ECONOMICS

By Benjamin Picton, Senior strategist at Rabobank

Let Them Eat Flatscreens

Speaking to NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that US stocks experiencing a correction is “healthy”. Naturally, this statement caused some alarm for many Wall Street types who had been counting on Bessent to be the second Trump administration’s ‘voice of reason’ on economic policy, tempering some of the President’s more hawkish instincts on trade and (more…)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking a $3.4 billion loan from the general fund to help a shortfall in the state's Medi-Cal healthcare program.  The shortfall problem comes only a year after Newsom expanded Medi-Cal coverage to include millions of illegal immigrants.  California's continuing deficits and mounting debts have some officials concerned that the additional subsidies to illegals will cause a fiscal emergency in the near future. 

There are at least 2.6 million (more…)

Following Donald Trump’s imposition of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, as well as retaliatory tariffs from Canada, trade across North America’s borders has suddenly become much more expensive.

This map, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, shows how much different U.S. states’ trade is impacted by these tariffs, by visualizing each state’s combined share of imports from Mexico and Canada in 2024.

The visualization uses data from the U.S. International Trade (more…)