The results of last week’s election are in – Americans delivered a split decision on the makeup of the next Congress. In the House, Democrats won control from the Republicans and now hold the majority. In the Senate, Republicans maintained power and even added seats to their majority. This means that we’ll be operating under…
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Featured Blog, J.D. Foster
What is Going on with the Housing Sector?
The housing sector has triggered this question ever since housing bubbles popped across the country in 2007 to launch the Great Recession. The question remains as the housing sector is showing distinct signs of slowing. Traditional, convenient explanations, like rising mortgage rates, don’t wash as the current rate on the 30-year fixed rate mortgage is…
Featured Blog, John G. Murphy
The High Price of Tariffs
On Monday the White House announced it had “directed the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to proceed with placing additional tariffs on roughly $200 billion of imports from China”. While popular rhetoric suggests that tariffs are “slapped” on a foreign country, tariffs are of course taxes paid by Americans. It’s U.S. consumers, not foreigners, who…
Featured Blog, Neil Bradley
A Slippery, $39 Billion Slope: New Data Analysis Makes Case for Trade, Not Aid
n response to mounting frustration from farmers across the country, the administration last week proposed spending up to $12 billion of taxpayer money to compensate farmers and ranchers for the deep economic losses they are suffering as a result of the ongoing trade war. Notably, America’s agricultural community responded to the proposal by making…
Featured Blog, Sean Hackbarth
‘We Are Caught in the Middle:’ Tariffs Hit Illinois Farmers and Manufacturers Hard
‘We Are Caught in the Middle:’ Tariffs Hit Illinois Farmers and Manufacturers Hard Sean Hackbarth Soybeans are loaded into a truck during harvest in Princeton, IL. Farmers are always looking to the sky hoping for cooperation from Mother Nature. For Illinois farmers this year, the weather has been good enough that they’ve had a different…
Featured Blog, Sean Hackbarth
Workers, Farmers, Families, and Business are All Losers in a Trade War
It’s finally here: Retaliation Week, when other countries impose tariffs on about $75 billion worth of U.S. goods in retaliation for U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum and certain Chinese imports. Canada – the United States’ top trading partner – on July 1, was the latest country to slap retaliatory tariffs on our exports, putting…