some parts of the state, down in others.

But in December, prices inched up again, from a year ago, with the median price of single-family houses in Colorado at $549,950, up 3.8%. Median prices for the full year, though, were down 0.7%. The townhouse and condo market was up 3% in December to $424,995, and the annual median price was unchanged at $420,000.

Home prices are still high, though, so sellers are getting more than they paid for if they’ve owned it for more than a couple of years. But it’s become more difficult for renters to save up and qualify for a mortgage. However, interest rates are expected to fall this year, at least that’s what the body that makes that decision said it will consider.

Meanwhile, rent or buy? That’s a personal question. But even with a 20% down payment on December’s median-priced house in Denver ($593,500), the monthly mortgage is more expensive than a two-bedroom rental (at $1,914 a month), according to Realtor.com’s “Rent or buy calculator.”

Here’s how the rental numbers stack up:

“Despite all the craziness around increasing costs and increasing affordability challenges that we’ve been facing, the homeownership rate in Colorado actually continues to climb steadily since 2016. In 2022, we reached 67.4%, which is the highest level since 2010,” said Cooper Thayer, a Castle Rock Realtor at Thayer Group who presented the economic update at the Colorado Association of Realtors housing market update this week. “We’re seeing the cost of buying exceed the cost of renting right now so it’s really great to see, in Colorado specifically, our home ownership rate is still on the rise despite these challenges.”