Tangle - PREVIEW - The Friday Edition: Tracking Trump's promises and key metrics for America.

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

This year, a change in administration and a larger staff has afforded us a new opportunity: to set some benchmarks that we can check back on in two and four years. Doing something as expansive as this hasn’t been possible for me, alone, in the past. But with the growth of our team over the last four years, I wanted to take advantage of our deep roster to do something much bigger and more comprehensive. So, as a team (and with the help of our readers), we’ve decided to lay out a series of reference points for both the incoming administration and the country as President Trump heads into office. Today, we’re going to share a list of these benchmarks, with some numbers or assessments on where they stand today. We’ve also set a calendar reminder to publish newsletters checking in on them in two and four years, so we’ll come back to the list then and explore how the Trump administration — and the country — is doing.This is a preview of today's special edition that is available in full and ad-free for our premium podcast subscribers. If you'd like to complete this episode and receive Sunday editions, exclusive interviews, bonus content, and more, head over to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for a membership. If you are currently a newsletter subscriber, inquiry with us about how to receive a 33% discount on a podcast subscription! Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com to sign up! You can also give the gift of a Tangle podcast subscription by clicking here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a darkly comedic look at motherhood and society's expectations, Academy Award-nominated Amy Adams stars as a passionate artist who puts her career on hold to stay home with her young son. But her maternal instinct takes a wild and surreal turn as she discovers the best, yet fiercest, part of herself. Based on the acclaimed novel, Nightbitch is a thought-provoking and wickedly humorous film from Searchlight Pictures. Stream Night Bitch January 24th only on Disney Plus. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and this is a special Friday edition. Today, we are going to be setting some benchmarks for the Trump administration and the Trump presidency, taking stock of where the country is and laying out a few things that we hope to check in on in a few years. Here's the context and the background for this. So I have dismissed in the past the importance of presidential rankings because I think they're very silly. And when reviewing past presidents, I focused mostly on

the promises they made while campaigning and how those promises held up when they were in office. President Biden is set to leave office on Monday and next week, we're going to be reviewing his presidency the same way we reviewed Trump's presidency in 2021 by looking at the promises made and the promises kept and then just doing a broader evaluation of some of the big issues a lot of people track in our country. This year though we thought the change in administration and a larger staff afforded us a new opportunity to set some benchmarks that we could check back in on as a news organization in two and four years. Doing something as expansive

as this just literally has not been possible in the past because for so long Tangle has mostly just been me by myself but we have a larger team now and with all the growth over the last four years since the last change in administration I have a lot of help now and I set out to do this bigger project, something much more comprehensive. So as a team, and with the help of our readers and listeners who offered some suggestions, we've decided to lay out a series of reference points for both the incoming administration and the country as Trump heads into office for his final term. We've broken these benchmarks down into three broad groups, traditional economic metrics that presidents are judged by, like, you know, the price of

gasoline or unemployment rates and economic metrics we think presidents should be judged by, like, for instance, how many people have credit card debt, which to me is a better indicator of the health of your normal American than, say, GDP. Second, we're going gonna talk about promises. That is the things President Trump said he was going to do, the things he's promised on the campaign trail and since his victory, and then we're gonna evaluate whether he's done them or not.

A quick note that we are not giving our opinion on Trump's promises, just his ability to follow through on them. Three, we're gonna evaluate just national interests is kind of what we're calling this bucket. That is the state of our national security abroad, the safety of the American people at home and the strength of our domestic institutions. And lastly, we're going to share some predictions from some commentators that we found noteworthy and wanted to capture for posterity so we can refer back to them and kind of just judge what the mood is on

Trump now versus when he leaves office. I want to note here that some of our benchmarks are hard metrics, some are more qualitative assessments, and some may be more subjective evaluations. We think all of these issues are important and we don't want to track only the ones that are easy to measure. So what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna list some of the things that we're gonna keep track of. This is gonna be a little lengthy. You're gonna to get a lot of numbers, which I know is harder listening than reading, but I'll try and keep it as interesting as possible. At the end, we'll share some of the predictions we're going to keep an eye on. And I think this

will be a good benchmark setter for the whole Trump administration. And again, we're going to look back on this in two years and then again in four years and measure how he's doing. So we're sort of just setting this mile marker in the road. And of course, next week we'll be out with our review of the Biden presidency. All right, with that, let's get into it with our metrics. So the first issue we're going to track is gas prices. And what we're going to track is the AAA's fuel prices tracker that marks the national average for the price of a gallon of gas.

