Retail Sales Continue Decline

 Financial FAQs

“Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for August 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $732.0 billion, up 0.6 percent (±0.4 percent) from the previous month, and up 5.0 percent (±0.5 percent) from August 2024.” Census.gov

FREDretailsales

The financial markets rallied because the US Census Bureau’s August retail sales report showed consumers were still shopping and might save the holiday season for retailers. But it couldn’t hide the damage from the tariff wars.

The FRED graph of retail sales shows the huge monthly fluctuations in sales due to the tariff uncertainty. January retail sales (i.e., when Trump was sworn in) plunged 1%. In March it rose 1.3% to get ahead of Trump’s April 2 retaliatory tariffs. Then it plunged for two more months before Trump announced the 90-day reprieve, after which it rose 1% before beginning the monthly sales decline to 0.6% in August.

And retail sales are reported without inflation factored in as I highlighted above. Today’s inflation rate is 3% and climbing, so ‘real’ retail sales on average have been increasing just 2%. And this must be in large part because of the decline in the number of shoppers.

The latest unemployment report showed there has been a -313,000 decline year-over-year in the working population mostly thanks to the ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants. Although less than 100,000 undocumented immigrants have been incarcerated by ICE, there are millions more hiding in their homes or elsewhere to avoid being arrested.

Also factor in the job decline from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The economy created half as many new jobs from early 2024 to early 2025 in its national benchmark reassessment of the job market—a loss of -991,000 jobs—amounting to about 71,000 new jobs a month instead of the previously reported 147,000.

This decline will eventually figure into economic growth as well, since consumers power two-thirds of GDP growth.

The financial markets are in a relief rally because the tariffs (i.e., import taxes) aren’t yet stopping consumers from shopping and eating. New car and car parts sales increased in August for the third month in a row. Car shoppers have been buying more vehicles than usual for the past several months to avoid anticipated price increases in the coming months as tariffs take full effect.

Americans have also spent more on certain items that are heavily imported, such as coffee and car parts, whose prices have risen (coffee prices are up 15%, thanks in part to Trump’s 50% tariffs in Brazilian imports).

Another critical category, restaurant sales, advanced 0.7% last month. Overall restaurant spending is up 6.6% in the past three months compared with the same three-month period one year ago.

People buy more prepared food when they are confident in the economy. They eat out less when they are anxious about their jobs, according to MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash, a commentator I like to follow.

Wednesday’s Federal Reserve rate cut could power more consumer spending and higher inflation. Many upper income earners are willing to pay the higher tab, but not the bottom 20 percent of income earners.

And the bottom 20 percenters are in the main Trump supporters. So, I for one hope the Supreme Court disallows many of the tariffs-by-executive order Trump is foisting on the rest of the world. They are counter-productive, since their goal is not really economic. They are tax increases on all Americans to aid in paying down the huge debt incurred from Trump’s gigantic transfer of wealth in his big beautiful tax bill.

So he will use any excuse to levy them. The 50 percent Brazilian tariff is an excellent example, since Brazil imports more from the US than it exports. Trump has said he did it to attempt to influence the outcome of convicted felon buddy Jair Bolsonaro’s trial. It didn’t work, of course, as Bolsonaro is going to jail.

Trump wants to be a dictator, and a major trait of dictators is the accumulation of enormous wealth, not to “lift all boats” as JF Kennedy once said, but their own boats while the rest of US sink.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Are We in a Recession?

Financial FAQs

“The preliminary estimate of the Current Employment Statistics (CES) national benchmark revision to total nonfarm employment for March 2025 is -911,000 (-0.6 percent), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. BLS.gov

FREDunemployment

There was a lot of consternation when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the economy created half as many new jobs from early 2024 to early 2025 in its national benchmark reassessment of the job market— amounting to about 71,000 new jobs a month instead of the previously reported 147,000, said MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash.

Did it mean the BLS doesn’t know what it is doing, and Trump was right to fire the BLS head because he didn’t like the numbers? No, but it does show the job slowdown began last fall during the Biden administration, not in January.

