WASHINGTON — In the public imagination, no industry better symbolizes the downfall of U.S. manufacturing than steel. Shuttered plants dot the Midwest. Since 1973, steel employment has dropped 76 percent, from 610,700 to 147,300 in 2015. Moreover, the culprit seems clear — trade — and its influence seems pervasive: Manufacturing as a whole lost about […]

WASHINGTON — Someone — the Russian military, say many cyber experts — broke into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, releasing emails and sensitive documents. Sounds bad, and is. But a worse danger looms: the possibility that hackers (whether Russians or others) will manipulate our voting machines, casting […]

WASHINGTON — The hostility toward Wall Street remains so great that both political parties say, in their platforms, that they’d like to break up America’s biggest banks. But before engaging in this drastic economic surgery, it’s worth examining whether Dodd-Frank is working. Recall that the law, named after its congressional sponsors, former Sen. Christopher Dodd […]

WASHINGTON — Columnists get complaints. After my last column (which argued that maybe the economy is better than we say), I got one from Alice Lang of Spartanburg, South Carolina. She accused me (politely) of ignoring the long-term unemployed, of which she is one. After our conversation, I asked her to put her thoughts in […]

WASHINGTON — It’s the revolution of rising expectations again. Watching Donald Trump last week, I thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political philosopher whose “Democracy in America,” published in the 1830s, remains the most insightful study of our national character. But it was de Tocqueville’s other masterpiece, “The Old Regime and the French Revolution” […]

WASHINGTON — If economic commentators (including me) seem to agree on one thing, it is this: Jobs in America have become less secure. If you’ve got an OK job, don’t let go, because you may not be able to find another. The conventional wisdom is widely shared — but it may be wrong. We now […]

WASHINGTON — The Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week ought to be interesting, but whether it will be informative is another question. Barring a last-minute surprise, the delegates will nominate real estate magnate Donald Trump to be the GOP presidential candidate, and he will pledge — probably repeatedly — to “make America great again.” […]

“When we start suggesting that somehow there’s this enormous polarization [on race] and we’re back to the situation in the ’60s — that’s just not true.” — President Obama, July 9, 2016 WASHINGTON — Whatever happens — and urban riots cannot be excluded — President Obama is correct on one thing: This is not the […]