Where things stand right now, as of January 17th, 2025, the national average for the price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.12. That price is up very slightly from $3.07 per gallon one year ago. Next up is housing prices. What we're going to track, both home prices and health of the rental market. We're going to use two metrics to track home prices, the S&P CoreLogic Case Shiller Index, which is the leading measure of US home prices. And we're also going to track the median home prices as measured by the Federal Reserve Economic Data, that's FRED. We'll also use two indicators to measure the health of the rental market. First, we're

going to look at the median US asking rent, and then we'll sample the rental vacancy rates in the 10 largest US cities as measured by the Census Bureau. A quick note here that housing metrics, especially prices, are often lagging economic indicators, so we should exercise some caution when interpreting these numbers. That being said, this is where things stand. As of October 24th, the most recent month for which data is currently available,

the Kate Schiller index was 324.22, up from 312.96 one year prior. Additionally, according to Fred, the median sales price of houses sold in the United States was $420,400 in Q3 2024. In December 2024, the median US asking rent was $1,594, which was a decrease of about 0.3% from the year prior. Next up is the financial markets. What we're going to track. While the stock market is

not the economy, the performance of retail investments is one important indicator of economic health. So we're going to measure the leading market indexes. That's the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the NASDAQ, as well as the yield on the 10-year treasury note. So where do things stand? As of January 16, 2025, the Dow Jones closed at 43,153, the S&P 500 closed at 5,937, and the NASDAQ closed at 19,338. The yield on the 10-year treasury note was 4.61%. We'll be right back after this quick break.

In a darkly comedic look at motherhood and society's expectations, Academy Award-nominated Amy Adams stars as a passionate artist who puts her career on hold to stay home with her young son. But her maternal instinct takes a wild and surreal turn as she discovers the best, yet fiercest, part of herself. Based on the acclaimed novel, Nightbitch is a thought-provoking and wickedly humorous film from Searchlight pictures. Stream Nightbitch January 24th only on Disney Plus.

Next up is the issue of personal finances. What we're going to track here is savings and debt of US households. For savings, we're going to track here is savings and debt of US households. For savings, we're going to use the personal savings rate that's also called PSA VIRT, which tracks the percentage of disposable income that households save rather than spend on consumption. For household debt, we'll use the Federal Reserve of New York's Debt Tracker, which also accounts for credit card debt. This is where things stand. As of November 24th, the personal savings rate was 4.4%. The total U.S. housing debt was $12.98 trillion as of Q3 2024, and the total non-housing debt was $4.96 trillion. Americans total credit card balance was $1.17 trillion, an 8.1% increase from the year prior.

Next up is economic activity. What we're going to track, the growth in and total of U.S. gross domestic product, that's GDP, using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Just using GDP to show the health of a country's economy is insufficient, but as part of a broader dashboard, it is still a very good indicator. Where things stand right now, well, the GDP increased at an annual rate of 3.1% in Q3 2024,

and 3% in Q2 2024, and 1.3% in Q1. Total GDP as of the third quarter 2024 was $29.4 trillion. I wanna pause here just to say, I know we're throwing a lot of numbers at you. The next section of this is the promises, which is a little bit more subjective. So hang in there if your eyes are rolling into the back of your head, like mine might

be even just reading this because I know it's difficult to track all this without reading it. Next up is the issue of employment. What we're going to track the Department of Labor data measuring several things, the unemployment rate, non-farm jobs, the labor force participation rate and the number of people not in the labor force but seeking a job. Right now this is where things stand. In December of 2024, the unemployment rate was 4.1% with the rate for the previous seven months ranging between 4.1% and 4.2%. Non-farm payroll employment increased by 256,000 to a seasonally adjusted total of 160 million. The labor force participation rate was

62.5% and 5.5 million people were not in the labor force but said they wanted a job. Next up is the issue of inflation. What we're going to track is the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the consumer price index, that's the CPI, and core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices. We're also going to look at the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Federal Reserve's preferred metric for inflation. Where do things stand right now? In December 2024, the CPI increased 2.9% on an unadjusted annual basis and 0.4% from the previous month. Core CPI rose 0.2% from the previous month. In November, the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, the PCE,

rose 2.4% annually and 0.1% from the previous month. 2.4% annually and 0.1% from the previous month. Of course, as we found out in the last election, the actual data around the economy is not as important as consumer confidence sometimes, so we're also gonna track that. We're gonna track consumer confidence using the University of Michigan's economic indicators, which use surveying to measure how optimistic

or pessimistic consumers are about their financial situations, the economy and their purchasing intentions. Where things stand right now, the University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment was 73.2 in January 2025, which is a 1.1% decrease from the previous month and a 7.3% decrease from January 2024. The current economic conditions score for January 2025 was 77.9 and the index of consumer expectations was 70.2. Next up is interest rates. We're going to track changes to the Federal Reserve's range for federal funds, also known as the interest rate, as well as the 30-year mortgage rate as measured by Freddie Mac. The Fed's interest rate is currently 4.25% to 4.5%

and it cut interest rates three times in 2024 for the first time since April, 2020. The average 30 year mortgage rate is 7.04% up from the annual low of 6.08% in September. We're also going to be measuring domestic oil production. That's crude oil production in barrels per day based on US Energy Information Administration data. Right now, in October 2024, US field production of crude oil was 13,457,000 barrels per day.

