RealClearMarkets Articles

Only 18% of Americans believe that affordability has improved since President Trump reclaimed the presidency last January, according to a brand-new poll from YouGov-MarketWatch poll. When pressed further, 41% of survey participants said the Trump administration was to blame.  This poll has reignited a familiar political argument: The price of essentials like food and housing prices is still high, thus the president has failed on his election promise to lower prices. The implication is that prices for things like groceries should have gone down by now, and...

Personal Financial Outlook Drops 4.6% as Overall Index Falls 2.7% Consumer sentiment edged lower in March as the RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, the first monthly reading of U.S. consumer confidence, declined to 47.5 from 48.8 in February, a 1.3-point (2.7%) drop. The index has now remained below the neutral 50 mark for seven consecutive months, keeping the nation in what we classify as the pessimism zone. March’s reading is 3.3% below the 302-month historical average of 49.1, underscoring that economic optimism continues to run slightly below its long-term...

Last week’s Supreme Court decision striking down President Trump’s invocation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to levy tariffs was a serious, but not necessarily deadly, blow to the self-styled “Tariff Man’s” defining economic policy agenda. That means American manufacturers and hirers, who are not exactly enjoying smooth sailing, are not out of the unpredictable waves yet. Still, the ruling was a needed reminder that the United States was formed by a group of people trying to rid themselves of taxes on goods they...

In 2020, the town of Brookline adopted an ordinance banning the purchase of nicotine products for anyone born after the year 2000, touting the move as a way to create a "nicotine-free generation." As is often the case when "nanny-state" policies materialize — similar to previous efforts to tax soft drinks that faced enormous consumer backlash — this ordinance was swiftly adopted by virtue-signaling politicians in other localities seeking to masquerade as public health crusaders. Much like the circumstances that led to America’s "soda tax revolt," the public is once...

As President and CEO of MEMA, The Vehicle Suppliers Association, I am proud to represent America’s largest sector of manufacturing jobs and more than 930,000 Americans who work hard every single day to keep our cars on the road in all 50 states. For the past six years, our member companies have been on the frontlines of implementing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).  As the USMCA approaches its 2026 review, this monumental trade deal will inevitably face scrutiny. Recently I had the privilege to testify before the Senate Committee on Finance and shared a...

The most important question in macro investing right now may not be about tariffs, deficits, or Federal Reserve policy. It may be this: Can a digital dollar do what Paul Volcker could not — permanently arrest the debasement trade? Stablecoins are no longer a cryptocurrency curiosity. The total market capitalization of USD-pegged stablecoins has grown from roughly $6 billion in early 2020 to over $230 billion by early 2025. The GENIUS Act — passed in 2025 — provides a federal framework requiring issuers to back every stablecoin dollar with U.S. Treasury instruments or...

There is much talk today about affordability—and rightly so.  Crippling inflation during the Biden-Harris years sent prices soaring on just about everything.  And although the inflation rate has eased, most prices have not come down in any significant way.  In a political world where quick fixes are often not possible, there actually is an easy solution for an immediate impact on affordability: start getting rid of tariffs on critical items. Tariffs are largely driven by the government’s belief that the price of a given item is too low—that the price...

The ambitious of all stripes flock to where the economic growth is. Which is no insight. Where growth is greatest, so are wages. Consider what you’ve just read in relation to the photo attached to this opinion piece. It was taken by a colleague outside of a restaurant in Palo Alto, CA. Where wealth is on the rise, so is the value of workers adjacent to the wealth creation. It calls into question Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei’s recent contention that the “natural policy response to an enormous economic pie coupled with high inequality (due to a lack of jobs, or...

“Removing the financial barrier to ride has decreased car dependency” in other cities. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani on his free bus fares plan?  No.  It’s one of his fellow travelers here in San Antonio in a recent interview discussing a similar proposal.  He currently has the support of two other socialist city council members, and one progressive.  Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones supports a pilot program to test it out. In a related story, I will soon be hanging up my chauffeur hat when my youngest daughter takes her driving test...

When I was in business school, I completed a senior finance project on the Walgreen Company. I poured myself into it. I produced a beautifully bound, designed, and illustrated thesis outlining how Walgreens could supercharge growth by leveraging what was, at the time, a wildly low cost of capital. The idea was straightforward and elegant: use the balance sheet and bond rating to execute a leveraged blitz of the Pacific Northwest with a flurry of new stores in strategic markets. The financial modeling was strong. The forecasts were tight. The theory was sound. I earned an “A” and...

Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized that no matter how financially successful SpaceX may be, the company will have failed in his eyes if the primary objective – the colonization of Mars – is not achieved. Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson quotes him as saying: “The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision.” One example of this is that Musk chose methane as the fuel for Starship. He chose methane because it can be extracted on Mars. This will significantly reduce the amount of fuel that Starship needs to carry as it will not need fuel for both...

A recent above the fold, front-page headline at the New York Times asserted that “Reliance on Taiwan Chips Endangers U.S. Economy.” The article’s subhead added that “Big Tech Has Done Little to Heed Warnings of Disaster if China Attacks Island.” The author of the report, Tripp Mickle, could perhaps be convinced that the subhead discredits the headline. That's because the only closed economy is the world economy (HT: Robert Mundell). Mickle’s analysis implies that China would somehow benefit from economic implosion in the U.S., and that China could easily...

For the last two decades a growing share of the nation’s corn crop has gone towards producing ethanol, to be used as an additive in gasoline. Today, somewhere between 35 to 40 percent of all corn grown is used to produce ethanol. The ostensible motivation for the legislation creating the mandate two decades ago was to help the U.S. become energy independent, while Democrats supported it because of its perceived environmental benefits via reduced greenhouse gas emissions.  However, the massive increase in domestic oil and natural gas...

The January Producer Price Index landed with a predictable media spin: “hotter than expected” and therefore proof that tariffs, Trump, and the so-called “new protectionism” are reigniting inflation. That narrative collapses under even modest scrutiny of the underlying data.  Start with the topline. Total PPI rose 0.5 percent in January, above the 0.3 percent consensus and following a 0.4 percent increase in December. On a year-over-year basis, producer prices are up 2.9 percent. That’s above expectations—but critically, it is still well below the 3.8...

Welcome to the age of surveillance pricing – a new form of digital price gouging where Amazon and other online platforms use the massive amount of data they collect on every click, search, and purchase to weaponize sales and to maximize profit through predictive modeling.  While relatively unknown to the general public, the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of states filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit in 2023 against Amazon alleging the company used a secret algorithm, code-named Project Nessie between 2015 and 2019 to raise prices on and off the platform by...

Across the country, families are still feeling squeezed after the pandemic-era inflation. Prices remain high, mortgage rates are elevated, and many communities struggle to attract the investment they need to grow. Congress and the administration are right to focus on cost-of-living concerns. The best way to achieve lasting relief is by strengthening the long-term economic engine that keeps costs down: capital formation. When businesses invest in new equipment, cities modernize infrastructure, and entrepreneurs bring new products to market, the economy grows in ways that benefit everyone....

This is the second in a series of conversations between US tax system insiders and experts on the status and problems of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Today’s installment features Garrett Gregory, a tax attorney who spent 12 years in the IRS’s Office of the Chief Counsel – the IRS’s top lawyer – before founding the Dallas-based tax-focused Gregory Law Group. Bruce Willey is the CEO of American Tax & Business Planning based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Installment 2: With the IRS in Turmoil, What Should Americans Expect for the 2026 Tax Season? Bruce...

In 1981, and while trying to get the tax cuts he favored passed by Congress, Ronald Reagan joked about getting shot again to move public opinion in his direction, and by extension, congressional votes. Presidents thankfully can’t decree tax hikes or tax cuts, rather they can sign into law tax cuts first introduced in Congress, and voted on by members of Congress. Basic stuff, or so it once seemed.   That it’s no longer basic stuff means that Joe Biden was right about term limiting judges. Which is not an endorsement of Biden or his presidency, rather it’s a comment that...

Why were there no billionaires in the 19th century? Tick tock, tick tock… No doubt those with an Austrian or Monetarist School bent would say that the scarcity of billionaires was rooted in a lack of a central bank. They oddly, and insultingly, associate great wealth with "money creation," so-called "money supply," and currency devaluation. Yes, ridiculous. In truth, the lack of billionaires two centuries ago was rooted in the lack of cars, phones, airplanes, computers, internet, WiFi, and all manner of other advances that figuratively shrunk the world. A lack of inequality is really...