One of the broad keys for the Trump economy will be a shift from one that relies on aggressive monetary policy — zero interest rates, trillions in Fed money-printing — to fiscal policies focused on more broad-based growth that will stretch from Wall Street to Main Street. Though Obama's GDP numbers were pedestrian, the stock market as measured by the S&P 500 jumped more than 240 percent during his time in office. 
This policy will be successful in moving the U.S. economy away from low-growth secular stagnation towards significantly more buoyant performance," Folkerts-Landau said. "We would not be taken by surprise by a doubling of the growth rate of real GDP in the U.S. over the next two years, nor by a further significant move up of equity valuations and a material further appreciation of the dollar."

It is clear that the president's policies are pro-growth, pro-small business, and pro-job creation and there is no doubt that these policies will improve living standards for all americans. The president wants free trade, however he wants fair trade. This means leveling the global economic playing field. 

Andrew Soergel from US News writes about the GDP growth or lack thereof in China, following Trump's trade plans. While China has been known as one of the largest growing economies in the world, it has been slowly decreasing in growth over the past year. Its national annual GDP growth of 6.7 percent has been the lowest since 1990. This lack of economic growth in such a economically powerful country could mean detrimental effects for the world over.
(FLEUR BYRNE)

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2017-01-20/chinese-gdp-growth-drops-to-26-year-low-as-trump-trade-war-looms

Burundi, for example – Rwanda’s neighbour – as been an example of anything but. Burundi suffers poor leadership, continued political instability economic instability; everything Rwanda has defied. Over the last three years, Burundi has seen growth of about 3.4% on average, whereas Rwanda’s reached 6.5%."

This article is all about Rwanda's rapid economic growth, while still being overlooked. Since its horrific genocide only two decades ago, Rwanda has been trying to "rebrand" itself as a modern nation with strong stable leadership, and strong and stable economy. Rwanda is one of the fastest growing economies in not only Africa, but the world, but because of its history, it's not seen as so. Despite this, in some senses, it is more modern than America. They are investing heavily in infrastructure and renewable energy (currently 59% of Rwanda's energy comes from hydropower, whereas only 14% of America's power comes from renewable sources) in hopes of emerging from a dark history similar to Germany's in the 1940s and becoming a player in the African and global community.
(Johnny Donovan)

According to the NY Times' Neil Irwin, the U.S. economy is in a period of growth amidst high political tensions. People are actually buying more, and the Consumer Price Index's rise of 0.6% reflects this. Irwin, like other analysts, attributes the growth to the winter seasons warm weather, but warm weather isn't great for everyone. Utility companies observed a 0.3% fall all around. All in all, the consensus on the state of the U.S. economy is that it is in fact growing, and now, we just have to wait and see how Trump and the Feds react.

(Jacob Leaf)

"Economists Giovanni Peri and Chad Sparber found that inflows of immigrants – whether low- or high-skilled – induced native workers to shift to jobs that are more complementary in nature and where they have a comparative advantage. This type of shifting also limits the impact on native wages and employment."

This article goes against President Trump in his current policy's against immigration. It explains how immigrants do not affect our job market negatively but in reality flurish the job market. It is thought that the number of jobs is fixed but this is not true. If this was true then there would be less jobs for both immigrants and natives. These immigrants have a comparative advantage in manual labor and low skilled jobs. It is found that immigration does not hurt the economy as much as the consensus argues.