Why? Because the Federal Reserve had been holding their Fed Funds rate at 5.33% for too long, for more than one year until September 2024, before dropping it suddenly -0.5% to 4.83%, then two more times in November and December to 4.33%, where it’s been ever since.

The PCE inflation rate had fallen to 2 percent, so it looked like inflation had been conquered, and it was hurting consumer spending. Did the Fed see the possibility of a recession?

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER that calls recessions) put up the above FRED unemployment rate graph on its website as a simplified picture of what has happened to the unemployment rate during past recessions since 1980 (gray bars are recessions).

Past economic downturns seem to have begun when the unemployment rate rose to 5% and was as high as 10% during the 1981 and 2008 recessions and took months, even years in some cases, to end. The Great Recession of 2008-09 lasted more than 1.5 years, which made it the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression with the loss of nearly 8.9 million jobs, per the BLS.

COVID-19 was the exception to other recessions because the unemployment rate was already 3.5% when it hit and quickly returned to 3.5% when the pandemic ended, indicating the US economy was still fully employed and COVID-19 caused a temporary slowdown in growth. Since then, the unemployment rate has risen steadily to 4.3% in August.

This doesn’t really answer the recession question, since the NBER also looks at other economic numbers, such as real GDP (inflation adjusted), real personal income minus government transfers, real consumer spending, and industrial production, which are still growing, but for how much longer?

This is while the tariffs are in fact causing higher inflation. The BLS reported its Consumer Price Index is up to 2.9% annually from 2.3% in April before the tariffs kicked in, a sure sign that the tariffs have raised overall prices.

“The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in August, after rising 0.2 percent in July, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.9 percent before seasonal adjustment.” BLS.gov

The financial markets rallied on the latest inflation news, apparently believing the Fed will finally begin to cut interest rates in September—for the first time since last December.

Lower interest rates are badly needed to counter the high tariff rates that are slowing economic growth, if SCOTUS allows them in Trump’s appeal. They are causing the loss of $trillions to the US auto makers. GM reports it will have lost $1trillion in profits this year if the tariffs remain.

But what if SCOTUS disallows them? The NYtimes cites Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation. “You would be doing a tax cut. You would be undoing a tax increase and you would provide relief to lots of businesses and consumers.”

Wouldn’t that be a better outcome? It would lower import costs and should mean lower prices overall.

We know that upcoming rate cuts by the Federal Reserve are now guaranteed even with the latest inflation reports because of the weak job numbers. This will surely spark higher near-term consumer spending and capital expenditures due to the reduction in borrowing costs, but for how long if the tariffs are allowed, as I said?

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Another Civil War?

 Popular Economics Weekly

“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” JB Pritzer, Governor of Illinois

 

CBS

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has been documenting the irrational talk of President Trump, who seems to be trying to distract the media from the bad economic news and his involvement in the Epstein files in her quote from Governor Pritzer that she cited above.

“Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” said Professor Richardson

I believe it’s worse than that. He seems to want to foment a civil war by threatening to “invade” Chicago and New York as he invaded Los Angeles, using armed red state National Guard troops. The message is clear. Red southern states are finally able to invade blue northern states, something they couldn’t do in the 1860s civil war!

Can it also be a pretext for stopping the vote in upcoming elections by declaring some form of martial law? The courts have stopped his alien invasion rationale to date for rounding up undocumented immigrants and deporting them without due process.

But economic growth keeps being revised downward. In the Labor Department’s latest revisions, the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs in the last months of the Biden presidency and early stages of the Trump administration, indicating the labor market began to weaken far sooner than previously believed.

The updated employment figures from April 2024 to March 2025 could cause the Federal Reserve to lower short-term interest rates even more in September — and beyond. The latest downward revision is the biggest since at least 2000, reports MarketWatch’s Jeffry Bartash.

As a result, the pace of job creation from May through August slowed to 27,000 a month, one of the worst stretches since 2010 if the pandemic era is excluded.

