Annie Lowrey

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Annie Lowrey

“It almost feels like we’re trying to rebuild everything from scratch,” Michael Wieder told me. The company he co-founded, Lalo, sells sleekly designed baby gear, much of it made in China. In his first weeks in office, Donald Trump increased the tariff rate on most of the company’s imported goods by  20 percentage points. In April, he jacked the rate up to 145 percent. Lalo had to stop bringing in products from overseas: Paying the tariff could have bankrupted the company.

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Annie Lowrey

Like buffets and online dating and many other terrible-and-wonderful things, budgets are about trade-offs. Policy makers in Washington seem to have forgotten that obvious reality. From the Great Recession through the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic, interest rates were low, prices stable, the dollar in demand, deficit hawks chastened, bond vigilantes quiescent. Congress could spend and spend, whether the economy needed the stimulus or not. Donald Trump got his mammoth tax cuts for the rich.

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Annie Lowrey

In February 2020, my husband was away for a few weeks, and I was home writing stories, taking care of our old dogs and infant son. The economy was great; the health system stable; the novel coronavirus an ocean away. Still, many days, when the baby woke up before dawn, I’d take him to a 24-hour grocery store or pharmacy and stock up on paper towels, formula, pasta, dog food, and liquid ibuprofen.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Annie Lowrey

When Donald Trump took office in January, analysts at Goldman Sachs estimated that the economy had a 15 percent chance of entering a recession over the next 12 months. Today, with the world engulfed in a trade war, they see a 45 percent chance. J.P. Morgan puts the risk at 60 percent. Torsten Sløk, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, a private-equity firm, believes that a contraction is pretty much guaranteed. The situation is unprecedented, at least in modern history.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Annie Lowrey

According to President Donald Trump, the banker he picked to lead the Federal Reserve is “WRONG.” His reports are a “complete ‘mess!’” And his termination “cannot come fast enough!”These kinds of remarks would be extraordinary for any other resident of the White House. Presidents are normally deferential to central bankers and avoid lobbying for monetary-policy changes in order to maintain the markets’ faith in the Fed’s independence. Not Trump.