Is the US winning the trade war?

On Thursday, the Commerce Department announced the US trade deficit fell to the lowest monthly level since 2009 in October. Economists expected a much wider deficit of $58 billion, compared with the reported $29.4 billion. Some see an encouraging sign of progress toward the White House’s goal of shrinking the trade gap, which President Trump has argued is the result of foreign countries taking advantage of America’s economic might. Others see a math problem.

The ‘No Grudge’ Economy

US Customs and Border Protection said last month that it collected over $200 billion in tariff revenue last year, the result of more than 40 executive orders imposing entry taxes on goods coming into the US. Trump’s stated aim has been to change the fact that the US has a negative trade balance “with almost every country,” which he has called “unfair.”

In any case, the newly released figures show Trump’s desired effect taking place, at least in one monthly snapshot. Imports fell 3.2% from the previous month to $331.4 billion in October, and exports rose 2.6% to $302 billion. The overall trade deficit was 40% smaller than in September. Some say this could offer a tailwind for economic growth:

• The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta suggested Thursday that October’s shrunken trade deficit will provide a boost to fourth-quarter gross domestic product. Officials raised their forecast for real GDP growth in the three months through December 31 to 5.4%, up from their earlier forecast of 2.7% on Monday, noting the estimated contribution of net exports went “from -0.3 percentage points to 1.97 percentage points.”
• “The US appears to be winning the trade war, with tariffs curbing the imports of foreign goods, but America’s trading partners are not holding any grudge as they continue to buy more American goods and services,” wrote Fwdbonds Chief Economist Chris Rupkey.

Golden Caveat: Economists at Wells Fargo are not sold, arguing gold market trading activity distorted the numbers: Gold and other metal exports climbed $10 billion in October, or more than the $7 billion monthly increase in all exports. “Ultimately, this sharp narrowing in the October trade deficit is almost entirely due to the movement of gold,” they wrote. Pharmaceutical imports also fell dramatically in October, amid Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs, but many drugmakers have since reached deals to avoid them, suggesting the industry may do less to shrink the deficit in future quarters. To top it all off, the Supreme Court could rule as early as today on a case with the potential to block Trump’s use of emergency economic powers to enact tariffs. Buckle up.

It’s been quite a vibe check for Blackstone, whose name is now synonymous with mega-landlord.

Shares in the asset manager known for an expansive real estate portfolio, including tens of thousands of single-family homes, slid nearly 6% on Wednesday as investors reacted to a White House proposal to block Wall Street’s purchase of family homes, taking the firm’s shares into the red for the year.

Housing Hurdles

Yesterday, they bounced back, with a 1.1% gain pulling them into the green on a year-to-date basis as analysts evaluated the headwinds that have blocked past proposals similar to the one President Trump announced on Truth Social. In his post, the president said he was “immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” and called on Congress to codify it. Whether Congress has the political will to do so is debatable, financial experts say. And whether courts will go along is even more uncertain.

The announcement reflects the president “trying to rally the populist wing of the MAGA coalition heading into the midterms, given the importance of housing affordability,” Jaret Seiberg, a housing policy analyst at TD Cowen, wrote in a recent analyst note. Indeed, a December Economist/YouGov poll found 78% of Americans say it’s difficult to find affordable housing. And while Democrats may agree with pushing corporate giants out of local housing markets, they’re unlikely to jump on board with Trump’s plan.

Recent history also offers few reasons for optimism about the proposal’s viability:

• As BTIG analysts said in a note, there have been several Congressional proposals over the past few years aimed at addressing housing affordability, including ownership bans. “However, bureaucratic limitations have historically hindered the legislation in Congress, and as it stands now, most bills remain in the ‘Introduced’ phase,” the analysts wrote.
• “Whether the federal government can legally bar certain buyers from purchasing single-family homes is far from settled, and the lack of detail here makes it impossible to assess how such a policy would actually work in practice,” Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement.

No Going Solo: There’s also this: “The president simply doesn’t have the legal authority to decide who is allowed to purchase real estate and who isn’t,” George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin told The Daily Upside. “If he were to try to implement it by some sort of executive order or other executive policy, I expect that there would be lawsuits challenging it fairly soon.”

The doctors will see you now — and around the clock, from now on. Every step you take, every move you make, they’ll be watching you.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, the tech industry unveiled a new wave of AI-fueled, health-centric wearable devices and technologies, just as the US Food and Drug Administration moved to blur the lines between wellness wearables and professional-grade medical devices. But is it all just what the doctor ordered?

No Worse for Wearables

Among the new wave of wearable tech unveiled at CES are a continuous glucose-monitoring device from SenSura, a new nutrition-tracking platform for Garmin’s smartwatches, and fancy new blood pressure-monitoring devices from Chinese startups such as Dreame Technology and J-Style. Up until recently, such devices may have been considered a step too far for consumer tech. Just last year, for instance, the FDA sent a letter to wellness wearable firm Whoop after it rolled out a feature to check users’ blood pressure. Per the FDA, measuring blood pressure amounts to a medical diagnosis, something for which the company did not receive regulatory authorization. In 2024, the agency warned consumers not to use smart watches and smart rings that promise to measure blood sugar levels without piercing the skin.

Now, the agency says, it will take a different posture:

• On Tuesday, in a video posted on X while attending the show, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the agency is hoping to “promote more innovation with AI in medical devices.” Under the new guidance, the agency is allowing “low-risk” wellness-focused wearables more leeway to track health metrics such as blood pressure and blood sugar levels.
• “In the past, the FDA has permitted some measurements like pulse rate and O2 saturation in some wellness products, but not others,” Makary said during a CES speech. “It didn’t always make a lot of sense from the outside.”

Dr. ChatGPT: Feeling loose, the FDA also eased rules this week for so-called “clinical decision support software,” tech that can help doctors make medical recommendations. For OpenAI, it was the right prescription. On Thursday, the preeminent AI firm unveiled a new HIPAA-compliant version of ChatGPT designed to help healthcare professionals with medical reasoning and other administrative tasks. So long, WebMD. Hello, Dr. ChatGPT.