“The Chinese and the Saudis both are famous for making announcements about new overarching strategic frameworks … [but] it never quite materializes,” said Baker Institute Director David Satterfield.
"The strategy to me does not match the nature of the drug,” said U.S.-Mexico Center director Tony Payan of Texas Gov. Abbott's plan to target cheap, easily smuggled fentanyl. Big fentanyl drug busts? Not always impressive, Payan added. "Dealers can afford to lose a lot of it and still make a very handsome profit.”
While health care costs will drop under the new spending bill, "we don’t know by how much" and who will see the savings, Vivian Ho, the James A. Baker III Institute Chair in Health Economics, said. "It depends on which drugs are included" in price negotiations.
Seasonal factors are in part behind the decline in gas prices, said Michelle Michot Foss, fellow in energy, minerals and materials. "Prices tend to fall starting about mid-summer anyway," she said. She also explained that falling crude oil prices play a part: "Whatever you pay per barrel of oil plus a dollar and change to push it through a refinery is what you'll see at the gasoline pump."
What's driving ongoing inflation, and what's needed to curb it? Public finance fellow John Diamond joined Town Square Talk to discuss.