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By Dave Rank and Alan Yu

President-elect Donald Trump has made clear, through his policy proposals on the campaign trail and by those he has chosen to lead his national security team, what his plans for China policy under his second administration will look like. It is equally clear that his policy approaches threaten to wreck the U.S. economy, hurt American workers, damage trust with like-minded countries around the world, and increase wasteful military spending, even as they make the United States less secure.

Making America poorer, weaker, and less secure

On trade, Trump pledged to levy a 60 percent tariff on all goods from China and a 10 percent tariff on all other imported goods, regardless of whether those products are—or even could be—made by Americans. There is a place for judicious use of tariffs as a part of a president’s trade toolbox, but it is important to think through the likely impacts of a 60 percent tariff on Chinese-made goods. -- READ MORE

By Mia Ives-Rublee & Casey Doherty

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the White House Office of Management and Budget are asking the public to comment on a new rule on Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Section 14(c) allows employers to request a certificate from the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division to pay less than the federal minimum wage to disabled workers. The new rule would make it so that the Wage and Hour Division can no longer issue Section 14(c) certificates, thereby ending the practice of paying disabled people subminimum wages.

Where to submit comments on the rule

The proposed rule and comment submission box can be accessed through the Federal Register. Comments must be submitted by January 17, 2025. The new rule would: .Stop issuance of new Section 14(c) certificates to employers submitting an initial application on or after the effective date of a final rule .

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By Ryan Mulholland and Mike Williams

The incoming Trump administration is likely to impose significant tariffs on U.S. imports to an extent not seen since before World War II. The president-elect has already announced that he will use emergency executive authority on his first day in office to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the United States’ closest trading partners, and a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods. And given that he campaigned on an across-the-board tariff and a massive China-specific tariff, this is likely just the beginning.

Donald Trump may couch his tariff proposals in the language of “America first” or as fighting back against the ills of global trade, but the tariff ideas he has proposed will not make the economy fairer, bring prosperity to working people, protect the environment, or improve climate sustainability—and what’s worse, they are not even designed to do so. Yet the most common critique of Trump’s tariff agenda fails to make this point, focusing instead on the price increases likely to face American consumers. -- READ MORE

By Ben Greenho

Experts, policymakers, and renters and prospective home buyers all recognize that the United States lacks sufficient affordable housing. Nearly half of rental households pay over 30 percent of their income on housing costs, and the median monthly cost of owning a home reached an estimated $3,000 in 2023. Rent prices have risen over 100 percentage points more than inflation since 1984, and home prices increased nearly 500 percent in the same period. Construction of new homes has also dropped over 50 percent since 2007.

The Biden-Harris administration has taken multiple steps to increase Americans’ access to affordable housing. The administration has made $100 million in funding available in grants to communities to break down barriers to creating affordable housing, including by amending land use regulations enhanced a program to provide greater predictability about interest rates to state and local agencies that use federal funds to finance construction of new housing projects and taken executive action to expedite housing construction permitting and allow more types of homes to be built under federal housing codes, among other actions.
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By Sarah Nadeau

Washington, D.C. — The 2017 tax law was fundamentally flawed, increasing income inequality while putting upward pressure on the debt for little payoff. Looking ahead to the 2025 tax debate, a new Center for American Progress report outlines four key principles progressives should follow when evaluating any tax package next year.

The original 2017 Republican-passed law was a mistake. It added hundreds of billions of dollars to the annual deficit, disproportionately benefiting the top 10 percent of Americans and largely ignoring low-income families. As President-elect Trump and congressional Republican leadership prepare to extend these tax cuts again, this report highlights four principles that policymakers should use while evaluating any tax package in 2025 and explains why these principles are crucial to supporting working- and middle-class families—and not giving handouts to America’s richest families.

The four principles are as follows:

*.A tax package should not increase income inequality, including through how it is financed. -- READ MORE