(Brian Katz)

Alejandro Chafuen, president and CEO of Atlas Economic Research Foundation, predicts higher growth within the U.S. economy as a result of a “change in outlook as well as in the ideological bent of the designated cabinet members of the incoming administration.” President Trump’s role in increasing the economic growth is analyzed throughout this particular article. In fact, Chafuen believes that some of Trump’s choices for his cabinet reflect a determination to make the U.S. more attractive to business. Furthermore, the strong performance of stocks, in the U.S. and UK, indicate that the world market does in fact take Trump seriously. However, Chaufen describes how an increased amount of global terrorism and conflict affecting U.S. allies poses national security challenges and protectionist threats which threaten the overall growth of the economy. In sum, Chafuen believes that Trump’s role as president will work to increase the economic growth of the U.S.; even so, the country continues to face economic challenges as a result of terrorism and global conflicts. (ANAY SIMUNOVIC) 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alejandrochafuen/2017/01/03/the-u-s-economy-in-2017-welcome-higher-growth/2/#6d41c7e57ba7

A new migrant interested in the same job as you may diminish your odds a little, but a single immigrant with a good idea might end up creating hundreds or thousands of jobs that wouldn’t have existed had he or she not crossed an ocean or border (the impact of son-of-a-migrant Steve Jobs or South African tech entrepreneur Elon Musk comes to mind)." (Shih)

Overall, this article discusses how even though many Americans feel that immigrants will hurt our economic and cause economic failures, immigrants actually help the economy and promote growth. This is because immigrants do not go into all sectors of the work force equally. According to Kevin Shih, "Immigrants are highly overrepresented in either very low-skilled manual and labor-intensive jobs or very high-skilled science and engineering occupations" so therefore, the workforce is minimally changed. There are immigrants who have the power to change the world, such as Elon Musk. Also, because many immigrants are engineers and scientists, they promote growth by promoting innovation from researching. Therefore, this is one reason of how the economy is indeed helped by the addition of immigrants in our society. (KAPLAN)

But America’s youngest cohort of voters remains an underrated force for leftist economics. Burdened by student debt and the rising cost of housing and health care, this younger generation embraces a larger role for government. If, in a decade or two, today’s young liberal revolutionaries become the mainstream force in U.S. politics, Trump will have been a nativist paroxysm that merely delayed the inevitable evolution toward American social democracy."

"Jeffrey Sachs: Markets can only do certain things. They cannot ensure fairness. They cannot help the poorest of the poor. They cannot save the environment, or provide for modern infrastructure. But America has forgotten that in the last 36 years. We’ve been on one long privatization jaunt. The result is an economy that is quite rich but quite unequal, with decrepit infrastructure. The problem is not a shortage of technology but a shortage of common action.

Thompson: That is one of the book’s largest themes. The U.S. doesn’t suffer from scarcity, but rather from the unequal distribution of its abundance. So, there is little in the U.S. economy that cannot be fixed by more taxes, more planning, more spending, and more redistribution. But do any voters really want to hear that message?

Sachs: Millennials do. Bernie Sanders’ campaign showed that a message of economic redistribution can work. Words that used to be horrifying in the American political context, like socialism and social democracy, are commonplace among Millennials. They say government should have a larger role in health care and climate change. So I think the tide is turning."

"...in places where there is a higher African American population, there is less support for public goods. After the war on poverty, you had the Civil Rights Act and changes in the immigration code, which led to the Southern strategy, white identity politics, and a backlash to the civil rights movement.

Beyond that, American politics is much more penetrated by big money, especially after Citizens United. Big money has changed our politics, so that we have the politics of the billionaires. Even Trump, in an unbelievably crass bait and switch, attacked Hillary for her connections to Wall Street and turned to Wall Street to run his economic policy."

In this article, economist and Bernie Sanders adviser Jeffrey D. Sachs is interviewed about the current state and future of the US economy. Sachs believes that as the younger constituents in the United States age and become a more powerful force in the US populace, economic policy will likely take a leftward turn. He also discusses the trends in politics regarding taxation and redistribution. Since the Reagan Era the US has continually cut taxes which has significantly distanced the nation from social democracies around the world. Much of this movement has to do with the racial diversity of the United States, as most countries with Bernie's brand of democracy are predominantly white, and as diversity increases support for redistribution of wealth decreases. Sachs suggests that the growing automation in industry precipitates a need for further transfer of wealth as the income gap will continue to grow while the nation's total income will also increase. He states that blaming someone outside the US for the state of the middle class, Trump's strategy, was formulated as a way by which the rich can avoid be taxed at higher rates, which would be a more pragmatic solution. Finally, Sachs discusses the indifference Americans have towards global problems if they do not affect the United States. He believes that Americans can change the world with very little sums of money, which most Americans don't realize. He also states that is humanity's duty to distribute the incredible wealth the world has amassed so as to help elevate the living conditions and status of those who live in extreme poverty around the world. (Henry Carter)

