Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

Why an "infinity percent" tariff on Canada may hurt Americans more than Canadians. 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.? Subscribe — it's the one relationship with the U.S. that comes with zero tariffs: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. Subscribe — it's the one interest rate that never rockets up on you: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Inflation is stuck at 3.4% and prices are outrunning your paycheck. Here's what August really showed. 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. Subscribe — it's the one price that isn't rocketing up this month: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Is the promise real, and who actually pays for it? 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. Subscribe — I'll owe you $5,000, and I promise about as much as the President does: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Can you still trust the jobs numbers after Commerce dropped its ban on political interference? 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 Subscribe — it's one number you can trust to go up honestly: on YouTube 👉 https://www.youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

How the government can rig official statistics without ever faking a single number. 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 Subscribe: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. Subscribe — it's the one thing crossing your feed with zero tariffs attached: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Why did Trump's tariffs fail? It's a competence problem, not just a trade-theory problem. 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 … Want your question answered next time? Subscribe and comment: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. Subscribe — it's free, it's monthly, and unlike your real wages, it never falls behind: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. Justin walks through the three forces pushing long-term interest rates higher. Subscribe — it's the one rate that won't rise no matter what the bond market does: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Trump’s tariffs were supposed to do five things. So how did they actually score? 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. Subscribe to improve your GPA: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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? Subscribe and comment: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. 🔒 Get 20% off DeleteMe by going to https://joindeleteme.com/WOLFERS and use code WOLFERS to protect your privacy! 🙌 Subscribe — it's the one signal we promise to make loud and clear: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. Subscribe — it's one number around here nobody's fudging: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. Subscribe — it's a truth-finding institution with a much smaller error rate: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

Do sanctions on Iran actually work? Sixty years of the Cuba embargo say probably not. 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. Subscribe — it's the one economic lifeline we promise never to sever: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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 🔒 Get 20% off DeleteMe by going to https://joindeleteme.com/WOLFERS and use code WOLFERS to protect your privacy! 🙌 Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics Subscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

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. 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. Subscribe on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics Subscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers

A college student said a burrito shouldn't cost $20, and suddenly everyone seemed to be arguing about affordability. In this latest installment of Diving In, Justin Wolfers uses that burrito as a metaphor to untangle a real puzzle: 95% of Americans think there's an affordability crisis, two-thirds say groceries are unaffordable — yet by early 2026, every measure of real pay is above where it stood before the 2022 inflation burst. Both things can be true, and Justin shows you how. Using five different real-wage measures, the Atlanta Fed's tracker of the same workers over time, and price and wage growth data from 12 countries over 60 years, he shows that when prices rise, your wages almost always catch up — and pretty quickly. But since most people experience wage and price hikes as two separate acts in a psychological drama, it can feel like your raise got stolen. Now, a record 71% of Americans believe their income won’t keep pace with prices. And the bundle of bad policies raising the price of your burrito is making matters worse. Subscribe — it's the one upgrade that won't cost you the guac: on YouTube 👉 https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers One more thing: When I create these videos, I often crunch a few numbers in Stata, with whom I’ve got a paid partnership. Today, I used it to explore the relationship between rising prices and wages in America and 11 other countries. Click through here: https://platypuseconomics.com/stata/wages_and_inflation_oecd_worksheet.pdf if you'd like to follow along!

Justin Wolfers and Bloomberg's Stacey Vanek Smith pick through a week of confusing economic news on the latest episode of Off the Clock. First up, inflation. Inflation came in at 3.4% — not great, not terrible — but here's the part that stings: prices are still rising faster than wages and the average American paycheck buys less than it did a year ago. They also dig into the July jobs report and why it was a real jolt: the economy lost 23,000 jobs when forecasters expected a gain of 80,000, and earlier months got revised down too. Then Stacey talks to Justin about how lab-grown diamonds have absolutely crushed prices in this luxury industry (a $6,000 stone now sells for $10 at Walmart). This prompted a fascinating discussion on the diamond-water paradox, thinking at the margin, and why the AI shock to "cognitive work" may be the labor market's version of the same thing. Finally, Justin and Stacey cap off the episode with another round of Chart versus Chart. Be sure to vote for your favorite on the channel homepage for Platypus Economics. Subscribe on YouTube https://youtube.com/platypuseconomics Subscribe on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers Follow Stacey @svankesmith