EconoFact Chats

Most of the United States’ population growth is now due to immigration. Among these is an estimated 11 to 12 million undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants have been deported both through enforcement at the border and by being removed from within the United States. Recently, former President Trump has called for mass deportation of millions of people. How realistic is this goal? What would be the economic consequences of deporting even a fraction of the large number of people that Trump has called for? Does the threat of deportation have a chilling effect on those in this country legally? How would it affect communities that include both the undocumented and legal residents? Tara Watson joins EconoFact Chats to discuss these questions. Tara is the Director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings. Her most recent book is 'The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,' co-authored with Kalee Thompson. Note: This podcast was first published on 6th October, 2024.

Reporting on economics often focuses on the 24-hour news cycle and the ups and downs of financial markets. But the stock market is not the economy, and Heather Long, in her career as an economic journalist, endeavored to explain how economic issues affected people’s everyday lives. Heather reflects on her career as an economic journalist, highlighting her efforts to look beyond broad statistics to interview workers, small business owners, and job seekers to get a more nuanced and deeper insight into the state of the economy and the wellbeing of people in different parts of the economy and at different levels of income. Heather is Chief Economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. She served on the Washington Post’s editorial board from 2021 to 2025, and was the U.S. Economics Correspondent at the Post from 2017 to 2021. Prior to that, she was a Senior Economics reporter at CNN.

Udaibir Das, a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation with a rich background at the IMF and the Reserve Bank of India, unpacks the dynamic world of stablecoins. He explains how these crypto-tokens, pegged to fiat currencies, aim to offer stability amidst volatility. Discussions touch on their dual nature in facilitating transactions and their risks in illicit activities. Das also addresses the recent regulatory landscape and the balance governments must strike between fostering innovation and ensuring financial safety, drawing lessons from FTX's collapse.

This week, EconoFact Chats features an abridged version of the EconoFact Ask Me Anything Webinar held on May 27th with Bill Gale, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Co-Director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Gale discusses the 'Big Beautiful Budget Bill,' noting that it will provide high-income households with large tax cuts, while likely lowering after tax resources for low-income households. He also stresses the importance of reining in the deficit, and outlines a few tax policy proposals that have broad consensus among economists -- notably lower tax rates, fewer deductions, a consumption tax, and a carbon tax. EconoFact’s monthly Ask Me Anything Webinars are exclusively available to our Premium Subscribers. The modest $50 annual fee for becoming a Premium Subscriber supports EconoFact and its efforts to bring timely, accessible, unbiased, and nonpartisan analyses on important economic and social policy issues to the public. You can sign-up for a Premium Subscription at https://secure.touchnet.net/C21525_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=157

The first half of 2025 has been marked by broadening macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. How is this uncertainty likely to affect the U.S. economy over the coming months? And over the longer term? Mark Zandi joins EconoFact Chats to point out that while an immediate recession is unlikely, policies on tariffs, university and research funding, immigration, the budget, and efforts to influence monetary policy can have corrosive effects on long term growth. Mark is the Chief Economist of Moody’s Analytics. He serves on the board of directors of MGIC, the nation’s largest private mortgage insurance company, and is the lead director of Reinvestment Fund, one of the nation’s largest community development financial institutions.

The poverty rate among children is a crucial indicator of child well-being. Yet, the overall well-being of a child depends on more than just economic security. Education, health, and family and community, all play an important role. Leslie Boissiere of the Annie E. Casey Foundation joins EconoFact Chats to discuss the 2025 Kids Count Data Book report, which tracks trends in child well-being across these broad sets of indicators, disaggregated by geography, race and ethnicity. She notes encouraging reductions in child poverty, fewer teen births, more children with health insurance, and a rise in on-time high school graduation. Yet the latest data also shows a decline in reading and math scores, and an increase in chronic absenteeism. Leslie is the Vice President for External Affairs at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

United States colleges and universities currently enrol about 900,000 international students, representing 5% of all students – although the percentage of foreign students varies widely across institutions. Many colleges and universities would be hurt by policies that limit the number of foreign students. The detrimental effects of these policies extend beyond institutions of higher education to local economies, companies that hire engineers, scientists, and programmers, and to the dynamism of the U.S. economy since immigrants educated in this country are vastly overrepresented as entrepreneurs. Furthermore, American higher education serves as an important source of soft power that bolsters America’s standing in the world. Arguments have been made about foreign students endangering national security and taking the places of American students. How should we weigh these concerns against the benefits of foreign students who represent an import export of services for this country? Nathan Grawe joins EconoFact Chats to discuss these questions. Nathan is the Lloyd P. Johnson-Norwest Professor of Economics at Carleton College. His most recent book is 'The Agile College: How Institutions Successfully Navigate Demographic Change.'

The Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs plays a key role in shaping how the United States engages with the world financial system. Jay Shambaugh, Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the Biden administration joins EconoFact Chats to discuss his time in office, focusing on negotiations with China over industrial subsidies and non-market trade barriers, foreign investments in sensitive US technologies, and the challenges of dealing with sovereign debt defaults given the wide array of lenders today. The discussion also focuses on the International Affairs Department's role in monitoring exchange rate policies, and its interactions with Congress, the White House, and other domestic agencies. Before his term as Undersecretary, Jay served on the Council of Economic Advisors. He is currently a Professor of Economics and International Affairs, and the Co-Director of the Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University.

Binyamin Appelbaum, a journalist at The New York Times, joins fellow journalists Scott Horsley (NPR), Larry Edelman (Boston Globe), and Heather Long (The Washington Post) to dissect pressing economic issues. They tackle the impact of the newly passed budget bill and the downgrade of U.S. debt, discussing implications for lower-income Americans. The panel delves into tariff volatility, looming recession threats, and the concerns over Medicaid work requirements. Their insights reveal how these factors could shape the future of American fiscal policy and global investment.

Since the mid-1990s, the U.S. social safety net has been geared towards policies that encourage and reward work. While steady jobs and decent wages are the surest routes out of poverty, evidence shows that safety-net work requirements rarely translate into higher employment among beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP–formerly known as “food stamps”). Diane Schanzenbach joins EconoFact Chats to explain how stricter mandates often push people off SNAP without pulling them into the labor market, a dynamic that becomes more relevant as Congress weighs bills that would make continued SNAP and Medicaid benefits contingent on having or actively seeking work. Diane is the Margaret Walker Alexander Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. She is also a member of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine. She recently testified in front of the House Committee on Agriculture on the issue of increasing SNAP's mandatory work requirements.