 

Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, economics commentator and senior correspondent of Business Insider, sees immigration as a factor that increases the overall welfare in our economy.   Costa is surprised that Wall Street analysts today are more focused on President Trump’s corporate tax cuts than they are on the destructive economic effects of his immigration orders.  These immigration orders include “blanket travel bans on citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations as well as orders to increase deportations at the Mexican border with still-shifting guidelines.”   Costa analyzes the role of immigration bans in economic growth.   According to Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, immigration is a substantial source of labor-force growth.  Consequently, a decline in immigration will likely reduce the rate of economic growth.  Furthermore, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP), mass deportation would eventually drop United States GDP by 2.6 percent.  A report by the CAP found that removing these immigrants, largely made up of unauthorized workers, would “reduce national employment by an amount similar to that experienced during the Great Recession.”  In addition, Casto states that immigrants are, in fact, more likely than those born in the United States to start their own business.  Therefore, it is clear that the elimination of unauthorized immigrant workers in the United States will stifle our economic growth. (JACKIE RHOADS)

The center, which advocates for a crackdown on immigration, said illegal border crossers are a net drain of nearly $75,000 per person over their lifetimes. Stopping just 200,000 border-jumpers over the next decade would save some $15 billion.

The better the wall does at stopping people, the more money it saves taxpayers, the report said.

“If a wall stopped half of those expected to successfully enter illegally without going through a port of entry at the southern border over the next 10 years, it would save taxpayers nearly $64 billion — several times the wall’s cost,” Steven A. Camarota, a demographer and the report’s author, wrote.

(Jackie Sussman)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-home-prices-end-2016-on-high-note-case-shiller-says-1488290979

This article discusses how President Trump plans to slash funds for popular programs relating to education, the environment, science, and poverty. Although Republicans generally agree on cutting government programs to reduce the federal deficit, President Trump has broken with Republican leaders, such as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, in campaigning on his promise not to cute= Social Security or Medicaid. Trump believes that increased military spending will make America stronger and safer abroad. Although his budget proposals were not detailed, it is clear that these new budget cuts will impact many American lives, whether it's positive or negative. What many political scientists think is the most significant part of his budget proposals is how it signifies a consistent inclination for President Trump to oppose traditional Republican policies- such as  cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, relationships with Russia, and free trade, 

The daily Treasury reports also show that the national debt increased by $212 billion from Jan. 20 to Feb. 20 in 2009."

Since the inauguration of president Trump the national debt has gone down by $12 billion, a drop of .06%, according to Treasury data. While Trump boasts of his recent success comparing his performance to that of president Obamas, there are some factors he forgot. While the U.S. Debt under president Obama went up $200 billion in the first month, he was also working his way to getting america out of the recession. In the article in the New York Times it reads, "The debt is rising more slowly now because economic growth has strengthened and because of policy decisions made during Mr. Obama’s administration. But the debt is on a clear upward trend."

With Trumps plan to completely shut out Mexico, we will see if this really does have an affect on our economy. Higher tariffs on imports from Mexico and dismantling NAFTA could play a large role not only the political relations between our two countries, which we have already seen, but could also play a role in the economy. This article has linked weakened economies of countries to the surrounding countries around it. Corruption is a big player in this ultimate decision. If Trump were to put these new laws into effect corruption may only get worse due to economic pressure. Instability might have an effect on the people of Mexico blaming us for their new found problems.

