Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers

In this episode of The Professor Is In, Justin Wolfers digs into the latest tariffs on Canada, answering subscriber questions and responding to comments from his earlier Diving In He addresses the suspicious timing of these new tariffs, break down the confusing dairy tariff-rate quota, and argues that total US-Canada dairy trade — about a billion dollars against hundreds of billions in overall trade — isn't worth blowing up either economy over.
On whether Canada should retaliate, Justin borrows Joan Robinson's "rocks in the harbour" metaphor: most of a tariff's cost lands on the country imposing it, so matching Trump would mostly hurt Canadians.
Finally, Justin discusses the biggest issue: trust. Once a president tears up a deal he signed, the value of his next signature is zero — and that discourages the deep, long-run cross-border investment that has defined North American trade over the past several decades.
Canadian Tariffs Diving In: https://omny.fm/shows/platypus-economics/the-biggest-economic-story-nobodys-talking-about-diving-in
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Last summer, Congress passed one of the biggest cuts to food assistance in a generation. SNAP — the program a lot of folks still call food stamps — pays about $188 a month, roughly $6 a day for groceries like milk, eggs, rice, and peanut butter. It's not enough to live on, but it's the thing that lets a parent say yes to fruit this week instead of no.
In this Diving In episode, Justin walks you through what actually happened in four parts: what SNAP is and who leans on it, how the cuts ended up tucked inside Trump's 2025 budget law alongside big tax cuts for rich households, what the law actually changed, and what the data show now. The key detail: the new formula dings states for paying the wrong amount but not for wrongly turning eligible families away — a recipe for a slower, more suspicious system. By spring 2026, more than 4 million people had lost benefits, including an estimated 1.5 million children, even as nearly one in four adults still couldn't reliably afford enough food.
If your mum, your uncle, or your own household counts on this help, this is the shift that decides whether dinner is the thing that gives when the month runs long. Justin's takeaway: when politicians cut a program, don't just ask how much they saved — ask who lost what.
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Trump's new 50% tariffs on Canada bypass USMCA — here's what it really means for you.
President Trump just hit a limited set of Canadian goods with 50% tariffs, and he did it by dusting off Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a law last used when Herbert Hoover was in the building. Justin Wolfers walks you through what actually happened, why it's stranger than it sounds, and why the direct cost to the U.S. is smaller than the message behind it.
Here's the twist: throughout the earlier trade wars, being compliant with the USMCA free trade agreement was your escape hatch — roughly 90% of Canadian goods came in duty-free. These new proclamations ignore that agreement entirely. Justin's quick-and-dirty math says the tariffs cover a bit more than $20 billion of imports, about 5% of what we buy from Canada — meaning maybe $50 to $150 a year on your household, plus higher prices from American firms that now face less competition. For Canada it's a real hit: close to 1% of GDP.
But the bigger story is confidence. If a signed trade deal only holds until the next presidential mood swing, it's not really a rule. Justin argues Canada is the test case — a warning to the roughly 60 countries facing new tariffs any week now: retaliate, and your trade deal may not save you.
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In this latest episode of The Professor Is In, Justin answers listener questions and responds to comments from his latest episode dispelling the hype around Trump Accounts. Justin argues that Trump accounts are really two policies bundled together. There’s the attention-grabbing $1,000 payment for newborns, which has a genuine “kernel of genius” if the goal is to introduce families to saving, investing, and compound interest. But that piece is temporary. The larger, more durable part is a tax-advantaged wealth-transfer tool that primarily helps upper-middle-class families pass assets to their children.
Wolfers connects these accounts to other temporary Trump-era tax promises — on tips, overtime, and Social Security — and contrasts those short-lived populist gestures with more permanent tax cuts for the rich. The result, he argues, is a style of fiscal policy that looks pro-worker on the surface while delivering much larger long-run gains elsewhere.
Justin also explains why complexity is not just annoying — but economically harmful. When benefits are routed through a maze of tax rules, account types, and employer provisions, take-up falls. And the people most likely to miss out are often the families who can least afford to, making an already regressive system even more unequal.
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Diving Into Trump Accounts: https://omny.fm/shows/platypus-economics/the-truth-about-trump-accounts-read-the-fine-print-diving-in
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In this episode of Off the Clock, Justin and Stacey break down some of the week’s biggest economic news — letting you know what to actually worry about, what you can safely ignore, and where to find some silver linings.
This week they discuss the collapse of the Iran ceasefire and what it might mean for the economy. They also break down the latest inflation numbers, why the relief is probably short lived, and how inflation is starting to show up in less obvious and more surprising ways.
Then, in response to the terrible air quality affecting both Ann Arbor and New York, Justin gives Stacey a quick lesson on public goods, before sharing a surprising good news milestone.
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