Trump’s desperate attempt to deflect media attention now that the SCOTUS shadow docket has just allowed him to ignore the Fourth Amendment ban on indiscriminate search and seizure, will give Democrats plenty of political ammunition for the upcoming elections. The Supreme Court decision means ICE can stop any Hispanic looking, or Spanish speaking, person who must prove to their satisfaction that they are a US citizen or here legally.

It is an incredible overstretching of authority. And the immigration roundup in general will harm legal immigrants and minorities as well. Will Americans vote for a political party that blatantly breaks the Fourth Amendment, other than the hard line MAGA base that believes anything Trump says?

It is why Trump wants to rename the Defense Department as the Department of War, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is now talking and acting like a White Supremacist to rally Trump’s base.

I believe that Trump will touch a nerve that he hadn’t counted on, Americans’ love of freedom. Trump preaches the opposite, the right to imprison many Americans on almost any pretext.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

The Job Losses Begin

Popular Economics Weekly

“Trump’s arbitrary, capricious, and mercurial decisions about tariffs and everything else that affects the economy have made it impossible for employers to make even modest predictions about the future. So they won’t hire.” Robert Reich, Former U.S. Labor Secretary

FREDpayrolls

Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in August (+22,000) and has shown little change since April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. The unemployment rate, at 4.3 percent, also changed little in August. A job gain in health care was partially offset by losses in federal government and in mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction. BLS.gov

The Labor Department summary of the August unemployment report was misleading. There were lots of changes. Professor Reich, President Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, was just hinting at the damage Trump’s policies have wreaked since April 2 and the announcement of his tariff war on the rest of the world.

Job growth, for instance, since April has been a disaster. Revisions to past payrolls reveal that June private nonfarm payrolls lost jobs (-13,000) for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.

And the 22,000 total of new hires in August means that job growth has stagnated, since job growth is no longer keeping up with population growth, hence higher unemployment to come. The unemployment rate of 4.3% is a four-year high.

The Retail, Transportation, Education & Health, and Leisure/Hospitality sectors added a total of 88,000 jobs, which means that the rest of the economy lost -66,000 jobs, including the federal government (-14,000). It’s further evidence of the damage the DOGE government job cuts have done.

Consumers will be savings more and spending less for the holidays, which is a sign of slowing growth and even a recession, as I’ve been saying in past blogs.

Employers have stopped hiring because of the mostly illegal tariffs that may have to be refunded to importers, say the courts. The immigration raids are draining small businesses of workers, and the DOGE job reductions are cutting off the basic information that businesses need to operate; like weather predictions, medical information (vaccinations for babies and school kids).

There were never enough native-born workers to keep the job market growing, historically. It’s been the average one million per year influx of new immigrants that have filled the void of job vacancies historically.

Trump is also turning into Don Quixote with his irrational dislike of windmills. He is shutting down programs for future wind and solar power endangering future energy sources that AI will need to power the future economy.

There was other news that showed similar job weakness. The ADP, a private payroll processor, showed monthly payroll gain of just 54,000 jobs, down from 106,000 jobs in July.

And the U.S. JOLTS report of job hirings and separations was also negative for the first time since the pandemic. It estimates the actual number of monthly hirings and job losses. The number of people hired in July totaled 5.31 million, but the increase was almost entirely offset by 5.29 million “separations” —layoffs, job quitters, retirements, hence to real job growth.

This is while the Biden administration averaged 150,000 per month job increases during its four-year run.

The inflation component of stagflation is already happening, in spite of the Q2 jump in GDP to 3.1% that was mostly due to the drop in imports as the tariff taxes have begun to kick in.

“Trump promised to reduce prices, but prices continue to rise. Blame Trump’s tariffs. Prices for wholesalers rose at the fastest pace in three years in July, and those wholesale prices are now being passed on to retailers and consumers,” continued Professor Reich.

And consumers are also seeing rising inflation. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index (PCE), the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 2.9% annually without volatile food and energy price changes, I said last week. That’s too high for the Fed’s target rate of 2% inflation that prevailed until the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in supply lines that are still recovering for most of the world.

