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      Is the American Economy on the Mend?

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      Almost four years have passed since Covid-19 struck. In America, the pandemic killed well over a million people and left millions more with lingering health problems. Much of normal life came to a halt, partly because of official lockdowns but largely because fear of infection kept people home.The big question in the years that followed was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news.In the short run, of course, the pandemic had severe economic and social effects, in many ways wider and deeper than almost anyone expected. Employment fell by 25 million in a matter of weeks. Huge government aid limited families’ financial hardship, but maintaining Americans’ purchasing power in the face of a disrupted economy meant that demand often exceeded supply, and the result was overstretched supply chains and a burst of inflation.At the same time, the pandemic reduced social interactions and left many people feeling isolated. The psychological toll is hard to measure, but the weakening of social ties contributed to a range of negative trends, including a surge in violent crime.It was easy to imagine that the pandemic experience would leave long-term scars — that long Covid and early retirements would leave us with a permanently reduced labor force, that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment, that the crime surge heralded a sustained breakdown in public order.But none of that happened.You may have heard about the good economic news. Labor force participation — the share of adults in today’s work force — is actually slightly higher than the Congressional Budget Office predicted before the pandemic. Measures of underlying inflation have fallen more or less back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target even though unemployment is near a 50-year low. Adjusted for inflation, most workers’ wages have gone up.For some reason I’ve heard less about the crime news, but it’s also remarkably good. F.B.I. data shows that violent crime has subsided: It’s already back to 2019 levels and appears to be falling further. Homicides probably aren’t quite back to 2019 levels, but they’re plummeting.None of this undoes the Covid death toll or the serious learning loss suffered by millions of students. But overall both our economy and our society are in far better shape at this point than most people would have predicted in the early days of the pandemic — or than most Americans are willing to admit.For if America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, so has the pessimism of the public.By now, anyone who writes about the economic situation has become accustomed to mail and social media posts (which often begin, “You moron”) insisting that the official statistics on low unemployment and inflation are misleading if not outright lies. No, the Consumer Price Index doesn’t ignore food and energy, although some analytical measures do; no, grocery prices aren’t still soaring.Rather than get into more arguments with people desperate to find some justification for negative economic sentiment, I find it most useful to point out that whatever American consumers say about the state of the economy, they are spending as if their finances are in pretty good shape. Most recently, holiday sales appear to have been quite good.What about crime? This is an area in which public perceptions have long been notoriously at odds with reality, with people telling pollsters that crime is rising even when it’s falling rapidly. Right now, according to Gallup, 63 percent of Americans say that crime is an “extremely” or a “very” serious problem for the United States — but only 17 percent say it’s that severe a problem where they live.And Americans aren’t acting as if they’re terrified about crime. As I’ve written before, major downtowns have seen weekend foot traffic — roughly speaking, the number of people visiting the city for fun rather than work — recover to prepandemic levels, which isn’t what you’d expect if Americans were fleeing violent urban hellscapes.So whatever Americans may say to pollsters, they’re behaving as if they live in a prosperous, fairly safe (by historical standards) country — the country portrayed by official statistics, although not by opinion polls. (Disclaimer: Yes, we have vast inequality and social injustice. But this is no more true now than it was in earlier years, when Americans were far more optimistic.)The big question, of course, is whether grim narratives will prevail over relatively sunny reality in the 2024 election. There are hints in survey data that the good economic news is starting to break through, but I don’t know of any comparable hints on crime.In any case, what you need to know is that America responded remarkably well to the economic and social challenges of a deadly pandemic. By most measures, we’re a nation on the mend. Let’s hope we don’t lose our democracy before people realize that.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Will the Economy Help or Hurt Biden ’24? Krugman and Coy Dig Into Data.

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      Peter Coy: Paul, I think the economy is going to be a huge problem for President Biden in 2024. Voters are unhappy about the state of the economy, even though by most measures it’s doing great. Imagine how much unhappier they’ll be if things get worse heading into the election — which I, for one, think is quite likely to be the case.Paul Krugman: I’m not sure about the politics. We can get into that later. But first, can we acknowledge just how good the current state of the economy is?Peter: Absolutely. Unemployment is close to its lowest point since the 1960s and inflation has come way down. That’s the big story of 2023. But 2024 is a whole ’nother thing. I think there will be two big stories in 2024. One, whether the good news continues, and two, how voters will react to whatever the economy looks like around election time.Paul: Right now many analysts, including some who were very pessimistic about inflation last year, are declaring that the soft landing has arrived. Over the past six months the core personal consumption expenditures deflator — a mouthful, but that’s what the Federal Reserve targets — rose at an annual rate of 1.9 percent, slightly below the Fed’s 2 percent target. Unemployment is 3.7 percent. The eagle has landed.Peter: I question whether we’ve stuck the soft landing. I do agree that right at this moment things look really good. While everyone talks about the cost of living going up, pay is up lately, too. Lael Brainard, Biden’s national economic adviser, points out that inflation-adjusted wages for production and nonsupervisory workers are higher now than they were before the Covid pandemic.So let’s talk about why voters aren’t feeling it. Is it just because Biden is a bad salesman?Paul: Lots of us have been worrying about the disconnect between good numbers and bad vibes. I may have been one of the first people to more or less sound the alarm that something strange was happening — in January 2022! But we’re all more or less making this up as we go along.The most informative stuff I’ve seen recently is from Briefing Book, a blog run by former White House staffers. They’ve tried to put numbers to two effects that may be dragging consumer sentiment down.One effect is partisanship. People in both parties tend to be more negative when the other party controls the presidency, but the Briefing Book folks find that the effect is much stronger for Republicans. So part of the reason consumer sentiment is poor is that Republicans talk as if we’re in a depression when a Democrat is president, never mind reality.Peter: That is so true. And I think the effect is even stronger now than it used to be because we’re more polarized.Paul: The other effect affecting consumer sentiment is that while economists tend to focus on relatively recent inflation, people tend to compare prices with what they were some time in the past. The Briefing Book estimates suggest that it takes something like two years or more for lower inflation to show up in improved consumer sentiment.This is one reason the economy may be better for Democrats than many think. If inflation really has been defeated, many people haven’t noticed it yet — but they may think differently a little over 10 months from now, even if the fundamentals are no better than they are currently.I might add that the latest numbers on consumer sentiment from several surveys have shown surprising improvement. Not enough to eliminate the gap between the sentiment and what you might have expected from the macroeconomic numbers, but some movement in a positive direction.Peter: That makes sense. Ten months from now, people may finally be getting over the trauma of high inflation. On the other hand, and I admit I’m not an economist, I’m still worried we could have a recession in 2024. Manufacturing is soft. The big interest rate increases by the Fed since March 2022 are hitting the economy with a lag. The extra savings from the pandemic have been depleted. The day after Christmas, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said the share of Americans in financial distress over credit cards and auto loans is back to where it was in the depths of the recession of 2007-9.Plus, I’d say the labor market is weaker than it looked from the November jobs report. (For example, temp-agency employment shrank, which is an early warning of weak demand for labor.)Also, small business confidence remains weak.Paul: Glad you brought up small business confidence — I wrote about that the other week. “Hard” indicators like hiring plans are pretty strong. “Soft” indicators like what businesses say about future conditions are terrible. So small businesses are in effect saying, “I’m doing OK, and expanding, but the economy is terrible” — just like consumers!I’m not at all sure when the Fed will start cutting, although it’s almost certain that it eventually will, but markets are already effectively pricing in substantial cuts — and that’s what matters for the real economy. As I write this, the 10-year real interest rate is 1.69 percent, down from 2.46 percent around six weeks prior. Still high compared with prepandemic levels, but financial conditions have loosened a lot.Could there be a recession already baked in? Sure. But I’m less convinced than I was even a month ago.Peter: The big drop in interest rates can be read two ways. The positive spin is that it’ll be good for economic growth, eventually. That’s how the stock market is interpreting it. The negative spin is that the bond market is expecting a slowdown next year that will pull rates down. Also, what if the economy slows down a lot but the Fed doesn’t want to cut rates sharply because Fed officials are afraid of being accused by Donald Trump of trying to help Biden?Paul: I guess I think better of the Fed than that. And always worth remembering that the interest rates that matter for the economy tend to be driven by expectations of future Fed policy: The Fed hasn’t cut yet, but mortgage rates are already down substantially.Peter: Yes.Paul: OK, about the election. The big mystery is why people are so down on the economy despite what look like very good numbers. At least part of that is that people don’t look at short-term inflation, but at prices compared with what they used to be some time ago — but people’s memories don’t stretch back indefinitely. As I said, the guys at Briefing Book estimate that the most recent year’s inflation rate is only about half of what consumers look at, with a lot of weight on earlier inflation. But here’s the thing: Inflation has come way down, and this will gradually filter into long-term averages. Right now the average inflation rate over the past 2 years was 5 percent, still very high; but if future inflation runs at the 2.4 percent the Fed is now projecting, which I think is a bit high, by next November the two-year average will be down to 2.7 percent. So if the economy stays where it is now, consumers will probably start to feel better about inflation.Peter: Except that perceptions of inflation are filtered through politics. Food and gasoline are more expensive for Trump supporters than Biden supporters, if you believe what people tell pollsters. That’s not going to change between now and November.The Obama-Biden ticket beat the McCain-Palin ticket in 2008 because voters blamed Republicans for the 2007-9 recession. Obama-Biden had a narrower win in 2012 against Romney-Ryan, and I think one factor was the so-called jobless recovery from that same recession. That’s why Biden is supersensitive about who gets credit and blame for turns in the economy.For the record, Trump might be president right now if it hadn’t been for the Covid pandemic, which sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent in April 2020. The economy was doing quite well before that happened. A lot of Republicans are nostalgic for Trumponomics, although I think the economy prospered more in spite of him than because of him. Thoughts?Paul: Most of the time, presidents have far less effect on the economy than people imagine. Big stimulus packages like Barack Obama’s in 2009 and Biden’s in 2021 can matter. But aside from pandemic relief, which was bipartisan, nothing Trump did had more than marginal effects. His 2017 tax cut didn’t have much visible effect on investment; his tariffs probably on net cost a few hundred thousand jobs, but in an economy as big as America’s, nobody noticed.Peter: Just speculating, but I wonder if when people say they trust Trump more than Biden on the economy, they’re feeling vibes more than parsing statistics. You know, “We need a tough guy in the White House!”Paul: People definitely aren’t parsing statistics. Only pathetic nerds like us do that. And while Trump wasn’t actually a tough economic leader, he literally did play one on TV.But we don’t really know if that matters, or whether people are still reacting to the shock of inflation and high interest rates, which they hadn’t seen in a long time. Again, the best case for Biden pulling this out is that voters get over that shock, with both inflation and interest rates rapidly declining.Oh, and falling interest rates mean higher bond prices, and often translate into higher stock prices, too — which has also been happening lately.Peter: True, Paul. But cold comfort for people who don’t own stocks and bonds. Or who do own stocks and bonds in their retirement plans but don’t think of themselves as part of the capitalist class. To win in November, Biden and his team are going to need to be perceived as doing something for the working class and the middle class. That’s why you see the White House talking about eliminating junk fees and capping insulin prices.Paul: For what it’s worth, I think a lot of people judge the economy in part by the stock market, even if they don’t have a personal stake. That’s why Trump boasted about it so much, and has lately been trying to say that Biden’s strong stock market is somehow a bad thing.Finally, there are some indications that Democrats in particular are feeling better about the Biden economy. The Michigan survey tracks sentiment by partisanship. The numbers are noisy, but over the past few months Democratic sentiment has been slightly more positive than it was in the months just before the pandemic struck.Peter: Paul, how important do you think the economy will be to voters compared to other issues, such as Trump’s fitness for office, Biden’s age, abortion access, et cetera? I mean, if it’s not important, why are we even having this conversation?Paul: The economy surely matters less than it did when Republicans and Democrats lived in more or less the same intellectual universe — everyone agreed that the economy was bad in 1980 or 2008; now, Dems are fairly positive while Republicans claim to believe that we’re in a severe downturn. But there are still voters on the margin, and weak Democratic supporters who will turn out if they have a sense that things are improving.Peter: Democratic strategists think the election might come down to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, assuming that Biden holds Michigan and New Hampshire and loses Arizona and Georgia. Any thoughts about the economic outlook for Pennsylvania and Wisconsin?Paul: No strong sense about either state. But one little-noticed fact about the current economy is how uniform conditions are. In 2008, so-called sand states that had big housing bubbles were doing much worse than states that didn’t; now unemployment is low almost everywhere.Of course, all political bets are off if we have a recession. But there’s a reasonable case that the economy will be much less of a drag on Democrats by November, as the reality of a soft landing sinks in.Oh, and my subjective sense is that for whatever reason, media coverage of the economy has turned much more positive lately. I have to think this matters, otherwise, what are we even doing? And until recently, media reports tended to emphasize the downsides — “Great jobs numbers, and here’s why that’s bad for Biden” has become a sort of running joke among people I follow. These days, however, we’re starting to see reports acknowledging that we’ve had an almost miraculous combination of strong employment and falling inflation.Peter: Paul, what economic indicators will you be paying the most attention to in the next few months with regard to the election? I’ll nominate inflation and unemployment, although those are kind of obvious.Paul: Unemployment, for sure. On inflation, I’ll be watching longer-term measures: Will inflation be low enough to bring down two- or three-year averages? And especially highly visible stuff, like groceries. Thanksgiving dinner was actually cheaper in 2023 than in 2022. Will grocery prices be subdued enough to reduce the amount of complaining?Oh, and I’ll be looking at consumer sentiment, which as we’ve seen can be pretty disconnected from the economy but will matter for the election.Peter: Happy New Year!Source photographs by Caroline Purser and Anagramm/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Wall Street strategists’ bull and bear scenarios for 2024.

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      Wall Street’s forecasts mostly missed this year’s bull market rally. Here’s what strategists are saying about 2024.Last November and December, veteran stock market watchers forecast that 2023 would be a year to forget. They saw high inflation, a looming global recession and rising interest rates as sapping households’ buying power and denting corporate profits. For investors, they penciled in paltry gains and one of the worst performances for the S&P 500 in the past 15 years.But the market pros got the story only partly right. While interest rates did climb to a near two-decade peak, the S&P 500 has surprisingly soared to a near record high. Fueled partly by a rally in the so-called Magnificent Seven megacap tech stocks, it’s risen nearly 25 percent this year, as of Thursday’s close, shaking off a banking crisis, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and slowing growth in China’s economy.Crypto managed to do even better. Bitcoin bulls have swept aside a legal crackdown against the industry’s biggest players to fuel an impressive rally. The digital token has gained more than 150 percent this year, making it one of the best performing risky assets.“Twenty twenty-three was a great year for the contrarians,” David Bahnsen, the founder and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm, told DealBook. “You had macroeconomic concerns a year ago that didn’t come to bear, and you had valuation and financial concerns that didn’t come to bear. And it’s particularly ironic that it didn’t, because actually everything investors feared a year ago got worse.”Wall Street’s outlook for 2024 is rosier. Analysts see lower borrowing costs, a soft landing (that is, an economic slowdown that avoids a recession) and a pretty good year for investors.But if 2023 taught the market pros anything, it’s that forecasts can look out of date pretty fast. A slew of things could disrupt the markets in the year ahead — inflation creeping up again, or not, is one big factor to watch. And there are wild cards, too, with voters expected to head to the polls in over 50 countries next year, including the U.S.Here’s how Wall Street sees 2024 playing out:The bull caseThe median year-end 2024 forecast for the S&P 500 is 5,068, according to FactSet. Such a level would imply an annualized gain of roughly 6 percent for 2024.Bank of America’s equity strategists, led by Savita Subramanian, are among those in the bullish camp. In their annual forecast, they said that the S&P 500 would be likely to close out next year at 5,000, helped by a kind of “goldilocks” scenario of falling prices and rising corporate profits.Goldman Sachs is even more upbeat. Its analysts upgraded their year-end 2024 call on the S&P 500 to 5,100. They made the change after the Fed’s surprise statement on Dec. 13 that the equivalent of three interest-rate cuts were on the table for next year. Lower borrowing costs tend to give consumers and businesses more spending power, which could help Corporate America’s bottom line.Another catalyst: Investors this year put far more money into safe interest-rate sensitive assets, like money market funds, than they did into stocks. That logic could be flipped on its head in 2024. “As rates begin to fall, investors may rotate some of their cash holdings toward stocks,” David Kostin, the chief U.S. equity strategist at Goldman Sachs, said in a recent investor note.The bear caseOn the more pessimistic side is JPMorgan Chase, which carries a 2024 year-end target of 4,200. Its analysts team, led by Marko Kolanovic, the bank’s chief global market strategist, sees a struggling consumer with depleted savings, a potential recession and geopolitical uncertainty that could push up commodity prices, like oil, and push down global growth.The year ahead will be “another challenging year for market participants,” Kolanovic said. (Most strategists are even more downbeat on Europe, where recession fears are more acute. On the flip side, equities in Asia could show another year of solid growth, especially in India and Japan, Wall Street analysts say.)Lee Ferridge, the head of multi-asset strategy for North America at State Street Global Markets, is more optimistic about the American consumer, but points to a different challenge for investors. “If I’m right, the economy stays stronger. But then that’s a double-edged sword for equities,” he said. The prospect of robust consumer and business spending poses an inflation risk that could force the Fed to hold rates higher for longer, and even pause cuts, he said. “That’s going to be a headwind for equities.”“I wouldn’t be surprised to see a fairly flat year next year,” he added. “If we are up, it’s going to be the Magnificent Seven that are the drivers again.”The wild card: politics and the electionsPresidential elections are not rally killers, according to market analysis by LPL Financial that looks at the past 71 years. In that period, the S&P has risen, on average, by 7 percent during U.S. presidential election years. (The market tends to do even better in a re-election year, the financial advice firm notes.)Even with some uncommon questions swirling over next year’s contest — Will a mountain of legal troubles derail the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump? Will President Biden’s sagging polling ratings open the door for a strong third-party challenger? Will the election result be disputed, causing a constitutional crisis? — that’s unlikely to add much volatility to the markets, Wall Street pros say.“The election will not be a story in the stock market, up until November 2024, for the simple reason that the stock market will not know who’s going to win the election until November 2024,” Bahnsen said.His advice: Don’t even try to game out the election’s impact on the markets. More

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      Esta es la agenda comercial que planea Trump, si gana las elecciones

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      El expresidente Donald Trump está planeando una ampliación contundente de las iniciativas de su primer periodo para reformar las políticas comerciales de Estados Unidos si regresa al poder en 2025; por ejemplo, al aplicarle un nuevo impuesto a “casi todas las mercancías importadas”, lo que tendría el riesgo de distanciar a sus aliados e iniciar una guerra comercial a nivel mundial.Aunque el gobierno de Biden ha mantenido los aranceles que el expresidente le impuso a China, Trump iría mucho más lejos e intentará desvincular las dos economías más grandes del mundo, las cuales intercambiaron 758.000 millones de dólares en mercancías y servicios el año pasado. Trump ha dicho que iba a “aplicar otras restricciones contundentes a la participación china” en una amplia variedad de activos en Estados Unidos, prohibiría a los estadounidenses invertir en China e introduciría de manera gradual una prohibición total a las importaciones de categorías importantes de mercancía hecha en China, como artículos electrónicos, acero y productos farmacéuticos.“Impondremos fuertes sanciones a China y a todos los demás países cuando quieran abusar de nosotros”, aseveró Trump en un mitin reciente en Durham, Nuevo Hampshire.En una entrevista, Robert Lighthizer, quien fue el principal negociador comercial en el gobierno de Trump y que lo más probable es que tenga una gran participación en un segundo periodo, ofreció la explicación más amplia y detallada hasta el momento sobre la agenda comercial de Trump. Para este artículo se le hicieron preguntas referidas a la campaña del exmandatario y los integrantes del equipo de campaña estuvieron al teléfono para comentar al respecto.En esencia, la agenda comercial de Trump busca dar marcha atrás a la integración de Estados Unidos en la economía global y hacer que el país se vuelva más autónomo: producir un mayor porcentaje de lo que consume y ejercer su poder a través de acuerdos individuales con otros países.Trump, quien se autodenomina como un “hombre de aranceles” dio algunos pasos en esa dirección cuando fue presidente, por ejemplo, al imponer aranceles a diversas importaciones, obstaculizar a la Organización Mundial del Comercio e iniciar una guerra comercial con China. Si lo vuelven a elegir, tiene planeada una injerencia mucho más audaz con la esperanza de eliminar el déficit comercial y fortalecer el sector manufacturero, lo que traerá consecuencias potencialmente trascendentales para el empleo, los precios, las relaciones comerciales y el sistema de comercio mundial.Sus planes —que ha calificado como “una reforma radical de nuestra política comercial y fiscal en favor de los estadounidenses”— supondría una apuesta de alto riesgo con la salud de la economía debido a que el desempleo ha bajado a 3,7 por ciento, la inflación ha disminuido sustancialmente de su repunte posterior a la pandemia, cada mes se generan cerca de 200.000 empleos y la bolsa de valores está por llegar a un nivel sin precedentes.Robert Lighthizer, en el centro, fue el principal negociador comercial del gobierno de Trump, incluso para el el Acuerdo entre Estados Unidos, México y Canadá que reemplazó al TLCAN.Gesi Schilling para The New York TimesLos planes de Trump han hecho que especialistas en comercio con ideas más tradicionales estén en alerta. Daniel M. Price, un alto asesor en materia de economía internacional durante el gobierno de George W. Bush, calificó esos planes como “erráticos e irracionales”. Afirmó que los costos correrían a cargo de los consumidores y los productores estadounidenses y que esos planes tendrían el riesgo de alejar a los aliados.“La última vez que Trump impuso aranceles de forma abusiva a nuestros aliados (por razones de seguridad nacional inventadas), varios socios comerciales importantes, como Japón y Corea del Sur, se abstuvieron de tomar represalias contra las exportaciones estadounidenses pensando que Trump pronto regresaría a la cordura”, señaló Price. “Esta vez no consentirán esa fantasía”.Resulta complejo evaluar los méritos de la visión comercial de Trump porque podría haber múltiples repercusiones y él está buscando cambios a largo plazo. Pero muchos estudios económicos concluyeron que los aranceles que impuso cuando era presidente le costaron a la sociedad estadounidense más de los beneficios que generaron.La investigación de los economistas de la Reserva Federal y la Universidad de Chicago encontró que los aranceles que Trump impuso a las lavadoras en 2018 crearon alrededor de 1800 empleos al tiempo que aumentaron los precios que los consumidores pagaron por nuevas lavadoras y secadoras en 86 y 92 dólares por unidad. Ese gasto significó alrededor de 817.000 dólares por empleo.Lighthizer descalificó los estudios que criticaban los aranceles de Trump, los tachó de sesgados en favor del libre comercio y alegó que la inflación se había estabilizado durante su gobierno. También afirmó que, aunque la eficiencia, las ganancias y los precios bajos eran importantes, la prioridad debería ser fomentar la creación de más empleos en el sector manufacturero para los estadounidenses que no cuentan con un título universitario.“Si lo único que quieres es eficiencia —si crees que la gente está mejor en la fila del desempleo con tres televisores de 40 pulgadas de lo que estaría si estuviera trabajando, y con solo dos televisores—, entonces no vas a estar de acuerdo conmigo”, comentó Lighthizer. “Hay un grupo de personas que cree que el fin es el consumo, pero mi idea es que el fin sea la producción y que haya comunidades seguras y felices. Debemos estar dispuestos a pagar un precio por eso”.En 2017, Trump comenzó su presidencia contratando a asesores económicos con puntos de vista diversos, incluidos defensores de políticas proteccionistas, como Lighthizer y Peter Navarro, así como veteranos de Wall Street orientados hacia el libre comercio y escépticos respecto a los aranceles, como el expresidente de Goldman Sachs Gary D. Cohn.Pero los asesores económicos con los que mantiene una estrecha relación son, en su inmensa mayoría, de ideología pro-arancelaria, como Lighthizer. Lo más probable es que sus planes más agresivos para un segundo mandato se enfrenten a una oposición interna mucho menor que en su primer mandato.Aranceles universalesMuchos estudios económicos concluyeron que los aranceles, incluidos los del acero, que Trump impuso como presidente le costaron a la sociedad estadounidense más que los beneficios que produjeron.Damon Winter/The New York TimesEntre los planes más ambiciosos de Trump en materia comercial para 2025, el de consecuencias más globales es imponer un presunto arancel universal de base, es decir, un nuevo impuesto para la mayoría de las mercancías importadas.La campaña de Trump no ha especificado cuán elevado sería este arancel. En una entrevista de agosto con Fox Business, Trump mencionó una cifra del 10 por ciento y dijo: “Creo que debemos trabajar mucho” en la economía estadounidense.Trump no ha precisado otros detalles. Por ejemplo, no ha explicado si concibe el arancel universal como un nuevo piso o como un complemento de los aranceles existentes. Es decir, si un producto importado tenía un impuesto del cinco por ciento, ¿ahora aumentaría al 10 o al 15 por ciento? Lighthizer mencionó que sería esto último.El exmandatario tampoco ha dicho si el nuevo arancel se aplicaría a las importaciones de las dos decenas de países con los que Estados Unidos tiene acuerdos de libre comercio, entre ellos México y Canadá, los que juntos representan casi una quinta parte del déficit comercial total de Estados Unidos en mercancías y con los cuales el gobierno de Trump renegoció el acuerdo comercial casi libre de aranceles que sustituyó al Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte.El equipo de campaña señaló que Trump no ha anunciado ninguna decisión al respecto. Pero la embajadora de Canadá en Estados Unidos, Kirsten Hillman, dijo en una entrevista que su país cree que sus exportaciones deberían estar exentas de cualquier nuevo arancel universal.“Acabamos de concluir este acuerdo con el 99 por ciento de los aranceles a cero bajo la gestión anterior de Trump, por lo que es nuestra expectativa que estas políticas propuestas no se apliquen a Canadá”, dijo.Trump tampoco ha dicho si cree que podría imponer de manera unilateral el agresivo nuevo arancel según la ley actual o si tendría que autorizarlo el Congreso.Clete Willems, que fue asistente adjunto del presidente Trump para los temas de economía internacional, dijo en una entrevista que simpatizaba con el deseo de reciprocidad del exmandatario, pero agregó: “La autoridad del presidente para promulgar aumentos arancelarios generalizados no está clara, y soy escéptico de que el Congreso vaya a respaldarlo”.Sin embargo, Lighthizer afirmó que, dada la magnitud del déficit comercial de EE. UU. y su impacto en la economía estadounidense, un presidente tendría “clara autoridad” para imponer aranceles de manera unilateral en virtud de dos leyes, la Ley de Poderes Económicos de Emergencia Internacional y la Sección 338 de la Ley Arancelaria de 1930 .Sin embargo, dijo que, dependiendo de las condiciones políticas, Trump podría optar en cambio por pedir al Congreso que promulgue una nueva legislación para que un sucesor no pueda revocarla fácilmente. “Él tiene la autoridad legal para hacerlo y tiene dos rutas”, dijo Lighthizer. “Hasta donde yo sé aún no ha tomado una decisión al respecto”.Independientemente del fundamento jurídico, se levantaría un torbellino de pérdidas y ganancias confusas derivadas de esa política de aranceles universales. Por un lado, repuntarían algunas manufactureras nacionales puesto que los fabricantes nacionales de mercancías rivales podrían incrementar los precios y ampliarían la producción. Ahí es donde está la atención de Trump: “Rápidamente nos convertiremos en una potencia manufacturera como ninguna otra que se haya visto en el mundo”, prometió en un video de campaña.Como algo básico de la economía, también habría inconvenientes. La medida supondría un aumento de impuestos que los consumidores tendrían que pagar cuando se incrementen los precios, y este se dejaría sentir más en la población de pocos recursos, puesto que son los consumidores que emplean una parte mayor de su ingreso en la compra de mercancías.Esta política también podría ocasionar una presión descendente sobre otras manufacturas nacionales. Los productores que compran insumos del extranjero pagarían costos más elevados, lo que haría que sus productos fueran menos competitivos en el mercado mundial. Los aranceles de represalia disminuirían la demanda de exportaciones estadounidenses.La desvinculación de ChinaTrump ha dicho que intentará separar las economías estadounidense y china, que intercambiaron unos 758.000 millones de dólares en bienes y servicios el año pasado.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesTrump también ha dicho que iría más lejos al imponer “una serie audaz de reformas para eliminar por completo la dependencia de China en todas las áreas esenciales”. En 2022, Estados Unidos importó 536.300 millones de dólares en mercancía procedente de China y le exportó a este país mercancías por un valor de 154.000 millones de dólares.Entre otras cosas, Trump ha mencionado que aplicaría “un plan de cuatro años para eliminar gradualmente todas las importaciones de productos esenciales chinos, desde artículos electrónicos hasta acero y productos farmacéuticos”, junto con reglas nuevas para evitar que las empresas estadounidenses inviertan en China e impedir que ese país compre bienes estadounidenses.No obstante, Trump se protegió al decir, sin dar mayores detalles, que permitiría “todas las inversiones que sirvieran de manera manifiesta para los intereses de Estados Unidos”.El gobierno de Biden también ha trabajado para imponer más restricciones a los intercambios económicos con China, pero de una manera más reducida y adecuada. El gobierno prohíbe exportar a China determinada tecnología que tenga aplicaciones militares y, en agosto, el presidente Joe Biden firmó una orden para prohibir que los estadounidenses realicen nuevas inversiones en empresas chinas que estén tratando de desarrollar algunas cosas como semiconductores y computadoras cuánticas.Ahora Trump está proponiendo llegar aún más lejos y pedir que se anule la categoría comercial de “país más favorecido” con la que cuenta China, lo cual implica cesar las relaciones comerciales normales permanentes y los aranceles reducidos que Estados Unidos le otorgó a China después de que esta se uniera a la Organización Mundial del Comercio en 2001. Concretamente, este mes, un comité de la Cámara de Representantes publicó un informe bipartidista que también solicitaba esa medida.De acuerdo con un estudio publicado el mes pasado por Oxford Economics que fue encargado por el Consejo Empresarial Estados Unidos-China, hacer esto trastornaría de manera importante la economía estadounidense. Este estudio estimaba que el aumento resultante en aranceles conllevaría una pérdida de 1,6 billones de dólares para la economía estadounidense y 774.000 empleos menos en cinco años.En sus memorias de 2023, tituladas No Trade