nauka: Economic policy of the first Trump administration

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The economic policy of the first Trump administration was characterized by the individual and corporate tax cuts, attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), trade protectionism, deregulation focused on the energy and financial sectors, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over his first term, Trump reduced federal taxes and increased federal spending, both of which significantly increased federal budget deficits and the national debt. The positive economic situation he inherited from the Obama administration continued, with a labor market approaching full employment and measures of household income and wealth continuing to improve further into record territory. Trump also…

Evidence: 40 • authority: 72

US economic performance has consistently varied by the political party of the US President. According to many economic metrics (including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth, and corporate profits), since World War II the United States economy has performed significantly better during the administration of Democratic presidents, compared with Republican presidents. Of these, the most statistically significant differences are in real GDP growth, unemployment rate change, stock market annual return, and job creation rate. The U.S. unemployment rate has risen on average under Republican presidents, while it has fallen on average under Democratic presidents. B…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 72

U.S. foreign policy during the first presidency of Donald Trump was noted for its unpredictability and reneging on prior international commitments, upending diplomatic conventions, embracing political and economic brinkmanship with most adversaries, and stronger relations with traditional allies. Donald Trump's "America First" policy pursued nationalist and unilateralist foreign policy objectives while prioritizing bilateral relations over multinational agreements. As president, Trump described himself as a nationalist and a globalist while espousing views that have been characterized as isolationist, non-interventionist, and protectionist, although the "isolationist" label has been dispute…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

United States labor law sets the rights and duties for employees, labor unions, and employers in the US. Labor law's basic aim is to remedy the "inequality of bargaining power" between employees and employers, especially employers "organized in the corporate or other forms of ownership association". Over the 20th century, federal law created minimum social and economic rights, and encouraged state laws to go beyond the minimum to favor employees. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires a federal minimum wage, currently $7.25 but higher in 29 states and D.C., and discourages working weeks over 40 hours through time-and-a-half overtime pay. There are no federal laws, and few state laws,…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The labor force is the actual number of people 16 years and older available for work and is the sum of the employed and the unemployed. The U.S. labor force reached a record high of 170.7 million civilians in January 2025. In February 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, there were 164.6 million civilians in the labor force. Before the pandemic, the U.S. labor force had risen each year since 1960 with the exception of the period following the Great Recession, when it remained below 2008 levels from 2009 to 2011. In 2021, The Great Resignation resulted in record numbers in voluntary turnover for American workers. The labor force participation rate, LFPR (or econo…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Employment rate, also called the employment-to-population ratio, is a statistical ratio that measures the proportion of a country's working age population (statistics are often given for ages 15 to 64) that is employed. Unlike the unemployment rate, the employment-to-population ratio uses the civilian noninstitutional population as its denominator, so people who are not in the labor force remain in the denominator even if they have stopped looking for work. In the U.S. Current Population Survey, the published ratio covers people age 16 and older and is calculated as employed people divided by the civilian noninstitutional population, multiplied by 100. The International Labour Organization…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

Structured vulnerability: nationality stratifies wages, working conditions, and labor rights among migrant workers in Malaysian oil palm plantations.. Malaysia's palm oil industry, the world's second-largest, depends on migrant labor, with foreign workers making up 80% of its plantation workforce. Despite well-documented labor exploitation, research has typically focused on single nationalities, overlooked the interplay of structural and individual factors, and largely excluded Thai workers from comparative analyses. This study addresses these gaps by comparing the experiences of Thai, Indonesian, and Bangladeshi migrants on plantations along the Thai-Malaysian border. The study uses in-dep…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

The cost of caring: Gendered health and labor market effects of grandparenthood.. While the effects of the transition to parenthood are well researched, less is known about how the transition to grandparenthood affects health and labor market outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian register data covering the entire population born between 1950 and 1960, we examine the effects of first-born grandchildren born during 2007-2018. Employing event-study models with person-year records, we compare grandparents to not-yet grandparents. Our findings reveal a sharp increase in the likelihood of respiratory infections during the first two years of grandparenthood, with infections increasing by 56% for…

Evidence: — • authority: 92

The relationship between digital literacy and employment quality: Evidence from a Chinese Household Survey.. In the digital era, digital literacy has emerged as a critical determinant of employment quality in the labor market. Using nationally representative data from the 2022 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study constructs multidimensional indices of digital literacy and employment quality. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, robustness checks, and moderation models are employed to examine the relationships between these variables and the underlying mechanisms. The findings suggest that digital literacy is significantly associated with employment quality. This relationship i…