The unemployment report is a huge eyeopener for Republicans who will attempt to explain it away as they did last month when Trump fired the head of the BLS that calculated the unemployment report. Job growth has quickly ground to a halt.

They and the American public will soon realize that allowing Trump’s massive tariffs without congressional consent isn’t working. It was a power play to increase his wealth and that of the Oligarchs that support him.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

Where is Robin Hood?

 

Financial FAQs

“List and hearken, gentlemen,

That be of free-born blood,

I shall you tell of a good yeoman,

His name was Robin Hood.”

 

FRED%gdp

Where is a modern Robin Hood when we need him or her, someone who can stop ‘King’ Trump from robbing the poor as the evil King John pillaged his people in medieval times? One legend says it wasn’t until the return of Richard the Lionhearted from the Crusades who usurped King John and brought justice back to the people of his kingdom.

King John impoverished his subjects with prohibitive taxes to support himself and his noblemen, just as ‘King’ Trump is levying excessive tariffs to pay for the tax cuts that are enriching himself, his oligarchs, and ballooning our national debt.

The massive public debt that Trump and his Republicans have deemed a national emergency is really of their own creation; tax cuts that weren’t paid for by successive Republican administrations.

The FRED graph shows the large jump in debt to 120 percent of GDP from successive Republican administrations since 1980 (Reagan), 2000 (GW Bush) and 2016 (Trump I). Gray bars are recessions.

It was the beginning of the domination of big business and globalization of whole industries, as well as the suppression of working Americans’ rights with the breaking up of the labor unions.

It was the very same tax cuts and deregulation that either ignored the laws or evaded them that Republicans have done since Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down schemes in 1980 that gave us the first real national debt ($400 million).

GW Bush continued the tax cuts which added the first $1 billion deficit, President Trump added another $5 billion in debt during his first term and is adding another $4-$5 billion in his just passed big ‘beautiful’ tax cut bill.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first Robin Hood in modern times to root out the Robber Barons of the First Gilded Age by busting their monopolies and prosecuting the lawbreakers. It initiated the Progressive Era that led to FDR’s New Deal for the American people.

The only dip in debt (as percentage of GDP) portrayed in the graph was the Clinton Democratic administration’s four budget surpluses (1996-2000) that would have practically abolished the debt altogether if GW Bush and his Republicans had not pushed through two more tax cut bills that weren’t paid for.

This has resulted in at least a $2 trillion transfer in wealth from working class folk that has enriched Big Business and corporate CEOS immeasurably since 1980. Their huge wealth and support made another Trump administration possible.

It’s time for Democrats to find their own Robin Hood who can reverse the theft in the courts and win elections by exposing Trump’s Oligarchs for what they are, Robber Barons.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

This Inflation Isn't Temporary--Part II

 Popular Economics Weekly

From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for July increased 2.6 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 2.9 percent from one year ago. BLS.gov

BLS.gov

The PCE price index is one of several inflation measures that the Fed will use to determine whether to cut the Fed Funds rate at their September FOMC meeting. The other measures include the unemployment report and Consumer Price Index that will be out before their next meeting.

Fed Chair Powell has recently implied at the Jackson Hole Conference that if the employment picture is as bad as that of the past three months, they might even cut it -0.50%.

That would help borrowers because the Prime Rate would drop to 7.0% (from 7.5%) that lenders use for credit card and car loan rates. Consumer spending would then most likely pick up and elevate prices on top of the higher prices already appearing from the tariff taxes that Trump has levied.

This highlights the incredible stupidity of Republicans that may come to haunt them, who have passed massive tax cuts while allowing Trump to create havoc with his tariff war. They are counting on an increase in economic growth next year from higher capital investment in such as AI to pay for it and keep stagflation from happening.

But the inflation part of stagflation is already happening, in spite of the Q2 jump in GDP to 3.1% that was mostly due to the drop in imports, as the tariff taxes have begun to kick in.

Consumers are already seeing rising inflation. The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index (PCE), the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 2.9% annually without volatile food and energy price changes. That’s too high for the Fed’s target rate of 2% inflation that prevailed until the COVID-19 pandemic threw a monkey wrench in supply lines that are still recovering for most of the world.