 

This article discusses the economic and societal concerns of inequality throughout the world. Published right before the World Economic Forum in 2016, Kim Hjelmgaard wrote this article with the goal of exploiting how technology has altered everyday life and had a huge impact on the economic status of the poorest and richest people in our population. An interesting aspect of this article was the study conducted by Oxfam, a poverty fighting organization, which explored how it only took 388 of the world’s wealthiest individuals to match the poorest half of the world. Furthermore, Oxfam credits this large gap to the decline of national income going to the workers and the constant capital growth  through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits experienced by their owners. In summation, the growing gap in our society's economy negatively impacts our ability to interact with one another and limits our society to act on the desires of the rich. (KATIE ORLIN)

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/01/17/oxfam-wealth-inequality-report-davos/78929370/

But failing to act and leaving future generations with the bill, particularly for millennials—the single largest and most diverse generation of Americans—will have severe negative effects. If not addressed, the debt and Washington's culture of spending threatens to harm all of us, limiting economic opportunity, earning power, and the ability to repay student loans, buy a home, or start a new business. If we don't put Medicare and Social Security on a sustainable path, they'll be bankrupt long before we reach retiring age."

This article speaks to the United States' national wealth, specifically, the country's national debt. The debt is currently at 19.93 trillion dollars, and with it closing in on 20 trillion dollars, the article talks about impacts that a huge debt could have in the future. Entitlement programs are likely to go bankrupt long before any of our generation is ready to recieve them, which means we will be paying in money we will never see. Additionally, the interest on the debt will become a larger sum of our budget, only compounding the issue and resulting in higher taxes.

President Trump has stated, consistent with conservative values, that taxes should be cut and the government should be smaller. However, unlike Republicans like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, who ran on entitlement reform in 2012, Trump says he will not touch entitlements. This will likely cause an even more significant rise in the debt, only worsening the problems created by Obama's disastrous spending policies, which doubled the debt during his presidency.

(Fritz Schemel)

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/total-federal-debt-set-to-pass-20-trillion-a-huge-threat-to-millennials/article/2615903

According to Reuters Business Report, despite massive consumer spending our GDP has decreased growth in the fourth quarter. Several estimates in the business and government spending sector were much higher than the real numbers turned out to be. This is only one quarter and the economist writing this report that an acceleration in growth is likely.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-economy-idUSKBN1671KL

“Now, higher energy prices are lifting broad price gauges across advanced economies and low unemployment in the U.S. is forcing employers to compete over a smaller pool of available workers, putting upward pressure on wages. Fed officials have said they expect continued firming in inflation over the coming months and years.”

As the United States’ inflation rate approaches 2 percent––the Federal Reserve’s annual target––the case has been made for the central bank to raise short-term interest rates as quickly as this month. Additionally, the personal-consumption price index (PCE) rose 0.4 percent in January––a 1.9 percent increase from 2016. The Federal Reserve’s next meeting is in approximately two weeks, and the odds of a price increase are estimated at 2-in-3, per CME Group. Still, a rate increase seems imminent with the country’s expected growing inflation over the coming months. 

GDPNow is a GDP forecaster put forth by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Each day, GDP growth is calculated and estimated based on current economic growth, including real time information like Census Bureau statistical releases and retail sales. It is important to note 
that the graph and numbers provided are on a relatively small scale compared to the size of the entire economy. For example, the graph shows a decreasing trend in the predicted GDP percentage growth, however the Y axis of the graph only ranges from 1.5%-3.5% and the X axis from 12/22/16 to 3/2/17 (a span of roughly 3 months). An essential takeaway from this report is that the GDP growth can change by the hour, day, week, or month, depending on recent document releases and current economic behavior. 

(NICOLE WELCH)

In an interview with Fox & Friends that aired Tuesday morning, Trump said part of the money for a proposed increase in military spending would come from a revved-up economy.

