Very Serious

1 week ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Joe Biden, for some reason, is back on television. This morning, he told the hosts of The View he still thinks he would have beaten Donald Trump if he’d stayed on the ballot last year. He also says he “wasn’t surprised” Kamala Harris lost to Trump — Harris was well-qualified to be president, he says, but she was no match for the powerful weapon of sexism that Trump levied against her.

2 weeks ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Today’s GDP report showed the economy shrinking slightly in the first quarter, at an annualized pace of 0.3%. Not great news. But for reasons economist Jason Furman notes, this figure somewhat overstates how weak the economy was in the first quarter. There was a tremendous surge in imports in the first quarter, which signals that firms were acting to get ahead of expected tariffs, which in turn led to a large buildup of inventories.

1 month ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Last week, Donald Trump achieved something no president has before: He singlehandedly caused the S&P 500 to fall 10 percent in two days. The declines have continued today, and the signal from the ticker is unmistakable: His harebrained tariff plan is an economic disaster. A recession is now likely, with all the concrete human harms that entails: job losses, business closures, bankruptcies.

1 month ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,While the idea that the imposition of huge tariffs constitutes “liberation” is ridiculous, some of the other descriptors the White House is using for President Trump’s big tariff announcements are accurate enough. His sweeping global tariffs will be “transformative,” “historic,” and “bold,” they say.

1 month ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,There’s a conversation — occurring, as these conversations do, mostly among coastal elites — about how Democrats can better promote abundance. But for that conversation to end up being useful, it needs to be connected to what the average American thinks abundance even is. To that end, it’s worth thinking about Sen.