It is a huge miscalculation for Republicans to believe that allowing Trump’s massive tariffs without their consent has anything more to do than increasing his wealth, and that of the Oligarchs that support him.

How much of the investments promised by Japan and the EU in their new tariff agreements will materialize, and how will it be spent? How much manufacturing can return to the US that must still compete with cheaper foreign products?

We know how con men operate from experience. Prices weren’t reduced or a Ukraine peace deal negotiated on ‘Day 1” as Trump had promised.

It will mostly be more smoke and mirrors that the White House propaganda machine will attempt to make Americans believe there is very little inflation and the job market won’t further worsen. Trump already fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) head that reported job growth slowed precipitously over the past three months because he didn’t like the numbers.

The above graph pictures how consumers have been behaving this year during the chaos. Their disposable incomes (blue bars) and savings (black line) had been rising faster than spending (outlays) until April when tax returns are due (and Trump’s retaliatory tariffs were first announced). Then it reversed. The spending rate has been increasing (brown bars) faster than savings since then as consumers are depleting their savings accounts once again.

Consumers spent more on cars, car parts and financial services (59%) of their Personal Consumption Expenditures, while gas and energy spending fell 12.1%. Their personal savings rate has hovered around 4% all year.

It’s an important indicator because personal savings rise sharply when consumers pocket their incomes if they fear something bad is about to happen, like higher unemployment. If the Fed also sees danger, then they will cut their interest rates.

And if President Trump succeeds in politicizing the Fed by firing Governor Lisa Cook and hiring another BLS head who will cook the job numbers for him, so that he can hide what is really happening in the job market, then all bets are off on just how bad the stagflation that results will be.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

"Mr. President, do not come to Chicago."

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

“So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump's military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.” CBS News

CBS

President Trump and Republicans have expanded their defacto civil war by invading Democratic blue states, something the original confederacy couldn’t do. He wants to impoverish them just as Republicans have milked their red states for decades.

That’s why Illinois Governor JB Pritzer came out swinging at a press conference when he learned that President Donald Trump was looking at occupying Chicago and Philadelphia next with National Guard troops from some of the red states to combat crime.

“Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against, and it's the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances,” said Governor Pritzer

But there’s more to Trump’s actions. Pritzer wanted Americans to realize that Trump and his Republicans are defunding everything the federal government provides to protect Americans from crime to pay for his tax cuts for the wealthiest. The total is $1,166 billion in cuts to public safety and crime prevention programs, as well as grants to local police departments, said Governor Pritzer.

There are good reasons that blue states are more prosperous and do a better job at protecting their citizens. They have higher minimum wages, fewer restrictions to the right to collective bargain and form trade unions, women’s rights, and better health care than the red states.

And what if red staters understood they only get the leftovers, including less disaster aid when they suffer a disproportionate number of hurricanes, floods and tornadoes, such as happened in Kerrville, Texas?

Everyone loves tax cuts, but not when it creates an almost $39 trillion public debt that endangers the full faith and credit of the U.S. Trump wants to pay for the tax cuts with massive tariff hikes by regressing to a century-ago Gilded Age that enriched the few and corrupted many.

It is the reason for the continuing civil war, I said last week, Republicans trumpet there are more individual rights and freedoms with smaller government and lower taxes.

But it is really to maintain control by preserving as much of the vestiges of the agrarian, slaveholding culture as possible.

By depriving red state citizens of adequate health care in the name of lower taxes and smaller government, they become sicker. By restricting union organizing with right to work laws, workers not only have lower incomes, but less time with their families and for leisure.

And attempting to erase DEI mandates from existing laws and educational institutions is their attempt to resuscitate the Jim Crow laws of racial segregation that took a century to redress.

Won’t cutting government research on healthcare and the climate, slashing funding for the FAA and NOAA make us less safe as well, when the President’s primary job is to protect Americans not harm them?

It looks like a massive dereliction of duty that would fit the definition of a “high crime and misdemeanor.”

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen