EFF Health News

  Trump Signs Orders to Ban Some Canadian Products From U.S. Market The clock had just struck midnight. September 8, 2026. And somewhere in Ottawa, a government official probably poured themselves a stiff drink, though not, as it turned out, an American one. Because at that hour, Canada's retaliatory tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of U.S. goods officially took effect. Duties ranging from 15 to 50 percent slammed into American steel, aluminum, dairy, appliances, clothing, cosmetics, and farm equipment. It was, by any measure, a punch. Donald Trump waited about eighteen hours to punch back. Tuesday evening, the White House posted five new executive orders. They didn't just raise tariffs. They didn't just threaten. They outright banned certain Canadian products from entering the United States. Alcohol. Dairy. Motorcycles. Gone. Starting September 29. This isn't a tax on Canadian goods. It's a door slammed shut. Here's what happened. What Exactly Did Trump Ban? Let...

  ADP National Employment Report August 2026: Jobs Data Shows Hiring Slowing to a Crawl You open your phone. You see the headline.  38,000.  That's it? That's all the jobs the private sector managed to create in a month? The ADP National Employment Report for August 2026 landed like a wet blanket on a Wednesday morning. Private employers added 38,000 jobs. That's the slowest pace since January. And it's a long way from the 47,000 economists expected. But here's the thing, the monthly number only tells half the story. ADP also dropped its weekly Pulse estimate for the four weeks ending August 22. And that number?  12,000 jobs per week . Twelve thousand. Per week. Across the entire country. Let's dig into what these numbers actually mean. Not the Wall Street translation. The real one. The Numbers Don't Lie, But They Do Raise Questions The Weekly Pulse: 12,000 Jobs Per Week The NER Pulse is ADP's weekly temperature check. It's a four-week moving avera...

  Oil's "New Normal" Is Looking More Expensive You pull into the gas station. You swipe your card. The numbers climb faster than they should. Forty dollars. Fifty. Sixty. You're not buying a yacht, you're filling a sedan. The pump clicks off and you stare at the total like it's a clerical error. It's not. Something shifted. You felt it before you understood it. On February 28, 2026, the world changed. Not with a bang that registered on seismographs. With a campaign. A U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran that effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water that carries roughly a fifth of the world's seaborne crude. Within weeks, Brent crude punched through $114 a barrel. American gasoline averaged $4.48 a gallon by mid-May, up from $2.98 before the war started. The pundits called it a spike. A shock. A temporary dislocation. They were wrong. What we're watching now isn't a spike. Spikes recede. This is a repricing. A structu...

  Bessent Dares the Market to Cross Him: 'I Am the House Now' The Treasury secretary stood in front of a business school crowd in Dallas and told the world's most powerful traders to bring it on. "I have asymmetric information," Scott Bessent said. "I am the house now." He meant it as a warning. A dare. A declaration of war against anyone stupid enough to bet against him. The market took the bet anyway. Within hours, Treasury yields shot up to levels not seen in three years. The 10-year note touched 4.85%. The 30-year broke past 5.3%. Stocks slumped. Oil spiked above $100 a barrel. The whole thing backfired spectacularly. Bessent had just tripled the Treasury's bond buyback program to $6 billion. He'd spent the previous day telling currency traders he knew exactly what the Japanese were going to do with the yen. He'd positioned himself as the house in a game where the house always wins. The market called his bluff. Or did it? Here's the s...

  ‘Nothing Worse’: Energy Prices Are Closing In On GOP's Midterm Chances The number flashed across every financial terminal in America, $100. Not a stock price. Not a quarterly bonus. A barrel of Brent crude, creeping past triple digits like a drunk staggering home at 3 AM. And somewhere in Dallas, at the Republican National Convention, a room full of party operatives felt their stomachs drop. Because $100 oil doesn't just mean expensive gas. It means expensive  everything . The war with Iran grinds into its seventh month. The Strait of Hormuz remains a chokehold on global supply. And the GOP's carefully constructed midterm message, the one about pocketbooks and prosperity, lies in ruins on the convention floor. “There's nothing worse for a president of the United States than inflation or runaway prices,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist at Firehouse Strategies. He's right. And the numbers prove it. The $100 Barrel That Broke the Camel's Back Oil hit $1...

  Consumers Split Over Inflation Trajectory in August, New York Fed Survey Shows You wake up. You check your phone. Gas is up again. Groceries cost more than they did last month. Your landlord sends a note about rent. Again. Then you read the news: inflation expectations are "unchanged." Unchanged? Really? The New York Federal Reserve dropped its August Survey of Consumer Expectations on September 8. The headline writers had a field day. One-year inflation expectations held at 3.6%. Five-year held at 3.0%. Three-year dipped a tenth of a point to 3.2%. Steady as she goes. Nothing to see here. Move along. Except that's not what's happening. Not even close. The Headline Numbers Tell Only Half the Story Let's talk about what "unchanged" actually means. The median respondent, the person right in the middle of the distribution, expects prices to rise 3.6% over the next year. That's the same as July. It's also well above the Federal Reserve's 2% tar...