Overall, crude oil production increased by roughly 21% between January 2021 and October 2024, and 5% between March 2020 and October 2024. So we're pumping a lot of oil. The next issue we have and the final metric that we're going to be tracking before we get into the promises made by the Trump administration is the issue of national debt and deficit. We're going to track changes to the national debt. That's the total amount of outstanding borrowing owed by the US government. And we're also going to track the deficit. We're going to track changes to the national debt. That's the total amount of outstanding borrowing owed by the U.S. government. And we're also going to track the deficit. That's the total

amount the U.S. government has spent exceeding what it has collected in revenue. Right now, this is where things stand, buckle up. The total national debt was $35.46 trillion in the fiscal year 2024, while the national deficit was $710.94 billion as of October, 2024. We'll be right back after this quick break. In a darkly comedic look at motherhood and society's expectations, Academy Award-nominated Amy Adams stars as a passionate artist who puts her career on hold to stay home with her young son. But her maternal instinct takes a wild and surreal turn as she discovers the best, yet

fiercest, part of herself. Based on the acclaimed novel, Nightbitch is a thought-provoking and wickedly humorous film from Searchlight Pictures. Stream Nightbitch January 24th only on Disney+. All right, that concludes the section on metrics, which is a lot of numbers and I know is a ton of stuff to throw at your brain and listen to. But we're going to move on to some stuff that might be a little bit more engaging in the audio format, which is the promises of the Trump administration.

So first up, one of the issues that we're going to track is the cost for seniors on Social Security. On the campaign trail last August, Trump suggested that Americans who rely on Social Security as their primary source of income are being hurt by Biden administration policies. As a remedy, Trump said he would eliminate the federal income tax some Social Security recipients pay on their benefits. The Social Security administration estimates that roughly 40% of Social Security recipients pay federal taxes on their benefits, usually when they have other substantial income The Social Security Administration estimates that roughly 40% of Social Security recipients pay federal taxes on their benefits, usually when they have other substantial income in

addition to their benefits. So what we're going to track is whether any tax reform legislation passed during Trump's term includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security payments. Next up is the war in Ukraine. At various points during his campaign, Trump promised to help negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine either before his inauguration or in the early days of his presidency. Trump advisers now say they are looking at a timeline of months to resolve the conflict, what we're going to track, whether there is a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine,

and if the United States is directly involved. Next up is the issue of Israel and Palestine and Israel and Gaza specifically. What's been said, Trump promised to secure a deal to end the war in Gaza before his inauguration, saying that broader conflicts in the Middle East were going to get solved. What we're going to track. This is one issue we can already partially evaluate. According to reports from American and Israeli media Trump's incoming administration played a key role in Advancing a ceasefire deal with a roadmap toward peace and it started before he took office

Going forward we'll track whether the deal proceeds as planned and whether any new conflicts break out in the region with a particular focus on Israel Lebanon and Hezbollah Iran Syria and Yemen Next up is the issue of tariffs. Trump has called for significant tariffs to protect US industries and address trade imbalances, suggesting that the US could raise trillions of dollars from imposing new tariffs. Specifically, he proposed implementing a baseline tariff of 10% on all US imports and tariffs of 60% or higher on all imports from China. He has also said he would impose a 25%

tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico until they clamp down on drugs and migrants crossing their respective borders. What we're going to track is whether Trump imposes tariffs on any of those countries and the ensuing economic impact. Next up is government efficiency. Trump made government efficiency and waste a key issue in the election, appointing Ailan Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a presidential advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOJ, focused on improving government efficiency. Musk and Ramaswamy have said their efforts will focus on three reforms, regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions, and cost savings.

Before the election, Musk said DOJ would find at least $2 trillion in savings. More recently, he said there was only a good shot of cutting half that. Hey everybody, this is John, executive producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com to sign up for a newsletter subscription or you can go to tanglemedia.supercast.com and sign up for our premium podcast membership, which will unlock this complete episode, as well as ad-free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews, and so much more. We are working on trying to get together a bundled membership

package where you're able to sign up for both the newsletter and the podcast. In the meantime, if you sign up for a newsletter subscription and you'd like to receive the podcast. In the meantime, if you sign up for a newsletter subscription, and you'd like to receive the podcast subscription as well, or vice versa, we will offer you a 33% discount to sign up for the other. This is the best we can do in the short term while we work on a long-term bundling solution. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings. So stay tuned. Isaac and Ari will be here for the Sunday podcast and I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday for the rest of the crew. This is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend. Y'all. Peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by John Law. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will K. Back, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to reettangle.com and check out our website. you