Just posted "Political Economy of Automation & Fragmented Prod.," w/ @gonzalezrostani.bsky.social & @ericaowen.bsky.social, showing how automation in the Global North spills over the Global South thru. trade/exports/jobs, leading to ↑ organized crime ↑ Left-populism papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

All are invited to the first in Publishing with University Presses Webinar Series, "Turning Your Dissertation into a Book," Oct 9 at 1pm ET. Organized by our Faculty Outreach Committee with the Rutgers Ctr for Minority Serving Institutions. Register here: https://buff.ly/UiOAr5M

It's been a little disheartening to hear so much confusion in the reporting on Trump's new trade deal with Japan. So let me try to clarify.

Regarding the tariffs and concept that the US companies will bring back manufacturing jobs to the US in the coming years; What's significantly more likely to happen is factories built in the US will be heavily automated, robotics driven by AI, with an increasingly minimal amount of human staff.

👇🎯 Restoring manufacturing & restoring manufacturing employment are not the same thing. It's not the 1950s anymore.

On the tariffs @strangeloopcanon.com over at the other place has pretty convincing evidence that the White House may have used LLMs to come up with its tariff model and that that evidence may have come from LLM scraping of a Peter Navarro book. We are in the dumbest AI timeline.

I’m just a small-town international political economy professor, so I may not have this right. But are you telling me now that…international trade is actually good & enables consumers to buy more goods at lower prices than if we do the mercantilism? 🤔

Again, when people ask you if you can imagine a time when the US might be classified as a competitive authoritarian/not-fully-democratic regime, the only honest answer is that we already are there now. That's uncomfortable to have to articulate & even more so for folks to hear, but it is what it is.

Phenomenal social science right here.

With everything happening in domestic & international affairs, trade policy may not be the most pressing issue. But tariffs and trade wars still shape our economy, jobs, and prices daily. Listen to learn how U.S. trade policies impact businesses, workers, and consumers in this unpredictable moment.

Like other economists I'm being asked to comment on Trump tariffs. We should do so - it's our job. But first we should make the point stated eloquently here by @alanbeattie.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/c26b...

Trump is openly violating the law on a vast and unprecedented scale and everyone is acting like it's normal. NPR had a long story about finding a rare shrew. NYT said he was disregarding "legal niceties." This is an attack on the Constitution as profound as the attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

Job alert! On the search committee for a TT job in public policy at Pitt-GSPIA. Details are linked and review begins on 1/30. Contact me for details. cfopitt.taleo.net/careersectio...