Economists continue to revise down their projections for U.S. economic growth this year:

As of April 2025

Price Hikes

Chinese exporters with products listed on Amazon have responded to increased tariffs by raising prices an average of close to 30 percent on nearly 1,000 products sold to U.S. consumers since mid-April, according to a CBS News report citing data from price analysis tool SmartScout.

As noted in prior editions of Fact Pack, the Trump administration has paused some of the tariffs announced on April 2, but has hiked duties even higher on China — as of Monday, April 28, levies on goods from China are now subject to a 145 percent rate.

The U.S. imported $438.9 billion of goods from China in 2024, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, putting it just behind Mexico and above Canada on the list of trading partners.

Prices also have risen at popular e-commerce “fast fashion” giant Shein, as well as on Temu and AliExpress. In addition to tariff-related hikes, many low-dollar items made in China are now more expensive because President Trump ended a carveout on certain lower-value direct shipments from duties.

De Minimis

The carveout policy mentioned above is called the “de minimis” exemption. For those unfamiliar, the term is rooted in the Latin phrase meaning “the least” and exempts foreign-made items worth less than a set dollar amount from duties and taxes.

Data republished by the Department of Commerce shows more than 100 countries around the world employ de minimis — many do so to help speed up international shipping — and the maximum value de minimis parcels can have varies widely between nations.

Before President Trump ended the exemption for Chinese, Canadian, and Mexican goods, American consumers benefited to a not-small degree — the threshold was raised from $200 to $800 in 2015 on products made in those nations. Since then, the volume of de minimispackages sent to the U.S. has exploded — about 1.36 billion were processed in 2024, nearly a tenfold increase from 2015.

As of April 2, 2025

The Biden administration in September had announced the intent to protect certain U.S. industries (“trade fairness”) and weed out certain low-quality and/or questionable products (illicit subtances among the latter by exempting them from “de minimis” and increasing reporting requirements, in the light of China’s burgeoning e-commerce-by-international-shipment sector.

New Hires

Nationally, there were 5.4 million hires in February 2025. The hires rate, which is the number of hires during the entire month as a percent of employment, was 3.4 percent.

Montana was among the states with the highest hires rates, at 4.9 percent, followed by:

• Alaska at 4.7 percent

• South Carolina and Wyoming at 4.4 percent each.

As of February 2025

Nevada:

As of February 2025

Sellers NYC

Consumers in the Big Apple are big spenders:

As of 2024

Fly the Still Friendly Skies

Cost-conscious travelers on the lookout for affordable flights are finding them, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In March, airfare prices declined an average of 5.3 percent year-over-year, making it one of the few service categories tracked by the BLS to have actually dropped in price over the last 15 years.

As of 2025

As you can see (the red line in the graph above), the wider “basket” of goods and services that makes up the headline Consumer Price Index figure, or CPI has risen 47.6 percent since 2010.

Disabled and Working

In 2024, the employment–population ratio for Americans with a disability reached a series high of 22.7 percent since data were first reported in June 2008. The labor force participation rate for people with a disability, at 24.5 percent, also reached a series high in 2024.

As of 2024

A Trifecta of Census Data

As of Q1 2025

As of Q1 2025

As of Q1 2025

Stock Exchange Comparisons

The S&P 500 delivered a 17 percent annualized return over the 10 years between 2015 and 2025, the most for major stock exchanges from around the world. Major indices from Brazil, India, and Vietnam have also logged between 12–16 percent returns.

As of 2025

Food Miles

Discussions about “carbon footprints” often center on energy, manufacturing, and transportation — so we were interested to learn from this Our World in Data article that transporting food accounts for a fairly low percentage of global emissions.

This is because most of the world’s food travels by boat, and shipping is a lower-carbon mode of transport.

Source: Our World in Data As of 2018

Food transport would be a much bigger emitter if all our food were flown across the world — but that’s only the case for highly perishable foods, such as asparagus, green beans, some types of fish, and berries.

That said, agriculture and food production account for at least 25 percent of global emissions:

Source: Our World in Data As of 2021

Graph Source: Our World in Data As of 2019

Data Source: Data from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Exiting the UK

Recent tax hikes aimed at the United Kingdom’s wealthiest residents is having an unsurprising effect: Many are moving to other countries.

Richard Gnodde, a Goldman Sachs Group Inc vice chairman who ran its international business for years, is reportedly relocating to Milan from London. UK natives Ian and Richard Livingstone now list Monaco as their place of usual residency after previously citing their home country, according to registry filings.

As of 2024

On the Horizon

Mike PeQueen: Friday’s employment report will be important but not as important as any news on tariffs. 

Data & Dialogue About the Economy



The Fact Pack is a monthly business e-report co-authored by Mike PeQueen of Hightower Las Vegas and John Restrepo of RCG Economics, which combines important metrics relevant to business decision makers and financial commentary on the current issues facing the economy.

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