In Fall 2013, as a student in Professor Robert Lawrence's Political Economy of Trade course at the Harvard Kennedy School, I explored a fundamental question: Do the anti-dumping and subsidies rules of the WTO help ensure that trade is fair and beneficial? My answer then was cautiously optimistic but wary. Drawing on economists like Alan Sykes, I noted a critical paradox: while subsidized or dumped imports may violate trade rules, they often benefit importing countries through lower prices and improved terms of trade. The economic case for trade remedies was weak—"the only plausibly useful function of antidumping laws from an efficiency standpoint is the avoidance of predatory pricing," which antitrust laws could handle. Yet anti-dumping duties were already the most frequently used trade remedy, with China as the primary target. I concluded that these remedies served more as political safety valves than economic tools—necessary to maintain support for open trade, even wh...
Today's release of the August 2025 Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation data drew widespread media attention, with coverage highlighting both the persistence of inflation and its implications for Federal Reserve policy. Across outlets, analysts pointed to resilient consumer spending and income growth as signs of underlying economic strength, even as inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target. The consensus among media reports is that while inflation is not worsening, its stubbornness continues to challenge policymakers navigating a softening labor market and evolving rate expectations. To provide deeper insights into inflation's trajectory, I've developed a forecasting framework that combines two econometric approaches — ARIMA time series modeling and Phillips Curve analysis—to predict Core PCE inflation. This analysis presents a unique opportunity to validate my forecasting methodology against eight months of 2025 data. ...