By Robert Romano After two quarters, the U.S. economy is growing at an annualized, inflation-adjusted rate of 1 percent — or 0.5 percent so far through June — according to data compiled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis . That stinks. In fact, it stinks so bad that to get to 3 percent for the year, the […]

By Rick Manning Donald Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t believe that America has gotten the better end of trade deals over the past twenty years and has built much of his appeal to voters who have seen their wages stagnate and have witnessed or […]

By Rick Manning As originally published on http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/15/trade-fast-track-supporters-should-oppose-trans-pacific-partnership.html President Obama is attempting to force a vote on his Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal during the upcoming lame duck session , and under the terms of last year’s fast track trade bill, he just might be able to do it. The law requires […]

By Robert Romano “Agreements are worthless without enforcement… [T]he [World Trade Organization] WTO involves a long list of commitments by the member countries, as we have seen above.  But without some mechanism to enforce these agreements, countries will depart from them whenever they perceive it in their […]

By Rick Manning As originally published at http://www.riponsociety.org/article/bad-trade-deals-are-keeping-our-economy-in-neutral/ Standing beneath a statue of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam earlier this year, U.S. president Barack Obama bragged about his ability to ram a rigged, crony capitalist trade deal through a lame duck U.S. Congress. “Nothing is easy in Washington […]

  By Dave Cribbin Armed with the best junk science money can buy and dubious arguments that don’t pass the laugh test the anti-smoking cabal has enlisted big government to do its bidding through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA has compiled and promulgated new rules that could in their current […]

By Robert Romano So much for the promised economic catastrophe that was to befall the UK in the aftermath of the June 23 vote to leave the European Union (EU). The FTSE 100 Index has already shrugged off all its initial losses following four hectic trading days that followed. After trading closed on Wednesday, the stock exchange is actually […]

By Rick Manning Yay, the unemployment rate is down to 4.7 percent. Boo, the labor participation rate dropped precipitously and is at historically low-levels. So, what does the May jobs report mean?  Is the economy finally getting better and moving off the sluggish cycle it has been stuck in for six […]

By Robert Romano An average, record 56 million working age adults aged 16 to 64 are not in the labor force in 2016, an analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows . That is to say, they are neither working nor looking for work. The non-participating 56 million accounts for 27.1 percent of the working […]

By Robert Romano The problem with the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement isn’t that it is free trade, it is that it is not. You cannot have free trade when even after a trade agreement goes into effect and tariffs are supposedly reduced many of our trading […]