Is Free, Lighthizer reconoció que las empresas estadounidenses que operan en China y las que dependen de las importaciones chinas se opondrían a esa idea, pero afirmó que “con el tiempo” la fabricación de más productos como computadoras y teléfonos móviles regresaría a Estados Unidos o a sus aliados, lo que beneficiaría a los trabajadores estadounidenses y al país.También escribió que las inevitables represalias chinas para perjudicar las exportaciones estadounidenses “contribuirían aún más al desacoplamiento estratégico” de las dos economías. “Cualquiera que admita que China es un problema pero insista en que existe una solución mágica y sin perturbaciones para el problema que representa China es muy probablemente un mentiroso, un tonto, un bribón, un globalista irredimible, o alguna combinación de ellos”, escribió.Décadas de lucha contra el déficitUn edificio industrial abandonado en Rockford, Illinois. Los críticos han señalado el deterioro social ocasionado por el cierre de fábricas en todo el país como una desventaja del comercio.Jamie Kelter Davis para The New York TimesEl nacionalismo económico de Trump le ha ayudado a cambiar el Partido Republicano. Ha reunido a una coalición más obrera que la que solían atraer los republicanos antes de que fuera el abanderado del partido.Sus puntos de vista son un retroceso a un enfoque mercantilista del comercio, en el que los países utilizaban aranceles elevados para proteger y desarrollar sus capacidades de fabricación nacionales. El sitio web de la campaña de Trump afirma que su política comercial “está firmemente arraigada en la historia estadounidense” porque Estados Unidos “solía imponer aranceles a más del 95 por ciento de todas las importaciones”. Esa estadística es de antes de la Guerra Civil, cuando los aranceles constituían la gran mayoría de los ingresos del gobierno federal.A lo largo del siglo XX, muchos economistas llegaron a considerar eso como un planteamiento miope. En la década de 1990, a pesar de la oposición de los sindicatos, se formó un consenso bipartidista a favor de un comercio más libre. La idea era que la reducción de aranceles y el aumento del comercio aumentarían la prosperidad material general de la sociedad al mejorar la eficiencia y bajar los precios.Pero esas ganancias no se han distribuido equitativamente y, con el tiempo, han surgido diversas formas de desilusión con la reducción de las barreras comerciales.En Estados Unidos, los críticos tanto de izquierda como de derecha han señalado cada vez más las desventajas del comercio para las comunidades obreras. La decadencia social se extendió a medida que las empresas cerraban fábricas cuya producción podían trasladar al extranjero, para bajar costos, lo que contribuyó —junto con otros factores, como el aumento de la automatización— al estancamiento de los salarios de la clase trabajadora. Las interrupciones de la cadena de suministro durante la pandemia centraron la atención en otro riesgo de la globalización.Y existe una creciente ansiedad sobre las implicaciones de seguridad de la dependencia de Estados Unidos de China para ciertos bienes y recursos críticos, y la indignación por las prácticas de China de obligar a las empresas a compartir tecnología y su robo descarado de secretos comerciales.Políticamente, Trump se adelantó al centrarse en los aspectos negativos del libre comercio. Durante más de 30 años, ha arremetido contra los déficits comerciales, que considera, al igual que los balances de las empresas, una simple cuestión de beneficios y pérdidas. Se queja de que los países extranjeros que exportan más a Estados Unidos de lo que importan están estafando a Estados Unidos.En 2017, Trump hacía sistemáticamente una pregunta sencilla a sus informadores antes de sus llamadas con líderes extranjeros, según una persona con conocimiento directo: “¿Cuál es el déficit comercial?”. A menudo, la respuesta establecería el estado de ánimo de Trump para la llamada y cuán amistoso sería con el jefe de Estado.Trump retiró a Estados Unidos del Acuerdo Transpacífico, el tratado comercial más importante del presidente Barack Obama. Su gestión paralizó la capacidad de la OMC para resolver disputas comerciales entre países al bloquear su capacidad para sustituir a los miembros de un órgano de apelación.Trump impuso aranceles a determinadas importaciones, aumentando los precios de las lavadoras y los paneles solares, así como del acero y el aluminio. E inició una guerra comercial con China, imponiendo aranceles a más de 360.000 millones de dólares de productos chinos.A pesar de los agreivos aranceles de Trump, los datos de la Oficina del Censo muestran que el déficit comercial anual de bienes creció de 735.000 millones en 2016 a 901.000 millones de dólares en 2020. Pero Lighthizer señaló una ligera disminución en el déficit comercial en 2019 en comparación con 2018, argumentando que los aranceles estaban empezando a tener su efecto previsto antes de la agitación del año pandémico.Las guerras comerciales de Trump fueron costosas. Después de que China —que se ha convertido en el mayor mercado de exportación para los agricultores estadounidenses— tomó represalias aumentando los aranceles sobre los productos agrícolas estadounidenses como la soya, el gobierno de Trump comenzó un rescate gubernamental de 28.000 millones de dólares para mantener a los agricultores a flote. Un estudio de febrero de 2020 calculó que el mayor coste del metal para los fabricantes estadounidenses debido a los aranceles sobre el acero había causado la pérdida de unos 75.000 puestos de trabajo.Por muy agresivas que fueran las políticas comerciales de Trump en su primer mandato, no siempre llegó tan lejos como quería. A pesar de amenazar con retirarse de la Organización Mundial del Comercio, por ejemplo, nunca lo hizo. Aunque detestaba el TLCAN, su administración negoció un sustituto que, aunque modernizaba varios términos, mantenía un mercado casi libre de aranceles con México y Canadá.Lighthizer, que dirigió esas negociaciones, escribió en sus memorias que, independientemente de si el Congreso debería haber aprobado el TLCAN en 1993, retirarse abruptamente de él después de décadas de integración económica habría causado “una catástrofe económica y política”, enviando “ondas de choque a través de la economía” y perjudicando a “los votantes de Trump en Texas y en todo el cinturón agrícola”.Ana Swanson More

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      TikTok’s Influence on Young Voters Is No Simple Matter

