Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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