Paul Krugman (Part 2)

 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/by/paul-krugman

以下是 Paul Krugman 寫美國事務以及商業題材的 Substack 文章。

Democrats Shouldn’t Support Tariffs

Don't get sucked in by Trump's revenge mania

Paul Krugman

Apr 14, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/democrats-shouldnt-support-tariffs

Key Points:

• Donald Trump’s tariffs are bad economics. So Democrats need to stop giving Trump cover. Republicans don’t care about helping workers, so all he has done is throw away credibility. 

• For the reality is that Trump’s motivation for tariffs, as for everything else, seems to be a desire to punish. In this case he wants to punish other countries, which he insists have treated America unfairly. He’s wrong when it comes to our (former?) allies: Europe and Canada, for example, have done nothing wrong. And while we have real grievances against China, Trump’s tariffs are a very bad way to address those grievances, not least because he’s alienating everyone who should be on our side.

• But shouldn’t we be trying to restore U.S. manufacturing? Let me make three points: 1. Trump’s tariffs will hurt, not help, manufacturing. 2. If you want to promote manufacturing, you should use industrial policy, not tariffs. 3. Good jobs don’t have to be in manufacturing, and manufacturing jobs aren’t necessarily good. And if the goal is to build a better economy, policy should focus on creating good jobs everywhere, not fetishize manufacturing.

• There’s a lot of romanticism about what manufacturing jobs in America used to be like. It’s true that some industrial workers were well paid. But that was mainly because they had strong unions. And even in America, where many service-sector jobs pay poorly, there are also many jobs outside manufacturing that offer good wages. Employment in health care now greatly exceeds employment in manufacturing; well, according to Pew, 55 percent of health care jobs provide middle-class incomes. And policies that increase workers’ bargaining power could greatly expand the number of good jobs outside manufacturing.

• And you know who did try to boost manufacturing with targeted subsides, and had a lot of success? The Biden administration: Biden also pursued quite tough policies against China that, unlike Trump’s, didn’t punish our own economy at least as much as they punished China’s. Look, I know that many Democrats are pissed at Biden for not stepping aside sooner. But that shouldn’t mean disavowing the good his administration’s policies did.

• Should tariffs ever be part of an industrial strategy? The only justifications are political. As it happens, U.S. law makes it much easier to impose tariffs than to provide subsidies: Tariffs can be raised through executive action, while subsidies require legislation. This means that there are some circumstances, such as responding to sudden import surges, when tariffs may be the only available recourse.

• The point is that Democrats shouldn’t engage in Trumpian nostalgia for an industrial era that isn’t coming back. They should be pushing for policies that will make jobs better in the 21st century, not harken back to a rose-colored vision of America in 1955. And they should never, ever say that Trump’s tariffs have a point. Because they don’t.

（推介原因：Paul Krugman 有時會在文章內向美國的民主黨出謀獻策，又或者替民主黨的拜登辯護，這是其中一篇。 ）

Treason in the Futures Markets

People close to Trump are trading based on national secrets

Paul Krugman

Mar 24, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/treason-in-the-futures-markets

Key Points: 

• Over the weekend Donald Trump threatened dire vengeance on Iran unless its government opened the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, a deadline that would expire Monday evening in Washington. Specifically, he announced that the U.S. would begin bombing power plants — plants that supply electricity to Iran’s civilian population — unless the Strait was cleared.

• But at 7:05 AM Monday Trump called the whole thing off — for five days, he said, but many people are assuming that the threatened action, which would have been a massive war crime, is now off the table.

• The reason for the about-face, he claimed, was that the U.S. was engaged in productive negotiations with Iranian officials — although this seems to have come as news to the Iranians, who denied that any such negotiations are taking place.

• But in any case, Trump’s sudden climb-down was startling. Who could have seen this coming?

• The answer is, the person or people who bought large quantities of stock market futures and sold large quantities of oil futures around 15 minutes before Trump’s announcement.

• As CNBC reports, At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point.

• A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. West Texas Intermediate May futures also saw a noticeable pickup in trading activity at roughly the same time, with a distinct volume spike interrupting otherwise quiet conditions.

• This “sharp and isolated jump in volume” — which you can see for the oil futures market in the chart at the top of this post — was especially bizarre because there were no major news items — no major publicly available news items — to drive sudden big market transactions. The story would be baffling, except that there’s an obvious explanation: Somebody close to Trump knew what he was about to do, and exploited that inside information to make huge, instant profits.

• This wasn’t the first time something like this has happened under Trump. There were large, suspicious moves in the prediction market Polymarket before previous attacks on Iran and Venezuela. But this front-running of U.S. policy was really large: the Financial Times estimates the sales of oil futures in that magic minute Monday morning at about $580 million, and that doesn’t count the purchases of stock futures.

• When officers of a company or people close to them exploit confidential information for personal financial gain, that’s insider trading — which is illegal.

• But we have another word for situations in which people with access to confidential information regarding national security — such as plans to bomb or not to bomb another country — exploit that information for profit. That word is “treason.” 

• However, I do believe that the culprits will be easy to determine once Democrats are back in power, and they must apply the full force of law to the people responsible.

