Interesting that Lutnick seems to have been lead on the UK deal but Bessent is driving the China engagement, with Greer working to both of them (Greer in the Oval with Lutnick now but also travelling to Geneva with Bessent).

March trade data shows tariffs rising even before April 2nd

Feeling a lot of Brexit deja vu in how American businesses are talking about tariff risk, and the political uncertainty around it. Worth remembering how that ended up going for Britain...

OK, so we got another move lower in the GDPNow forecast yesterday. One that was unrelated to the trade data, leaving the tracking estimate of personal consumption at zero growth in the first quarter. I'm still inclined to think this overstates how quickly the economy weakened. Some notes ...

Should a waited a few hours to post this

After the AfD's surge on Sunday, far right parties are the most voted-for of any grouping in Europe, for the first time in history: www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

New achievement unlocked! Emilia Pérez is now IMDb's lowest-rated Best Picture nominee of all time, an honour it shares with In Old Arizona (1928)

In light of latest of steel/aluminum tariff threats, it's a good time to review the evidence. This work finds job losses in metals-using sectors outweigh job gains in metal sectors ~75 to 1. Steel Tariffs and U.S. Jobs Revisited econofact.org/steel-tariff... via @econofact.bsky.social

I recently did some "level accounting" for a few European countries as part of an update of some teaching material. TFP in Europe has really collapsed relative to the US since 2000. Quite striking. (I "account" for differences in K/Y and hours per working-age person in this exercise.)