The 900-page Project 2025 Policy Mandate contends that the gold standard “forces governments to rein in spending and inflation lest their gold reserves become depleted.” But that argument is not based on the realities of why the United States — along with the rest of the world — has seen such high rates of inflation […]

Experts say the “nonsensical” policy proposal, which largely aligns with Donald Trump’s agenda, would weaken the US agency tasked with protecting election integrity, critical infrastructure, and more.

Participants were almost uniformly sobered by the paucity of effective constraints on abuse of power. The exercises showed emphatically that Trump’s authoritarian promises, with implementing details in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, pose a profound threat to constitutional government. Defenders of democracy, our participants assessed, must do more than they are doing now to prepare. […]

Investors’ exuberance in the face of political ructions is unlikely to pay off.

We believe there is rising political risk in US markets that is likely being underpriced by markets. This can take many forms, but one is institutional capture, including the Fed. If the central bank lost independence, that would have profound implications for how future fiscal policy might impact the economy.

“The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank’s so-called Project 2025’s primary recommendations for the Fed include a unitary focus on controlling inflation, winding down its balance sheet, and ending its lender-of-last-resort function. Further proposals would return the U.S. to a gold standard or abolish the Fed entirely.”

Millions of low- and middle-class households would likely face significantly higher taxes under the Project 2025’s proposals. He estimated that a middle-class family with two children and an annual income of $100,000 would pay $2,600 in additional federal income tax if they faced a 15% flat tax on their income due to the loss of […]

Along with the usual slate of tax cuts for the wealthy, Project 2025 also calls for abolishing the Federal Reserve, ending its role as the lender of last resort, and letting the President weigh in on interest rate hikes. Trump has also called for a 10% across-the-board tariff on imported goods, which could kick off […]

“This is what the economy looks like when it is at a sustainable simmer,” said Ernie Tedeschi, a former Biden administration economist who is now at Yale University’s Budget Lab. “But because we spend very little time in our economic history close to or at full employment, there is a lot more uncertainty.”