Wall Street will be listening for clues or details regarding the administration's plans on tax reform and deregulation, which could give the economy a boost."

With last year producing the worst economic growth (1.6%) the U.S. has seen since 2011, the U.S. was bound for intense policy changes. Changes such as foreign trade and tax cuts bring a lot of economic growth for the U.S. However, with heavy budget extensions for the military, this growth can also be put at risk. I believe that these plans are all in tact to maintain President Trump's goal of 4% growth this year, as there are numerous analysts and economists who run projections and proof read these plans. However, I think it is important to maintain priorities as a president which I believe makes it an extremely difficult job.

Australia had been expected to go into its first economic recession in 25 years due to a sluggish economy in the first three quarters of the year but has been able to rebound in the fourth quarter outpacing expectations. Australia’s economy heavily relies on trading natural resources like coal and iron which saw a surge in pricing due to increasing demand for chinese industry. This was also combined with an increase in consumer spending, increasing profits of private companies and large scale government investment. The Reserve Bank of Australia is singling that this fits with their optimistic outlook for the economy and that they are unlikely to lower interest rates further. 

In 2016 Ethiopia’s GDP ($69.2 billion dollars) surpassed Kenya’s GDP ($69.1 billion dollars), after Ethiopia’s economy went through a period of dramatic growth. In 2000 Kenya’s GDP (14 billion U.S. dollars) was almost double that of Ethiopia’s (8 billion U.S. dollars), but Ethiopia’s recent double digit growth is causing it to become the leading economy in East Africa. Ethiopia has the second largest population on the African continent (population 100 million) and because of its large population it is drawing attention from other countries. This is the cause of Ethiopia’s fast paced growth. China has been putting a lot of resources and energy into Ethiopia; in 2013 trade between the two countries is over 2 billion U.S. dollars. Although China benefits more than Ethiopia in the trade, China is helping to modernize Ethiopia by putting in new roadways, railroads and telecommunication lines. Unfortunately for Ethiopia steady growth may not be attainable with the current political friction, droughts and constant need for emergency food aid. Even though Ethiopia has surpassed Kenya’s GDP, the GDP per capita is still far behind, once again falling at around 50 percent of Kenya’s. Although Ethiopia still faces many challenges,  World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) predict that the economy will continue to grow at an annual rate of 7 to 9 percent. (Josiah Tarrant)

http://www.nan.ng/news/ethiopia-set-surpass-kenyas-economy/

According to this article, Trump’s position as president has put a damper on the global economy, and there’s more to come. This stems from the political uncertainty that’s in the mind of every single person. With no one knowing what Trump’s policies will do and how it will affect the world’s economy, the global trade will decrease. In the past 30 years, a study between trade economic policy has showed that they are directly related. With uncertainty remaining high, global trade will be quiet. As a consequence of the explosion in recent trade,  a large number of global supply chains have been created.  These chains are seen as to improving business, making it more efficient and boosting productivity.

Of the nation's 20 largest cities, seven reached their all-time highs in December: Seattle, Portland, Denver, Boston, Charlotte, North Carolina, San Francisco and Dallas."

This price growth shows the healthy pace for home sales, which increased in December and January to the fastest level in a decade. More consistent job gains and Increasing consumer confidence have encouraged many people to risk looking for a home. Also, with a low availability for properties in the US, especially in major cities, buyers bid against one another which has caused the growth of US home-prices. Home prices continue to increase, with the national average growing faster than at any time in the last two and a half year. Seattle, Portland, Oregon, and Denver are at the top of the chart with an annualized rate of home pricing increasing 10.8%. Many people have been concerned in fear that this growth will cause an increase in the US inflation. David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, has said the rate of increase will not affect the inflation. Low availability for homes has caused the growth in home pricing.

Andrew Badeski

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/28/us-home-prices-rise-56-in-december-sp-corelogic-case-shiller.html