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America's Jekyll-and-Hyde Economy | Off The Clock
31 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 15 min
The economy is growing — so why does your paycheck feel like it's shrinking? Lees meer
GDP is up 3.4%, unemployment is near record lows, the stock market keeps hitting highs — and yet it doesn't feel good. On this Halloween episode of Off the Clock, Justin Wolfers and journalist Stacey Vanek Smith dig into the "Jekyll and Hyde economy," where the pie is growing but a bigger slice is going to owners instead of workers.
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What the New GDP Report Actually Says | Diving In
30 oktober 2026 · 16 min
GDP grew 3.4% last quarter — so why does inflation still hurt? Justin Wolfers untangles it. Lees meer
The last big data dump before the 2026 midterms just landed, and it's a tangle: GDP grew at a 3.4% annualized rate last quarter — faster than forecasters expected — while the Fed's preferred inflation gauge is still running hot. In this Diving In episode, Justin Wolfers walks you through why both political parties can grab accurate numbers and tell you completely opposite stories.
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Did the Midterms Delay a Fed Rate Hike? | Diving In
29 oktober 2026 · 23 min
Why did the Fed hold interest rates steady when inflation is still above 2%? Lees meer
Inflation is running hot by every measure — PCE at 3.4%, core at 3.0%, and the CPI that tracks your actual cost of living at 3.7% — yet the Federal Reserve just chose to do nothing. Justin Wolfers walks you through what that decision means for your money, and admits up front he's a little puzzled too. Markets put an 85% chance on a rate hike in December, so what the Fed really did was delay a move almost everyone agrees is coming.
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The Dilemma Behind Debunking Trump | The Professor Is In
27 oktober 2026 · 20 min
President Trump brags that he's brought $21 trillion in new investment into America. Justin Wolfers already debunked that number (the White House's own list only reaches $11.3 trillion), so in this office-hours episode he answers your questions about what that claim would even mean if it were true. Lees meer
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What Is The State of Your Economy?
25 oktober 2026 · 51 min
Why do strong economic numbers feel so bad? Justin Wolfers says there are three economies, not one. Lees meer
Unemployment is 4.2%, the stock market is near a record, and GDP is growing — so why does your grocery bill, your rent, and your fill-up tell a different story? In this live call-in on NPR's The Middle with Jeremy Hobson, economist Justin Wolfers gives the economy three grades at once: an A if you own stock and a company, a B if you look at the lived reality of regular folks, and a C for how people actually feel — consumer sentiment at the lowest level ever recorded. The puzzle isn't a mystery, he argues: the share of Americans who think economic management is poor beats the share who think it's good by 66 points, an all-time high.
From Justin's conversation with Jeremy Hobson on NPR's The Middle, alongside CNBC's Steve Leisman.
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Trump Says $21 Trillion Is Coming. Is It? | Diving In
24 oktober 2026 · 20 min
President Trump says he’s brought $21 trillion of new investment into America since taking office. Sometimes it’s $18 trillion, sometimes $22 trillion. The exact figure isn’t the problem. All of them are wrong, by a lot. Lees meer
In this episode, Justin Wolfers gives you the questions you need to ask to test any huge number.
🎃 Enter our first-ever econ-themed Halloween costume contest by November 1 for a chance to win a limited-edition Gus the Platypus pillow: https://platypuseconomics.com/halloween
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Why Americans Don't Believe the Good Economic News | The Professor Is In
23 oktober 2026 · 25 min
Unemployment is low, inflation has cooled, and by most hard numbers the economy is doing okay — yet Americans sound miserable. Consumer sentiment this summer sat at 52, roughly where it was in May 1980, when unemployment was nearly twice as high and inflation was running around 14%. Justin Wolfers thinks he's cracked the puzzle: the 30-point gap between how you feel and how the economy is actually performing lines up almost exactly with how little Americans trust the people running economic policy right now. Lees meer
In this office-hours episode, producer Augusta Chapman tries to poke holes in that story, and Justin defends it. Does the gloom cause the distrust, or the other way around? Does sentiment even matter if you keep spending anyway?
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Don’t Be Fooled by Trump’s Diesel Gimmicks | The Professor Is In
21 oktober 2026 · 27 min
Tax-free red dye diesel won't make a single extra drop — so who really pays for it? Lees meer
President Trump signed an executive order letting truckers fill up with red dye diesel — the cheaper, untaxed fuel normally reserved for tractors and bulldozers — and the White House says it'll save truckers about $60 a tank. In this "Professor Is In" episode, Justin Wolfers and producer Augusta Chapman take your questions and show why the tax-free diesel policy creates no new fuel at all. There's only so much diesel in the world, so every gallon truckers gain, farmers lose.
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What Halloween Candy Reveals About Inflation | Off the Clock
17 oktober 2026 · 43 min
Why is inflation rising faster than your wages? It's a cost-push energy shock, not the good kind. Lees meer
Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith dig into the latest inflation report on Off the Clock, and the news isn't fun: prices are climbing 3.7% while wages crawl along at 3%, which means the average American — maybe you — is quietly falling behind. Justin walks through the difference between demand-pull inflation (the economy runs hot, prices rise, but your paycheck rises too) and cost-push inflation (energy and tariffs push costs up, prices rise, and nobody hands you a raise). Guess which one we're living through.
Along the way, Justin grades new Fed chair Kevin Warsh (forecasters gave him a shaky report card), explains why computers are suddenly getting pricier again, and announces the first-ever Platypus Economics Halloween costume contest.
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Why Official Inflation Can Seem Too Low | The Professor Is In
16 oktober 2026 · 29 min
Prices rose 3.7% over the past year, core inflation is stuck around 2.6%, and your paycheck is buying less than it used to — yet it feels like everything costs way more than that. Economist Justin Wolfers sits down with producer Augusta Chapman for office-hours-style answers to your questions: why your gut says prices doubled. Lees meer
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The Latest Inflation Report, Explained | Diving In
14 oktober 2026 · 15 min
The latest inflation report just dropped, and Justin Wolfers digs into why it's worse than Wall Street expected. Headline inflation came in at an eye-popping 3.7% — well above the Fed's 2% target — and core inflation is stuck above 2.6%. The really worrying part is the latest month: prices rose 0.6% in a single month, and whatever momentum was pulling inflation back toward normal seems to have vanished. Lees meer
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The Hidden Force Dragging Down Consumer Sentiment | Diving In
12 oktober 2026 · 20 min
Americans feel almost exactly as gloomy today as they did in 1980 — when inflation was near 14% and unemployment was close to 8%. Today those numbers are a fraction of that, yet consumer sentiment hit an all-time low. Justin Wolfers treats this like a detective case: the standard economic statistics predict sentiment should sit around 82, but the actual reading is 52 — a 30-point gap begging for an explanation. Lees meer
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The Nobel-Winning Insight That Made Spending Hard to Predict | Diving In
12 oktober 2026 · 25 min
Why Robert Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics — explained simply. Lees meer
This morning Robert Hall and Michael Woodford won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics, and Justin Wolfers couldn't wait to explain what they figured out — and why it touches how much you spend every month. By the end of the episode you'll understand why your next big purchase hinges more on what you think is coming than on what's in your bank account today, how modern macro got built, and why this is the way we all teach and read the economy now.
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The G7’s 100 Million Barrel Announcement Changes Nothing | The Professor Is In
9 oktober 2026 · 26 min
Justin Wolfers takes apart a headline that circled the globe: the G7 announcing it will release 100 million barrels of oil it had already promised to release back in March 2026. On this episode of Diving In, producer Augusta Chapman brings him your questions, office-hours style, and Justin explains why a press release dressed up as a deal does nothing to lower the price you pay at the pump. Lees meer
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Trump's Red Diesel Order, Explained | Diving In
8 oktober 2026 · 19 min
Justin Wolfers digs into President Trump's new executive order letting truckers fill up with red diesel — the tax-free fuel normally reserved for farmers, construction crews, and miners — and deferring the 24.4-cent federal highway tax until after the election. The White House says it'll save a trucker about $60 a fill-up. But diesel hit a record $6.52 a gallon a few weeks ago, and this order doesn't create a single new drop of it. Lees meer
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This Oil Deal Sounds Huge. Until You Do the Math | Diving In
7 oktober 2026 · 25 min
Trump calls it a massive win: 100 million barrels of emergency oil and fuel released to bring diesel prices down. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers reads the G7 communique line by line and finds something much smaller — an agreement to finally deliver on a release already promised back in March, in exchange for the US dropping a diesel export ban it should never have threatened. Lees meer
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Why the Jobs Report Keeps Changing | The Professor Is In
5 oktober 2026 · 23 min
The September jobs report landed weak, and the numbers for July and August got quietly revised downward. Economist Justin Wolfers takes your questions on what that actually means — and why a statistical agency that corrects itself is more trustworthy, not less. Lees meer
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Trump Wants Cheap Money. Why Are Rates Going Up Anyway?
4 oktober 2026 · 25 min
What happens when a president wants lower interest rates—but the economy, inflation, and bond markets are all pushing the other way? Lees meer
In this episode of What Next with Mary Harris from Slate, Justin Wolfers explains why the latest fight over interest rates is about much more than one Federal Reserve meeting.
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Why Workers Are Getting Less of What the Economy Produces | Off The Clock
3 oktober 2026 · 46 min
Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg columnist Stacey Vanek Smith slow down to unpack the one number that quietly shapes your paycheck: labor's share of income. For most of modern history, workers took home about two-thirds of the pie. Today it's down to 53% — and the rest goes to the people who own the companies, not the ones who show up to work. Then the stakes get bigger. Lees meer
Justin argues that past $100 million, the only thing money buys is power — and in an election decided by 115,000 votes, one billionaire's checkbook could theoretically swing thousands more. The same logic drives the AI question: the same technology makes your life utopian if you own the robot and dystopian if your boss does.
From the first-ever live edition of Off the Clock, recorded at Stanford.
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What September's Employment Numbers Really Say | Diving In
2 oktober 2026 · 18 min
The September jobs report landed with a thud: just 29,000 jobs created, well short of the 80,000–90,000 forecasters expected, with July and August both revised down and unemployment ticking up to 4.2%. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers walks you through why those numbers are disappointing by historical standards — yet why unemployment can still stay low and stable at the same time. Lees meer
Then there's your paycheck. Wage growth has slumped to around 3% — slower than prices — so if you feel like you can't keep up, you're not imagining it. Justin explains what weak wages mean for the Fed, why a rate hike now looks more likely in December than October, and why Wall Street shrugged.
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Are Your Financial Mistakes Making Someone Else Rich? | The Professor Is In
1 oktober 2026 · 33 min
Every dollar you spend having your money actively managed by someone in a sports car is paying for that sports car. In this Professor Is In episode, Justin Wolfers takes questions after his keynote at Stanford's Initiative for Financial Decision Making and lands on the core ideas he thinks every personal finance course must teach. Lees meer
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Why Good Money Advice Fails to Land | Diving In
30 september 2026 · 19 min
Most of us wash our hands even though we've never seen a germ. But when it comes to personal finance, hardly anyone "washes their hands" — and the mistakes are expensive. Justin Wolfers, back from a Stanford keynote to finance educators, argues that ignoring sound financial advice may cost people somewhere between 2% and 10% of their lifetime consumption — putting it in the same neighborhood as the welfare cost of climate change, and dwarfing the 0.1–1% economists usually assign to business cycles. Lees meer
So why won't people listen? Because the public doesn't trust economists: surveys show they rank barely above politicians in favorability. Justin makes the case that the fix isn't more experts screaming about interest rates — it's using plainer speech, telling better stories, showing real empathy, and laying out one clear action at a time. Here's what's in it for you: the employer match you're leaving on the table, the credit card interest compounding daily while your cash sits in savings, the actively managed fund quietly skimming your returns. Small mistakes, moved across a lifetime, add up to real money — yours.
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What Airbags Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence | The Professor Is In
28 september 2026 · 15 min
AI safety fears are in the news, so Justin Wolfers sits down with producer Augusta to work through the economics — and the ethics — of building guardrails into AI. Using airbags as the analogy, he shows why a "safe" AI, like a car with airbags, works a little less well than one built with no precautions — and why that tradeoff is worth taking when the downside isn't a fender bender but the electricity grid, a biological weapon, or human extinction. Lees meer
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How Much Should We Spend to Prevent an AI Catastrophe? | Diving In
26 september 2026 · 29 min
The people building the most powerful AI see faster science, better medicines, and explosive economic growth. Others see catastrophe. Justin Wolfers steps into that argument with the one tool that can actually weigh the two: economics. Lees meer
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How Accountability Shapes National Borrowing Rates | The Professor Is In
25 september 2026 · 24 min
What's the relationship between journalism and borrowing costs? Lees meer
When a local paper shuts down, something surprising happens: the town starts paying higher interest on its debt. Justin Wolfers sits down with producer Augusta to answer viewer questions about why press freedom isn't just a civics-class ideal — it's an economic force that touches your mortgage rate, your government's bond yields, and the whole institutional plumbing that keeps prosperity running.
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Why Trump's Diesel Export Ban Could Raise Gas Prices | Diving In
24 september 2026 · 18 min
The White House is floating a temporary ban on U.S. diesel exports, and the pitch sounds simple: keep the diesel here, and prices fall for farmers and truckers. Lees meer
In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers walks through why that story falls apart the moment you follow the economics past its first sentence.
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What Would It Take to Eliminate Poverty? | The Professor Is In
23 september 2026 · 24 min
In this episode of the Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers answers your questions about poverty in America. Justin walks through the official poverty measure ($32,649 for two adults and two kids), the newer supplemental measure ($41,701 for a renting family that adjusts for local costs and now counts internet and phone as essentials), and why the two disagree about how many people are poor. Lees meer
Justin also digs into the hard questions: is redistribution always a leaky bucket, or can fairness make the pie bigger? Why don't we just end poverty with a universal basic income?
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The Economic Cost of Trump's War on The Press | Diving In
22 september 2026 · 19 min
When the White House pulled the press badges of CNN, MS Now, and Politico, most of us reached for the First Amendment. Justin Wolfers asks a different question: what does a free press actually DO for us? What happens to your wallet when a president gets leverage over the reporters? Lees meer
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What If We Just Gave Poor People Money?
21 september 2026 · 26 min
Official poverty fell to 10.2% — so why does the better measure show almost no change? Lees meer
The new poverty numbers are out, and the headline looks like good news: official poverty dropped to 10.2%, a third straight annual decline. But Justin Wolfers explains why that single statistic hides more than it reveals — and why the broader "supplemental" measure tells a very different story.
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The Fed Raised Rates. Here's What It's Fighting. | Off The Clock
19 september 2026 · 58 min
The Fed just raised rates unanimously — and Justin Wolfers explains why that 12-0 vote matters more than the rate itself. Joined by Bloomberg Businessweek's Stacey Vanek-Smith on Off The Clock, Justin unpacks what "Silent Kevin" Warsh actually signaled, why the president's dream of 1% interest rates would light a fire under inflation, and why even a government that repays its debts can end up unable to borrow again. Lees meer
Then, Justin and Stacey debate whether "the feelings are the data," and Stacey builds the whole global economy into one bacon cheeseburger
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Finally, Justin turns thousands of YouTube comments into a data set to show Americans something the U.S. media keeps missing: just how angry Canadians are, and why they'll accept real economic pain.
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The Hawk Behind The Hike | The Professor Is In
18 september 2026 · 19 min
The Fed just raised its target rate by a quarter of a percentage point, the first hike since 2023 — but Justin Wolfers argues the number on the front page isn't the real story. In this episode of The Professor Is In, producer Augusta Chapman brings you audience questions, and Justin explains why the bigger signal was new Fed chair Kevin Warsh convincing markets he's a genuine inflation hawk. Lees meer
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Understanding The Fed’s Rate Hike Decision | Diving In
17 september 2026 · 13 min
Understanding The Fed’s Rate Hike Decision | Diving In Lees meer
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday by a quarter of a percentage point. It’s the first time the Central Bank upped rates since July, 2023.
All 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, including Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, voted in favor of a rate hike. Justin Wolfers, professor of economics and founder of Platypus Economics, breaks down the Fed’s decision, and unpacks how it’ll impact your life.
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The Canadian Boycott is About More than Economics | The Professor Is In
14 september 2026 · 20 min
Why an "infinity percent" tariff on Canada may hurt Americans more than Canadians. Lees meer
The U.S.–Canada trade war just got weirder, and Justin Wolfers walks through what actually changed. After Canada answered Washington's tariffs with a measured, dollar-for-dollar response, the White House escalated again. They proposed an outright import ban on things like Canadian alcohol, dairy, and auto products. His point: banning a product punishes the American buyers who wanted it most and now can't get it at any price.
That’s not the only way Americans are getting hurt. Canadian consumers are boycotting anything U.S. You can see it in the empty hotel rooms in Las Vegas and half-full convention centers. Canadians are "speaking from their heart" about sovereignty and dignity. No handshake between leaders will make that disappear.
Why should you care? Because the price of the clowning around lands in your pocket. This could look like a lost bonus, a thinner paycheck, or your employer's shrinking income. If Canada decides it can't trust its neighbor and diversifies toward Europe and Asia, that shift outlasts any single election.
Chapters:
0:00 Jazz hands and an update
1:00 What's changed since the last video
3:19 Meet the "infinity percent" tariff
4:30 Why a ban punishes American buyers
5:30 Do consumer boycotts actually work?
9:07 The real cost is the clowning around
11:07 How big a hit is this, really?
12:10 Should Canada diversify away from the U.S.?
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The Hidden Link Between Government Debt and Everyday Credit | Off the Clock
12 september 2026 · 51 min
Why does the bond market matter more than the stock market for your wallet? Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Stacey Vanek Smith take on August's inflation report, the rising odds the Fed hikes rates, and the one market that quietly sets the price of your car loan, your student loan, and your mortgage. Lees meer
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What August’s Inflation Report Means for You
11 september 2026 · 14 min
Inflation is stuck at 3.4% and prices are outrunning your paycheck. Here's what August really showed. Lees meer
The August inflation report just landed, and Justin Wolfers walks you through what it means for your wallet. Plus the all-important burrito price index.
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Vote Republican, Get $5,000? | Diving In
10 september 2026 · 18 min
Is the promise real, and who actually pays for it? Lees meer
At a midterm campaign rally Wednesday night, President Trump promised every adult American citizen a $5,000 check, but only if Republicans win both the House and the Senate. He's calling them "Trump dividends."
Justin Wolfers is here with a reality check, on Diving In.
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How Governments Manipulate Statistics Without Lying | Professor Is In
10 september 2026 · 19 min
Can you still trust the jobs numbers after Commerce dropped its ban on political interference? Lees meer
In August the Commerce Department quietly crossed out the rules that shielded official statistics from political meddling — meaning reports can now be delayed, buried, reworded, or stripped of their uncertainty. So can you still trust the numbers that shape your paycheck, your mortgage rate, and the price of your groceries?
In this episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers answers the question a whole audience asked: in light of this, why should we believe the latest jobs numbers?
Most useful of all, Justin hands you a rule of thumb for telling independent statistics from political claims — trust the official statistical agencies, be wary of anything from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and remember that someone who lied to you once will lie to you again.
Chapters:
0:00 An expensive way to make propaganda
0:56 Can we still trust the jobs numbers?
1:56 Which agencies are actually at risk
2:50 Why the jobs data is still protected
3:50 How statistics really get manipulated
6:22 The one report that was a lie
9:11 The tin-pot dictator club
10:02 Why propaganda destroys data's value
13:12 A rule of thumb for reading statistics
15:39 Official agencies vs. 1600 Pennsylvania Ave
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Hidden Ways the Government Manipulates Data | Diving In
9 september 2026 · 21 min
How the government can rig official statistics without ever faking a single number. Lees meer
A few sentences vanished from a Commerce Department directive — and almost no one noticed. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers walks you through what changed on August 19, when the department quietly scrapped its ban on political interference in the science behind America's official statistics. No fabricated numbers required: a report can be delayed, buried, reworded, or stripped of its uncertainty, and under the new rules that's all allowed at the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Here's why it lands on your kitchen table. These agencies tell you where prices are rising, whether poverty is getting worse, and whether the economy is actually growing. If a government distorts the inflation record, your grocery bill doesn't fall — you just stop being able to see the truth, and you can't fix what you can't measure. Justin counts the phrases erased from the old policy ("inappropriate influence": 10 mentions, now zero), shows how the scientific integrity watchdog job can now go to a political appointee who can be fired for inconvenient numbers, and walks through the Soviet, Venezuelan, Brazilian, and Argentine playbooks these new rules would permit. Then the one guardrail still standing: the 2018 trust regulation — and the big asterisk on whether anyone will enforce it.
Chapters:
0:00 A census report that was statistical nonsense
2:23 The quiet August 19 directive
4:13 Counting the phrases that disappeared
5:36 Steelmanning the rogue-scientist case
7:40 How statistics really get corrupted
10:19 The watchdog becomes a political hack
15:31 The one legal guardrail left
16:54 Stalin, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina
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The U.S. Canada Trade War Casts a Much Longer Shadow | Diving In
9 september 2026 · 27 min
Canada just retaliated against President Trump's latest tariffs, and everyone wants to know how big the hit will be. Economist Justin Wolfers walks you through the whole U.S. Canada trade war, and lands on a surprising answer. Lees meer
By the end, you'll understand why this trade war is small on paper, larger in reality, and what Justin would tell both Trump and Carney to do about it.
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Why Tariffs Can't Rebuild American Manufacturing | The Professor Is In
5 september 2026 · 23 min
Why did Trump's tariffs fail? It's a competence problem, not just a trade-theory problem. Lees meer
Economist Justin Wolfers answers your questions about why the Trump administration's tariffs earned straight F's on their own stated goals. His argument: the problem isn't only the economics of tariffs — it's chaotic, incoherent implementation. When a policy exists on Monday, is gone by Tuesday, and gets thrown out by a court on Thursday, you'd be crazy to build a 50-year factory around it. Across-the-board tariffs give you no leverage over China, targeting friendly Canada over fentanyl sets no clear incentives, and skipping Congress means the next president erases the whole thing with a pen. Justin warns the real lesson isn't "tariffs don't work" — it's that incompetent tariffs don't.
This is happening to you: two-to-one, Americans oppose these tariffs, and the higher prices land in your grocery cart and your next big purchase, not on foreigners. Justin also pushes back on "manufacturing fetishism" — arguing that what you actually want for your kids may be a keyboard, not steel-toed boots — and closes on why AI, unlike past economic shifts, may hit knowledge workers like you fast enough to really sting.
Chapters:
0:00 The report card: straight F's
1:10 How to raise your grade: study economics
2:38 Why chaos kills factory investment
3:41 Across-the-board tariffs give no leverage
9:17 No Congress, no lasting power
10:51 America's standing has fallen
11:46 Americans are on Canada's side
13:45 The manufacturing jobs fetish
18:03 Will AI do to white-collar work what robots did to factories?
This is an episode of …
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The Jobs Report Beat Expectations. Will The Fed Care?
4 september 2026 · 14 min
The economy added 162,000 jobs in August — far above the 50,000 to 60,000 Wall Street expected — and Justin Wolfers is smiling, because this is genuinely good news. Unemployment sits at a low 4.1%, and we've now had six straight months of job growth, which is what a normal, healthy labor market looks like. Lees meer
But Justin walks you through the asterisks that matter to your paycheck. Nominal wage growth has slipped to 3.1%, the lowest in years, which almost certainly means your real wages are falling as prices climb faster than your paycheck.
Justin also explains what this means as the Federal Reserve considers an interest rate hike.
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The Bond Sell-Off Isn’t the Scary Part | Diving In
2 september 2026 · 13 min
Everyone's talking about the bond market, and Justin Wolfers is here to explain what's actually going on — without the panic. In this episode of Diving In, he strips the fancy words away: the bond market is just supply and demand for loans, and right now a lot of people want to borrow. When demand for loans goes up, the price of loans — the interest rate — goes up too. Lees meer
Justin walks through the three forces pushing long-term interest rates higher.
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Who Actually Paid for the Trade War? | Diving In
2 september 2026 · 23 min
Trump’s tariffs were supposed to do five things. So how did they actually score? Lees meer
Justin Wolfers grades the tariff agenda against the administration’s own goals. Did tariffs create leverage? Did the trade deficit fall? Did factories come home? Did America get safer? Did the revenue deliver?
The answers: America’s trading partners already charged us around 3% on average before any of this started, so the “ripping us off” story was mostly imaginary. The celebrated Korea deal claimed credit for market access American exporters already had under KORUS — the negotiating equivalent of gifting someone their own umbrella and expecting a thank-you card. And the ten signed agreements the White House points to cover about 6% of U.S. goods exports, with no confirmation any of them are actually in force.
Then the numbers. The goods trade deficit hit a record $1.24 trillion in 2025, the first full year of the program. Manufacturing employment is about 62,000 jobs lower than when Trump returned to office. When the Dallas Fed asked 271 Texas manufacturers what tariffs would do to their business, only 5% planned to move production to the United States. Meanwhile, much of the tariff revenue is being refunded — to the importers of record, not to the families who paid at the checkout. Five promises, five tests, five fails.
Chapters:
1:04 Were we really being ripped off?
8:24 Did the trade deficit actually fall?
11:19 Did the factories come home?
14:15 Did tariffs make America safer?
16:55 Where did the tariff money go?
20:32 Why trade is cooperation
This is an episode of Diving In, the weekly Platypus Economics deep dive.
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Can You Sanction a Country That's Already Cut Off? | The Professor Is In
1 september 2026 · 21 min
In this episode of the Professor Is In, Justin answers your questions about "Operation Economic Outcast," the White House plan to squeeze Iran by threatening its trading partners with sanctions and loss of dollar access. Lees meer
The catch: the US already has roughly 6,000 sanctions on Iran and a naval blockade, so most of the country is severed already. New pressure only bites if third countries actually fall in line — and the biggest one, China, buys most of Iran's oil.
Justin calls China the Andre the Giant of this fight: to move it, the US would have to start a trade war with a third party country like China, Russia, or Turkey. That would inflict real pain on Americans. If Washington isn't willing to do that, the threat is bravado, not policy.
Diving In on "Economic D-Day": https://youtu.be/tOu7yQD9lAI?si=qtV0qp2FN8wD6i0v
Chapters: 1:19 Is today’s threat to Iran more powerful than the 1960’s threat to Cuba?
6:49 What happens if China doesn’t go along with it?
10:33 What are the economic benefits to countries that go along with this plan?
13:21 How seriously should we take the risk of dollar dominance ending?
This is an episode of The Professor Is In, where producer Augusta brings Justin your questions. Want your question answered next time?
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The Fed Chair Won't Talk (But Markets Listened Anyway) | Off the Clock
29 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
On this Fed-heavy episode of Off the Clock, Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith dig into new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's argument for a quieter, less transparent central bank — and why it doesn't hold up. Warsh defended saying less, insisting markets should take their cues from the economy instead of the Fed. Then his speech pushed expected interest rates sharply higher anyway. Lees meer
Justin's point is simple: whether or not the Fed means to guide you, you're listening either way — so it's better to be clear. Stacey pushes back with the real case for silence, which is the tendency for forward guidance to create "glass handcuffs."
They also weigh the escalating-but-still-small Canada tariff fight (why $20 billion is tiny — until it isn't), the limits of "economic outcast" pressure on Iran, and a worrying dip in women's labor-force participation driven by rising child care costs and shrinking work-from-home flexibility.
Finally, in honor of the late, great Dolly Parton, Justin and Stacey discuss how she was somewhat of an economist herself – with economics permeating so much of her songbook and lasting legacy.
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Why the BLS Guardrails Held — and the Census Bureau's Failed | The Professor Is In
28 augustus 2026 · 27 min
In this episode of the Professor Is In, Justin answers your questions from his earlier episode debunking the Census Bureau’s claim that 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 election. Lees meer
He starts by addressing the elephant in the room: even if the faulty claim were true – it couldn’t have swung anything. Biden won the popular vote by seven million. As for the decisive states: he won Arizona by 10,000 (the report alleges 1,100 fraudulent votes), Georgia by 12,000 (400 alleged), and Wisconsin by 21,000 (500 alleged). The math never gets close.
But the stakes here are far greater than any one report. The Census decides how many congressional representatives your state gets and underpins nearly every official number you rely on. When a statistical agency starts producing propaganda, Justin argues, you're on the same road as Argentina, Greece, and Russia — and your trust in every government figure, from inflation to your representation in Congress, is on the line.
