Free Republic

Are jobs exploding or is the economy in free-fall? Because of radical policies forced on the Census department by the real unelected Kings of America, judges, the bureaucrats in Washington don't know. If we knew how many illegal aliens there were, we could estimate the effect of giving hundreds of billions of dollars of aid. We could tell pro-illegal states to pay for their own voluntarily assumed costs. We could even ask the courts to reassign congressional representation from illegal aliens to U.S. citizens. So the Kings simply demanded ignorance by preventing us from knowing how many illegal aliens there...

Sitting outside every morning with a fresh cup of coffee or reading a book in the front yard at night: it's the simple pleasures that matter to Susan Cannon.Lately, sky-high interest rates on the 73-year-old's credit cards have cast a dark shadow."I can't get the balance down because I am still having to use credit cards at the end of the month to get groceries and gas," Cannon, who lives in a mobile home in rural Texas, told Business Insider. "I pay my bills, but because of the interest rates, it keeps going up. I feel like I'm being gouged."

VIDEOWatch carefully the face of Kate Bolduan's face as Matt Egan delivers very positive news about the inflation rate coming down. Happy news! Right? And yet a great SADNESS fell across Kate Bolduan's face. This wasn't how it was supposed to be in her world. Liberal world had been guaranteeing that Trump's tariffs would cause massive inflation due to soaring costs by now with the result that an economic crash would also crash Trump's popularity. That thought might have flickered across Kate's face as the bitter reality of the success of the Trump economy caused poor Kate to suffer extreme...

High home prices, faltering supply and weaker consumer confidence in the economy all continue to weigh on the U.S. housing market. The chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, Lawrence Yun, is calling it “a new housing crisis.” Sales of previously owned homes in January dropped a much wider-than-expected 8.4% from December to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.91 million, according to the NAR. Sales were 4.4% lower than January 2025. That is the slowest pace since December 2023 and the biggest monthly drop since February 2022. This count is based on closings, so contracts that were likely...

Taiwan has told Washington that its proposal to move 40% of the island’s semiconductor supply chain to the U.S. was “impossible,” Taipei’s top tariff trade negotiator said in an interview. Speaking on a local television broadcast Sunday, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun said she had made it clear to Washington that the island’s semiconductor ecosystem, built over decades, could not simply be relocated. Taiwan’s international expansion, including its investments in the U.S., is predicated on the notion that the industry remains’ rooted in Taiwan and continues to expand domestic investments, she said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Portland’s economy is not working for the majority of residents and businesses. Housing is too expensive. Companies are shrinking their presence in the city. Job numbers are going down. And the city’s most promising indicator of growth can’t be relied upon in today’s political climate: international in-migration. Those are some of the findings from ECOnorthwest, a research and consulting firm headquartered in Portland. The city’s business advocacy group, Portland Metro Chamber, partners each year with the firm to research and analyze economic indicators in the region. In the latest report released Thursday, economists at ECOnorthwest looked at population, housing affordability...

One of the Bay Area’s hottest startups is hiring like crazy. The catch? You have to be willing to train artificial intelligence to one day do your job as well as you can. Welcome to the next gig economy. Instead of driving for Uber or delivering Postmates, a new wave of workers is signing up to school AI. These white-collar contractors review and critique the output of the large language models that power chatbots and other AI tools. Not just anyone can work for Mercor, an AI startup valued at $10 billion. Applicants have to demonstrate their abilities in the...

Over the course of 2025, the average tariff rate on U.S. imports increased from 2.6 to 13 percent. In this blog post, we ask how much of the tariffs were paid by the U.S., using import data through November 2025. We find that nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers. [...] We highlight two main results. First, 94 percent of the tariff incidence was borne by the U.S. in the first eight months of 2025. This result means that a 10 percent tariff caused only a 0.6 percentage point decline in foreign export...

During the pandemic, Florida became a haven for those looking to escape lockdowns. Miami was a “Zoom town,” a place where rich mobile professionals moved to enjoy the beaches and freedom, while continuing their remote jobs. Some $36 billion in extra income tax registered with the IRS in 2022. That great influx of people has now come to an abrupt end. New US Census Bureau figures show that net migration to the Sunshine State has fallen 92 percent since 2022, its lowest level for more than 15 years. The number of people moving to Florida has collapsed, while existing Floridians...

The economy added 130,000 jobs in January — far more than economists had anticipated — while the unemployment rate edged down slightly to 4.3%, Labor Department data released Wednesday showed. Still, according to updated 2025 numbers, the job market also added a paltry 181,000 jobs for the entirety of last year, revised down from the earlier-reported growth of 584,000 jobs — the slowest pace of job growth outside recession since 2003. The releases come after private data released last week indicated the labor market remained bruising in January for out-of-work Americans, with little in the way of new jobs. Economists...

