On March 26, 2026, I attended a public meeting at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on the Economic Growth and Regulatory Paperwork Reduction Act. I expected something highly technical and removed from everyday realities, but the conversation returned to the same concerns. The meeting was divided into four panels: supervision, banking regulations, innovation, and consumer protection. The discussion centered on two themes: inconsistency in supervision and the pressure placed on community banks. Panelists came from different institutions, but their concerns overlapped. The first panel on bank supervision made it clear that the issue is not a lack of rules, but how unevenly those rules are applied. Several speakers highlighted the issue of weak communication between regulators and banks, noting that expectations shift depending on the examiner or agency involved, which creates unpredictability that makes the system more difficult to navigate. Instead of operating wit...
At POLITICO’s Economy Summit on March 25, 2026, the conversation around trade captured something bigger than tariffs alone: the sense that economic policy is now inseparable from political struggle. The summit included a trade panel, “What’s Next for Trump’s Tariffs?,” with Greta Peisch, Everett Eissenstat, and Eugene Laney, along with a separate conversation with Peter Navarro. That lineup mattered. It signaled that trade is no longer being discussed only as a technical issue for economists or lawyers but as a live political battleground involving executive power, business strategy, and the price Americans pay for everyday life. What makes this moment especially important is that it comes after a major legal shock. On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, ruling that Congress, not the president, holds the authority to impose tariffs of that scope. But...