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How To Fake a Voting Scandal | Diving In
26 augustus 2026 · 27 min
The Census Bureau just published a report claiming 24,000 noncitizens illegally voted in the 2020 election. In this episode of Diving In, Justin Wolfers takes the report apart and shows why it reads less like statistics and more like propaganda. The document has no author, no report number, and no named reviewers — a flashing red light that career statisticians have refused to sign their names to it. Lees meer
Justin also does the math: matching 128 million voter records to citizenship files without Social Security numbers means guessing who's who. Apply the Census Bureau's own historical false-match rate of 0.146% and you'd "find" about 21,000 apparent noncitizen voters — even if every single person voted legally. Add outdated naturalization records (the report itself flagged and fixed 64,000 such cases) and the whole 24,000 could vanish. It's counting smoke alarms and calling them fires.
Trusted government statistics are an essential piece of infrastructure on which American prosperity depends. If the institutions that tell you where poverty is rising or how the economy is doing get bent to serve whoever's in power, you lose the ability to hold that power to account — and that's a cost you pay whether you voted or not.
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America Is Reusing Cuba’s Sanctions Strategy on Iran | Diving In
25 augustus 2026 · 16 min
Do sanctions on Iran actually work? Sixty years of the Cuba embargo say probably not. Lees meer
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent just announced what he's calling an "economic D-Day" against Iran — a threat aimed not just at Tehran but at every foreign firm, bank, trader, and shipper that does business with it: choose Iran, or choose access to the U.S. dollar. Justin Wolfers walks you through what was actually announced and then rewinds to 1963, where the Kennedy administration used almost identical language to "tighten the noose" around Cuba. Same playbook, six decades apart.
Here's the problem: the CIA studied the Cuba embargo for 20 years and concluded the sanctions "have not met any of their objectives." Castro stayed in power until 2008; the regime is still there today. Broader research is just as sobering — even optimistic studies find sanctions produce political change only about a third of the time, and almost never regime change against an entrenched authoritarian. One study of Iranian influencers found broad sanctions actually increased pro-government sentiment.
Why should you care? Because sanctions don't stop at the missile factory. There's no border checkpoint that lets in baby formula but not weapons. When you choke an economy, food, medicine, and family remittances get squeezed too — and every time America uses dollar access as an ultimatum, other countries get one more reason to build a system that doesn't need us, quietly eroding the financial leverage that makes your dollar so powerful in the first place.
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The Economics of Feeling Ripped Off | The Professor Is In
22 augustus 2026 · 30 min
Politicians keep promising to bring prices down. In this episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers explains why that's a terrible idea — and why it's not the same thing as slowing inflation. He walks through what actually happens if you force the price level down: wages have to fall too, stores go unprofitable, and the only reliable way to make it happen is to engineer a recession — possibly a depression. The sensible target isn't zero prices, but inflation low enough that you can forget about it. Lees meer
Justin also digs into why your paycheck feels like it's losing the race even when, on average, it isn't. At least half of Americans saw wages beat prices last year — but the gains mostly go to people who switch jobs, and in today's low-hire, low-fire labor market, that door is barely open. So the raise you'd need to keep up is harder to reach right now, which could help explain why a record 71% of Americans expect prices to outrun their incomes (something that almost never actually happens).
What the $20 Burrito Debate Gets Wrong About Affordability https://omny.fm/shows/platypus-economics/burrito-gate-and-the-affordability-paradox-diving-in
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What the Heck is Going On In the Bond Market? | Diving In
19 augustus 2026 · 19 min
Bond yields have jumped from a little over 1% just after COVID to more than 5%, and Justin Wolfers walks you through why that matters at your kitchen table. The short version: the U.S. government is borrowing an enormous amount of money, lining up at the bank ahead of you and me, and that pushes the price of borrowing — the interest rate — up for everyone. Lees meer
Justin sorts the story into three parts: why everyone's suddenly talking about the bond market, what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is actually doing, and what it all signals. Two forces are driving yields up — heavy borrowing for the AI buildout, and a federal deficit at post-war highs outside of COVID and the Great Recession, even as the economy is doing okay. Markets are quietly asking whether the government is serious about paying them back.
Here's what's at stake for you: when the government crowds the credit line, the rate on your next mortgage, car loan, and credit card goes up, and a bigger interest bill each month means less cash to get by. Then there's Bessent's move to double a bond-buying program from $2 billion to $4 billion a day — routine plumbing, or an attempt to muffle the warning the bond market is sending? Justin's honest answer: right now, nobody knows.
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