Politics and Policy
Oil Isn’t the Real Reason Behind the Venezuela Operation
The oil industry is in the midst of a supply gut, producing millions of barrels per day above demand. Prices are low and major companies in the sector are contracting. According to Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, these economic facts undercut President Trump’s intimations of an oil bonanza in Venezuela.
Are Elon Musk’s Politics Driving Away Tesla’s Customers?
A new Yale working paper sets out to quantify the effect of the controversies over Musk’s transformation of Twitter and his time leading DOGE, and finds that they may have cost Tesla one million sales.
Trump Boasts of Peace Through Strength in the Middle East. Can He Achieve the Same in Ukraine?
Trump emphasized U.S. military and economic strength in his Knesset speech, write Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques. Can he also confront Russia from a position of power?
How Nations Use Economic Power to Shape the World Order
Yale SOM’s Christopher Clayton is helping to pioneer the field of geoeconomics, which explains how countries wield economic weapons to reshape global power dynamics—and what happens when they go too far.
We Don’t Know If Tylenol Can Cause Autism—and That Didn’t Change Last Monday
Dr. Howard Forman responds to the White House press conference drawing a link between the use of acetaminophen by pregnant women and cases of autism.
Behind Closed Doors, CEOs Say Trump Is Bad for Business
Yale SOM’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute recently gathered dozens of top CEOs for an off-the-record discussion. The consensus, write Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Stephen Henriques, was that Trump administration policies are undermining an economic system that took decades to build.
Supply Chains Need to Become More Agile in an Age of Tariffs
The ground rules for global trade have changed dramatically in the last year—and sometimes changed back and changed again—as the U.S. has levied tariffs on rivals and allies alike. Prof. Sang Kim, an expert in supply chains, explains how the shifts in global politics and trade could disrupt the complex systems that get products to your door.
How Trump Is Making the Fed’s Job Harder
Prof. William English, a former Fed official, says that the Federal Reserve’s mission of balancing inflation and employment has been complicated by a series of wild cards delivered by the administration, including tariffs and an attempt to fire a member of the Board of Governors.
DOGE’s Lease Cancellations Are Already Hitting the Commercial Real Estate Market
A study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Cameron LaPoint shows that the cancellations drove up the cost of commercial mortgage-backed securities as investors priced in more risk, and could reverberate through the broader economy.
MAGA’s March Toward a Command Economy
The Trump approach to the economy is anything but conservative, write Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, former Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper, former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, former Medtronic CEO Bill George, and Laura Tyson, former chairman of the White House Counsel of Economic Advisers.
The President Holds the Trump Card in His Meeting with Putin. Will He Play It?
When Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine this week, write Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and co-author Steven Tian, he should remember that he has a key piece of leverage: Russia’s economy is struggling, and the U.S. can push it off the cliff.
