Archie Hall

And a dispatch from @dlknowles.bsky.social from the ICE raids in Chicago www.economist.com/united-stat...

11/ So at least for now, Zero Migration America is here to stay. Best start getting used to it.

Here's the piece again: www.economist.com/finance-and...

10/ But: even unpopular Trump policies have a habit of sticking around. And there's little indication the administration has much desire to slow down.

Business complaints, even in industries with effective lobbying operations, so far haven't done much.

9/ The $100k H1-B fee also polls terribly: 57% of Americans opposite it, only 26% support it. Even among Republicans it's barely above water.

8/ Will the policy stick?

Public opinion on migration has rebounded sharply upward this year. 79% of Americans now thing immigration is good for the country, the highest on record.

7/ ... its issues with an aging workforce, especially if what we're seeing today sticks.

6/ Zero Migration also worsens America's deficit problems, and...

5/ The hit to growth from a serious attempt to squeeze skilled migration would be pretty stark.

4/ But the more consequential story is long-term.

The H1-B fee mess showed a fairly clear direction of travel on the Trump admin's desire to pull down skilled migration. The next place to watch is OPT, the post-grad work status that gets most talented foreigners into the US.

3/ Short-term, this will clearly be vastly disruptive.
— Plenty of industries like construction and farming lean very heavily on immigrant workers.
— High migration helped enable the 'soft landing' in 2023/4, by absorbing outsize labour demand. We could now see the reverse.

2/ What's happened? Crossings at the southern border have crashed after Trump's asylum ban.

Deportations are up and skilled-worker visa are already creeping down (even before talk of the $100k H1-B fee).

That is a stark reversal: net migration was ~2-3m in 2023 and 2024.

For the first time in about 70 years, net immigration to America could be zero. Beneath the noise of tariff and budget fights, migration may well be the biggest economic story of 2025.

My latest for @economist.com: Welcome to Zero Migration America

Link: www.economist.com/finance-and...

🧵 below

10/ But: even unpopular Trump policies have a habit of sticking around. And there's little indication the administration has much desire to slow down.

Business complaints, even in industries with effective lobbying operations, so far haven't done much.

9/ The $100k H1-B fee also polls terribly: 57% of Americans opposite it, only 26% support it. Even among Republicans it's barely above water.

8/ Will the policy stick?

Public opinion on migration has rebounded sharply upward this year. 79% of Americans now thing immigration is good for the country, the highest on record.

7/ ... its issues with an aging workforce, especially if what we're seeing today sticks.

6/ Zero Migration also worsens America's deficit problems, and...

5/ The hit to growth from a serious attempt to squeeze skilled migration would be pretty stark.

4/ But the more consequential story is long-term.

The H1-B fee mess showed a fairly clear direction of travel on the Trump admin's desire to pull down skilled migration. The next place to watch is OPT, the post-grad work status that gets most talented foreigners into the US.

3/ Short-term, this will clearly be vastly disruptive.
— Plenty of industries like construction and farming lean very heavily on immigrant workers.
— High migration helped enable the 'soft landing' in 2023/4, by absorbing outsize labour demand. We could now see the reverse.

2/ What's happened? Crossings at the southern border have crashed after Trump's asylum ban.

Deportations are up and skilled-worker visa are already creeping down (even before talk of the $100k H1-B fee).

That is a stark reversal: net migration was ~2-3m in 2023 and 2024.

Pretty crazy how the economic weakness of H1 2025 has just been... revised away

I wonder who...

Goes nicely with a slice of @spignal.bsky.social 's column about Europe's increasingly pungent lack of urgency www.economist.com/europe/2025/...

(And do read the piece there’s lots of stats-parsing in there too aside from the slightly provocative GDP chart)

Of course! Things can be both

A dose of everything-is-fine-ism from me in @economist.com.

Amid worries about a slowdown in America
—The latest data isn't awful (even payrolls), and seems to have stopped getting worse
—That leaves America with more than enough growth to keep Europeans jealous

www.economist.com/finance-and...

PollBase: Opinion polls database from 1938-today Get PollBase, the largest database of British national voting intention opinion polls, starting in 1943 and updated each quarter.

(Product of me spending a few hours playing around with the great PollBase dataset www.markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/.)

Charts with the same energy: longue duree Lib Dem polling and the VIX

One for the degens: pulled together a tracker of Fed betting markets w/ colleagues @economist.com.

Odds of Lisa Cook being ousted by December are still just 27%, and Waller has a narrow lead in the Fedstakes at 32%.

Link:
www.economist.com/interactive...