（推介原因：美國總統特朗普要求伊朗在48 小時內重開霍爾木茲海峽，然後突然把死線延後 5 天。他在社交媒體發佈消息之前的 15 分鐘，紐約的石油期貨市場以及標普 500 指數期貨合約交易量突然大幅上升，有內幕交易的嫌疑。英語傳媒有報導這件事，華語世界的 YouTuber 也有翻譯或評論。這篇是 Paul Krugman 的分析，他認為是跟美國總統關係密切的局內人出手，並且用 Treason 即是賣國形容這種行為。學者指控總統賣國，非常敢言，在華語世界會失聯。 ）

（熟悉財經新聞的讀者都知道，特朗普習慣在金融市場收市之後的時段，又或者是美東時間週末發表重要消息，又或者出手生擒或擊殺某國的領導人。換言之，美國總統對金融市場有幾大影響力，他是知道的。今次事件是否牽涉內幕交易或利益輸送，有待查證。）

Technology Bubbles: Causes and Consequences

What history can teach us about AI frenzy

Paul Krugman

Oct 12, 2025

∙ Paid

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/technology-bubbles-causes-and-consequences

Key Points: 

• It was a time of enormous optimism, based mainly on one specific technology that promised to have transformative effects on the economy. Businesses developing and implementing the new technology spent huge sums on construction and equipment. Individual investors piled into these businesses’ stocks, sending their prices soaring.

• And enthusiasts were right about the technology’s potential. It would eventually transform the economy, indeed society as a whole. But long-term transformation doesn’t necessarily translate into profits for businesses at the cutting edge. As it became clear that the financial returns wouldn’t live up to the hype, some companies went bust, while stocks tied to the technology lost most of their value. And plunging capital spending pushed the economy into a nasty recession.

• Whatever it is, few are denying that the technology is impressive. But warnings that there may be a huge AI bubble are getting louder. Worries about the financial underpinnings of all that capital spending are growing. And many people have noted that the AI boom is driving most, possibly all, of the economy’s recent growth. So what will happen if the boom goes bust?

• By the way, some early subscribers to this newsletter may remember that I interviewed Jim Chanos, the famous short-seller, back in February, and he made the case then for an AI bubble. But people weren’t yet ready to hear it.

• Today’s primer will not be about the long run economic and social implications of AI, which is an entirely different subject. I will write in a future primer about technology, growth and jobs in general, with some speculations about AI. For today, however, I’m going to focus on what history — especially, but not only, the telecommunications boom of the 1990s — can tell us about the AI boom and its consequences.

• Beyond the paywall I will address the following: 1. The AI boom in historical perspective 2. The logic of technology manias and bubbles 3. The “Winner Take All” nature of technology bubbles 4. What will happen if the AI boom goes bust?

（推介原因：Paul Krugman 分析 AI 所帶來的影響，討論是否會出現泡沫爆破。）

The General Theory of Enshittification

It isn’t a new phenomenon, but it seems to matter more

Paul Krugman

Jul 24, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-general-theory-of-enshittification

Key Points:

• Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. 

• I argued earlier this week that enshittification has a lot to do with the way the tech industry has fallen out of public favor. But without detracting from the brilliance of Doctorow’s discussion, I’ve become convinced that his analysis is too narrow, focusing only on certain kinds of social platforms. In fact, the basic logic of enshittification — in which businesses start out being very good to their customers, then switch to ruthless exploitation — applies to any business characterized by network effects. It may go under different names like “penetration pricing,” but the logic is the same.

• Suppose you run a business whose product, whatever it may be, is subject to network effects: the more people using it, the more attractive it is to other current or potential users. Social media platforms like Facebook or TikTok are the currently obvious examples, but the logic works for services like Uber or physical goods like electric vehicles too.

• What’s the profit-maximizing strategy for your business? The answer seems obvious: offer really good value to your customers at first, to build up the size of your network, then enshittify — soak the customer base you’ve built. The enshittification could take the form of charging higher prices, but it could also involve reducing quality, forcing people to watch ads, etc. Or it could involve all of the above.

（推介原因：Paul Krugman 分析社交媒體的商業模式。）

相關的文章：

Beggar-thy-neighbour

2018 年 8 月 15 日

https://xiaoshousha.blogspot.com/2018/08/beggar-thy-neighbour.html

節錄：特朗普（大陸譯名：川普）玩的那一套，叫 Beggar-thy-neighbour，源於上世紀三十年代的大蕭條時期 (the Great Depression)。為了保住就業及挽救經濟，美國採取單方面的保護主義措施（國產中文：單邊主義），損害貿易夥伴的利益，輕則令對方損失就業（原因：實施進口關稅會打擊外國出口商），重則傾家蕩產（原因：貨幣爭相貶值導致基本因素欠佳的國家例如土耳其爆發金融危機），同時令跨國企業的供應鏈大洗牌（原因：貿易戰令成本結構和風險水平改變，而迫使美國企業的海外生產線回流，正是特朗普的目的）。

Enshittification (Having been made shittier)

2025 年 12 月 21 日

https://xiaoshousha.blogspot.com/2025/12/enshittification-having-been-made.html

節錄：社交媒體或網上平台走上仆街之路，可以分為三個階段：首先，社交媒體 (Social Media) 或網上平台 (Online platform) 會在虧本的情況下，推出優質服務吸引使用者。第二步是剝削第一批客戶（個人客戶），用來孝敬第二批客戶（企業客戶）。第三步是把創造的價值或利潤轉移至創辦人或大股東身上。成功之後，社交媒體或網上平台再沒有動機維持優質服務，下一步是步向死亡，或處於半死不活的喪屍狀態。簡單地說：蝕頭賺尾，飽食遠揚。