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      We’re in a season of hand-wringing and scapegoating over social media, especially TikTok, with many Americans and politicians missing that two things can be true at once: Social media can have an outsized and sometimes pernicious influence on society, and lawmakers can unfairly use it as an excuse to deflect legitimate criticisms.Young people are overwhelmingly unhappy about U.S. policy on the war in Gaza? Must be because they get their “perspective on the world on TikTok” — at least according to Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who holds a strong pro-Israel stance. This attitude is shared across the aisle. “It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said. Another Republican senator, Josh Hawley, called TikTok a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.”Consumers are unhappy with the economy? Surely, that’s TikTok again, with some experts arguing that dismal consumer sentiment is a mere “vibecession” — feelings fueled by negativity on social media rather than by the actual effects of inflation, housing costs and more. Some blame online phenomena such as the viral TikTok “Silent Depression” videos that compare the economy today to that of the 1930s — falsely asserting things were easier then.It’s no secret that social media can spread misleading and even harmful content, given that its business model depends on increasing engagement, thus often amplifying inflammatory content (which is highly engaging!) with little to no guardrails for veracity. And, yes, TikTok, whose parent company is headquartered in Beijing and which is increasingly dominating global information flows, should generate additional concern. As far back as 2012, research published in Nature by Facebook scientists showed how companies can easily and stealthily alter real-life behavior, such as election turnout.But that doesn’t make social media automatically and solely culpable for whenever people hold opinions inconvenient to those in power. While comparisons with the horrors of the Great Depression can fall far off the mark, young people do face huge economic challenges now, and that’s their truth even if their grasp of what happened a century ago is off. Housing prices and mortgage rates are high and rents less affordable, resurgent inflation has outpaced wages until recently, groceries have become much more expensive and career paths are much less certain.Similarly, given credible estimates of heavy casualties inflicted among Gazans — about 40 percent of whom are children — by Israel’s monthslong bombing campaign, maybe a more engaged younger population is justifiably critical of President Biden’s support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government? Even the Israeli military’s own estimates say thousands civilians have been killed, and there is a lot of harrowing video out of Gaza showing entire families wiped out. At the same time, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 69 journalists and media workers have been among those killed in the war; Israel blocks access to foreign journalists outside of a few embedded ones under its control. (Egypt does as well.) In such moments, social media can act as a bypass around censorship and silence.There’s no question that there’s antisemitic content and lies on TikTok, and on other platforms. I’ve seen many outrageous clips about Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 that falsely and callously deny the horrific murders and atrocities. And I do wish we knew more about exactly what people were seeing on TikTok: Without meaningful transparency, it’s hard to know the scale and scope of such content on the platform.But I’m quite skeptical that young people would be more upbeat about the economy and the war in Gaza if not for viral videos.Why don’t we know more about TikTok’s true influence, or that of YouTube or Facebook? Because that requires the kind of independent research that’s both expensive and possible only with the cooperation of the platforms themselves, which hold so much key data we don’t see about the spread and impact of such content. It’s as if tobacco companies privately compiled the nation’s lung cancer rates or car companies hoarded the air quality statistics.For example, there is a strong case that social media has been harmful to the well-being of teenagers, especially girls. The percentage of 12- to 17-year-old girls who had a major depressive episode had been flat until about 2011, when smartphones and social media became more common, and then more than doubled in the next decade. Pediatric mental health hospitalizations among girls are also sharply up since 2009. Global reading, math and science test scores, too, took a nosedive right around then.The multiplicity of such findings is strongly suggestive. But is it a historic shift that would happen anyway even without smartphones and social media? Or is social media the key cause? Despite some valiant researchers trying to untangle this, the claim remains contested partly because we lack enough of the right kind of research with access to data.And lack of more precise knowledge certainly impedes action. As things stand, big tech companies can object to calls for regulation by saying we don’t really know if social media is truly harmful in the ways claimed — a convenient shrug, since they helped ensure this outcome.Meanwhile, politicians alternate between using the tools to their benefit or rushing to blame them, but without passing meaningful legislation.Back in 2008 and 2012, Facebook and big data were credited with helping Barack Obama win his presidential races. After his 2012 re-election, I wrote an article calling for regulations requiring transparency and understanding and worried whether “these new methods are more effective in manipulating people.” I concluded with “you should be worried even if your candidate is — for the moment — better at these methods.” The Democrats, though, weren’t having any of that, then. The data director of Obama for America responded that concerns such as mine were “a bunch of malarkey.” No substantive regulations were passed.The attitude changed after 2016, when it felt as if many people wanted to talk only about social media. But social media has never been some magic wand that operates in a vacuum; its power is amplified when it strikes a chord with people’s own experiences and existing ideologies. Donald Trump’s narrow victory may have been surprising, but it wasn’t solely because of social media hoodwinking people.There were many existing political dynamics that social media played on and sometimes manipulated and exacerbated, including about race and immigration (which were openly talked about) and some others that had generated much grass-roots discontent but were long met with bipartisan incuriosity from the establishment, such as the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, America’s role in the world (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and how international trade had reshaped the economy.As we head into the 2024 elections, in some ways, little seems to have changed since Obama’s victory in 2008 — the first election dubbed the “Facebook Election.” We’re still discussing viral misinformation, fake news, election meddling, but there’s still no meaningful legislation that responds to the challenges brought about by the internet and social media and that seeks to bring transparency, oversight or accountability. Just add realistic A.I.-generated content, a new development, and the rise of TikTok, we’re good to go for 2024 — if Trump wins the Republican nomination as seems likely, only one candidate’s name needs updating from 2016.Do we need proper oversight and regulation of social media? You bet. Do we need to find more effective ways of countering harmful lies and hate speech? Of course. But I can only conclude that despite the heated bipartisan rhetoric of blame, scapegoating social media is more convenient to politicians than turning their shared anger into sensible legislation.Worrying about the influence of social media isn’t a mere moral panic or “kids these days” tsk-tsking. But until politicians and institutions dig into the influence of social media and try to figure out ways to regulate it, and also try addressing broader sources of discontent, blaming TikTok amounts to just noise.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      ¿Qué le espera a la economía global en 2024?

