Rick Newman

More Joe Biden can now tell voters he wants to fix the health care system without blowing up what works. Biden, the front-runner among Democratic presidential candidates, unveiled a health care plan on July 15 that would keep private insurance in…

There’s a new Trump-o-meter in town, but our weekly Trumponomics discussion revolves around a familiar theme: the possible economic damage caused by President Trump’s trade policies. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled in congressional…

Kirsten Gillibrand didn’t raise her hand on July 27 when a debate moderator asked 10 presidential candidates who wanted to get rid of private health insurance. But that’s the outcome she favors, all the same. Gillibrand, a Democratic senator from New…

Joe Biden, man of the people, made a few bucks recently. He and his wife Jill pulled down $15.5 million during the last two years, many multiples of Biden’s income during the eight years he was the lowly vice president. The latest presidential…

View photosMore Like Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden made a lot of money after leaving government, by writing a book and giving paid speeches. But he’s not likely to face the kind of criticism Clinton did for cashing in. After…

Twenty-five years before President Donald Trump took office promising to roll back trade deals, H. Ross Perot told a national audience that the “giant sucking sound” voters heard was American jobs flowing to Mexico. Perot, who died on July 9, at 89…

Is President Trump outperforming his predecessor when it comes to job creation? He certainly thinks so. “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!” he tweeted after the latest monthly numbers showed employers created 224,000 new jobs in June. But job growth has actually…

With strong hiring in June, investors are torn over whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this summer. The case for cutting rates focuses on tepid wage growth, other signs of slack in the labor market and the economic damage caused by…

View photosMore You can find flaws, if you look hard enough. But the employment numbers for June are surprisingly robust and unmistakenly good for President Donald Trump. Employers added 224,000 jobs in June, handily beating estimates and dashing…

Profits are bad, according to many Democrats running for president. “There are too many people profiteering off of the pain of people in America, from pharmaceutical companies to insurers,” Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said at the Democratic debate…

Markets like the outcome of the talks between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China on June 29. The mini-deal on trade included modest concessions from both sides and an apparent halt in escalating punitive measures. But the unsteady…

It’s routine now for President Donald Trump to hector the Federal Reserve and its chair, Jerome Powell. But it’s no less troubling every time Trump does it, especially since Trump’s insults are getting lower and more ridiculous. Trump this week said…

Whose fault is everything that’s wrong? The Democrats don’t have convincing answers. They assail President Trump, of course—but worsening income inequality, a stagnant middle class and unaffordable health care were problems well before Trump came on…

The law of unintended consequences is a well-understood phenomenon: Public officials impose a law or rule intended to prompt one type of behavior, but fail to consider everybody who might be affected or ways people might react. In this manner,…

Americans will finally see how a battalion of Democratic presidential candidates stack up head-to-head during this week’s debates. Ten Democrats, headlined by Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke, will debate on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo June 26…

The tax cuts President Trump signed into law in 2017 were supposed to stimulate business spending and raise family incomes. Critics warned they’d also lead to damaging unintended consequences. We will be watching for years to assess the long-term…

View photosMore What have you done for me lately? That’s what voters want to know when politicians run for reelection. And President Trump’s boasts about stock market gains under his watch are growing very dated. Trump has bragged more than 60 times…

She’s running for president, but Elizabeth Warren may already be the nation’s wonk-in-chief. “I have a plan for that,” Warren famously declares on the campaign trail when voters ask about struggling farmers or unaffordable child care or shoddy…

There will be a meeting. The presidents of China and the United States will talk. They’ll both probably say it was a nice chat. But the upcoming confab between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping is very unlikely to break an impasse on trade…

In his new book, “The Land of Flickering Lights,” Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado geeks out on some economic charts. They show changes in wealth and income distribution in the United States during the last several decades, and tell a familiar story:…