President Donald Trump said the U.S. should have the "lowest interest rates in the world" and argued that rate cuts would significantly reduce federal borrowing costs during an interview Tuesday on FOX Business’ "Kudlow." "This country should have the lowest interest rates in the world," Trump told host Larry Kudlow. "We keep the world going." Trump tied interest rates to government interest expenses, saying that changes of a few points could significantly alter federal finances. "Every point is $600 billion," Trump said. "All he has to do if we went down two points, we don't have a deficit anymore," he...

Hiring increased sharply at the outset of 2026, the year's first jobs report said, blowing past economists' expectations and besting sluggish performance from the previous year. The U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January, according to the report, which marked a sharp increase from 50,000 jobs added in the previous month.

Recent figures from the Central Bank of Iran highlight the scale of the problem. In the Iranian year 1403 (2024/25), the average annual gross expenditure of an urban household reached about 4.69 billion rials, or roughly 391 million rials per month, marking a year-on-year increase of nearly 38%. Of this amount, close to 30% was spent on food and beverages alone. For an average household of 3.2 people, monthly food expenses exceeded 116 million rials.

The Washington Post editorial board has a good piece up today about some new data put out by the Cato Institute. What the data is looking at is purchasing power. Over time, workers are caught in a balance between rising inflation and rising wages. This data is used to calculate something called the "time price" which is the amount of working time needed to purchase a standard basked of goods. Here's how the Post explained it.The premise of the index is simple: how many hours do you need to work, compared to the month or year before, to be able...

Dip-buyers remain a powerful force in U.S. markets. A Friday surge brightened what had been a gloomy week on Wall Street, with bargain hunters flooding back to push the Dow industrials within reach of the 50000-point threshold. The blue-chip average soared about 2%, or 1,025 points, to an intraday record above 49900. Nvidia gained around 7.5%. Caterpillar added 6%. 3M rose 4%. Investments from tech stocks to cryptocurrencies bounced back from losses earlier in the week. The Nasdaq composite was up about 1.7% after dropping 4.5% in the past three sessions, reflecting investor concerns both about artificial-intelligence disruption and potential...

It looks like the embattled airline Boeing may be looking for a fresh start in South Carolina. Boeing told employees last week that it plans to consolidate 787 engineering work in South Carolina as it ramps up production of its popular twin-aisle jet, the union representing its engineers said on Wednesday. “Boeing regularly evaluates and adjusts its workforce to stay aligned to our commitments to our customers and communities,” a Boeing spokesperson said in an email. A Boeing spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday that in addition to adding engineers in South Carolina, the company plans to hire engineers in Washington,...

President Trump published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Jan 30. You might have missed it in all the brouhaha. It’s not often a President writes an editorial explaining his economic policies in detail. And, one presumes that an effort like this is vetted by his economic team, so it provides an interesting insight in to their thinking as well. The Journal does not link to sources of numbers, and I won’t play the numbers game. I’m more interested in the economic logic of the essay. Three principles stand out: Correlation vs. causation, budget constraints and accounting identities,...

When President Donald Trump took the oath of office for the second time in January, he did not inherit a roaring economy or a nation brimming with confidence. He inherited an economy weighed down by chronic inflation, high prices, and a deep sense of anxiety among working families who felt they were falling further behind every month. But one year later, the outlook is far different. From day one onward, Trump has taken decisive action to stabilize and improve the economy. Challenges remain, and affordability is still a serious concern. But the results speak for themselves—and the best may still...

🌍 Top 10 contributors to global real GDP growth (2026) 1．🇨🇳 China — 26.6% 2．🇮🇳 India — 17.0% 3．🇺🇸 United States — 9.9% 4．🇮🇩 Indonesia — 3.8% 5．🇹🇷 Türkiye — 2.2% 6．🇳🇬 Nigeria — 1.5% 7．🇧🇷 Brazil — 1.5% 8．🇻🇳 Vietnam — 1.6% 9．🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia — 1.7% 10．🇩🇪 Germany — 0.9% 📌 China + India alone = 43.6% of global growth 📌 Asia-Pacific accounts for ~50% of total growth Source: IMF

President Donald Trump is making a huge mistake campaigning on the economy -- an economy that’s projected to have expanded well over four percent at least in the fourth quarter of 2025. At least, that’s the newest hot take being blurted into cyberspace by CNN. CNN Business Senior Writer Allison Morrow, who’s developing quite the reputation for mastering the art of incoherence, published yet another example of brain-dead anti-Trump screeds January 28, “Trump wants to refocus voters’ attention on the economy. He might regret it.” Yes, that's a real headline. So what exactly — pray tell — should Trump talk...