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      Con dos guerras persistentes y la incertidumbre de 50 elecciones nacionales, la inestabilidad financiera podría agravarse en todo el mundo.Los ataques al tráfico marítimo indispensable en los estrechos del mar Rojo por parte de una decidida banda de militantes en Yemen —una repercusión de la guerra entre Israel y Hamás en la franja de Gaza— le está inyectando otra dosis de inestabilidad a una economía mundial que está batallando con las tensiones geopolíticas en aumento.El riesgo de escalada del conflicto en Medio Oriente es la última de una serie de crisis impredecibles, como la pandemia del COVID-19 y la guerra en Ucrania, que han ocasionado profundas heridas a la economía mundial, la han desviado de su curso y le han dejado cicatrices.Por si fuera poco, hay más inestabilidad en el horizonte debido a la oleada de elecciones nacionales cuyas repercusiones podrían ser profundas y prolongadas. Más de dos mil millones de personas en unos 50 países —entre ellos India, Indonesia, México, Sudáfrica, Estados Unidos y los 27 países del Parlamento Europeo— acudirán a las urnas el año entrante. En total, los participantes en la olimpiada electoral de 2024 dan cuenta del 60 por ciento de la producción económica mundial.En las democracias sólidas, los comicios se están llevando a cabo en un momento en que va en aumento la desconfianza en el gobierno, los electores están muy divididos y hay una ansiedad profunda y constante por las perspectivas económicasUn barco cruza el canal de Suez en dirección al mar Rojo. Los ataques en el mar Rojo han hecho subir los fletes y los seguros.Mohamed Hossam/EPA, vía ShutterstockUna valla publicitaria anunciando las elecciones presidenciales en Rusia, que tendrán lugar en marzo.Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      How Trump Is Running Differently This Time

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      A wrecking ball. A bull in a China shop. A “chaos candidate.” During Donald Trump’s whirlwind rise to the presidency, his opponents and critics frequently noted his penchant for havoc. Surely, they believed, voters would not want to steer the country toward disorder and mayhem.The problem? In 2016, being a chaos candidate turned out to be a feature, not a bug, of American politics: Enough voters were tired of bland, establishment candidates and a system that didn’t improve their lives, and they put Mr. Trump over the top. The Trump team was so confident that these voters and the president were in sync that by the summer of 2020, one of his re-election campaign’s most oft-aired ads used those exact “bull in a china shop” words again.But if Mr. Trump ran before as the disrupter, don’t count on him doing so a third time in 2024. Voters don’t want chaos anymore. In my assessment of the dynamics of this election, what I see and hear is an electorate that seems to be craving stability in the economy, in their finances, at the border, in their schools and in the world. They want order, and they are open to people on the left and the right who are more likely to provide that, as we saw with the rejection of several chaos candidates in 2022, even as steady-as-she-goes incumbents sailed to re-election.And though Mr. Trump may seem a poor fit for such a moment, with his endless drama and ugly rhetoric, much of his candidacy and message so far is aimed at arguing that he can restore a prepandemic order and a sense of security in an unstable world. And unlike 2020, there’s no guarantee most voters will see President Biden as the safer bet between the two men to bring order back to America — in no small part because Mr. Biden was elected to do so and hasn’t delivered.By 2020, some of those voters who originally took a chance on President Chaos turned to what they viewed as the safer choice in Mr. Biden. Following a first Trump term marked by tweets that threatened to set off geopolitical firestorms, the global upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic and rising domestic unrest around race, voters instead opted to send Mr. Biden to the White House with the ostensible mandate to unify the country and make politics boring again.To be fair, Mr. Trump at times seemed to see where things were headed, and tried to paint Mr. Biden as the more chaotic of the two for a brief spell in that 2020 campaign. Back then, clearly, it didn’t work — the argument that “Sleepy Joe” was secretly going to usher in more mayhem fell flat. Even Mr. Trump’s advantage over Mr. Biden among voters in exit polls on the issue of the economy was not enough to secure victory. And on potential factors like Mr. Biden’s own health, a theme Mr. Trump relished, voters in 2020 decided that Mr. Biden was healthy enough to handle the presidency by a slim 53-47 margin. Fine, they said, give us the sleepy guy who spent the campaign in his basement — he’s better than the alternative.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump’s 2025 Trade Agenda: A New Tax on Imports and a Split from China

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      Former President Donald J. Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on “most imported goods” that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war.While the Biden administration has kept tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on China, Mr. Trump would go far beyond that and try to wrench apart the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged some $758 billion in goods and services last year. Mr. Trump has said he would “enact aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership” of a broad range of assets in the United States, bar Americans from investing in China and phase in a complete ban on imports of key categories of Chinese-made goods like electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals.“We will impose stiff penalties on China and all other nations as they abuse us,” Mr. Trump declared at a recent rally in Durham, N.H.In an interview, Robert Lighthizer, who was the Trump administration’s top trade negotiator and would most likely play a key role in a second term, gave the most expansive and detailed explanation yet of Mr. Trump’s trade agenda. Mr. Trump’s campaign referred questions for this article to Mr. Lighthizer, and campaign officials were on the phone for the discussion.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More