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Florida is the first state to reject an abortion-rights measure

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AMONG THE results that came early on election night was for a ballot measure in Florida to enshrine a constitutional right to an abortion. Though 57% of Floridians supported it (with 91% of the vote counted), it failed—falling short of the 60% majority required in the state. The defeat marks the first time state-level abortion-rights campaigners have lost such a ballot campaign since the Supreme Court overturned a national right to the procedure in 2022. Florida’s current law will stand: it bans abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.

Nine other states also voted on abortion-related measures on November 5th (see map). Most, including those in Arizona and Nevada, are expected to pass. Tallies in Midwestern states—South Dakota, Nebraska and Missouri—may be the tightest. The ballot measures vary in scope, from New York’s expansive equal-rights amendment to South Dakota’s measure offering unfettered access to abortion only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Only Florida required a 60% supermajority.

Map: The Economist

Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment would have made abortion accessible until a fetus’s viability, about 24 weeks from conception, and later if necessary to protect the health of the woman. Its failure will affect not only more than 4m women in Florida but millions more across America’s south-east. If the measure had passed, it would have offered relatively permissive access in a region blanketed with highly restrictive laws. None of the states bordering Florida have procedures for citizen-led ballot initiatives that might overturn their laws.

Florida’s abortion-rights activists had raised $110m, a record for such a campaign. Their messaging emphasised health care and freedom from government interference, hoping the Sunshine State’s social liberalism would help them reach a super-majority. While one famous Floridian, Donald Trump, said that he would be voting against the amendment, he did not join the opposition campaign. Instead Ron DeSantis, the state’s governor, became its figurehead. He labelled the amendment too extreme for Florida and defended the state’s six-week ban.

The campaign was contentious. The state agency that regulates medical providers published videos opposing the proposed change, and the Department of Health threatened criminal prosecutions against television stations airing supportive advertisements, claiming they could discourage women from seeking emergency care. (A federal judge rejected the threatened sanctions, saying: “It’s the First Amendment, stupid”).

More than two-fifths of Americans have now voted on abortion since 2022. The breakneck pace of ballot-measure campaigns will slow. Only two more states with bans—Oklahoma and Arkansas—have provisions for citizen-led ballot initiatives. America’s abortion environment is becoming calcified along regional lines, with little appetite for reform in states with restrictive laws. Given that a national law is unlikely to pass in Congress, many Americans will continue to be forced to travel to receive abortions, or receive posted pills. And harrowing accounts of women in restrictive states who have died from complications during miscarriages, or faced serious health risks because doctors were afraid to treat them, will continue to accumulate.

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Economics

Trump and Fed Chair Powell could be set on a collision course over rates

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Jerome Powell and President Donald Trump during a nomination announcement in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2017.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell could be on a policy collision course in 2025 depending on how economic circumstances play out.

Should the economy run hot and inflation flare up again, Powell and his colleagues could decide to tap the brakes on their efforts to lower interest rates. That in turn could infuriate Trump, who lashed Fed officials including Powell during his first term in office for not relaxing monetary policy quickly enough.

“Without question,” said Joseph LaVorgna, former chief economist at the National Economic Council during Trump’s first term, when asked about the potential for a conflict. “When they don’t know what to do, oftentimes they don’t do anything. That may be a problem. If the president feels like rates should be lowered, does the Fed, just for public optics, dig its feet in?”

Though Powell became Fed chair in 2018, after Trump nominated him for the position, the two clashed often about the direction of interest rates.

Trump publicly and aggressively berated the chair, who in turn responded by asserting how important it is for the Fed to be independent and apart from political pressures, even if they’re coming from the president.

When Trump takes office in January, the two will be operating against a different backdrop. During the first term, there was little inflation, meaning that even Fed rate hikes kept benchmark rates well below where they are now.

Trump is planning both expansionary and protectionist fiscal policy, even more so than during his previous run, that will include an even tougher round of tariffs, lower taxes and big spending. Should the results start to show up in the data, the Powell Fed may be tempted to hold tougher on monetary policy against inflation.

LaVorgna, chief economist at SMBC Nikko Securities, who is rumored for a position in the new administration, thinks that would be mistake.

“They’re going to look at a very nontraditional approach to policy that Trump is bringing forward but put it through a very traditional economic lens,” he said. “The Fed’s going to have a really difficult choice based on their traditional approach of what to do.”

Market sees fewer rate cuts

Futures traders have been waffling in recent days on their expectations for what the Fed will do next.

The market is pricing in about a coin-flip chance of another interest rate cut in December, after it being a near-certainty a week ago, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch. Pricing further out indicates the equivalent of three quarter-percentage-point reductions through the end of 2025, which also has come down significantly from prior expectations.

Investors’ nerves have gotten jangled in recent days about the Fed’s intentions. Fed Governor Michelle Bowman on Wednesday noted that progress on inflation has “stalled,” an indication that she might continue to push for a slower pace of rate cuts.

“All roads lead to tensions between the White House and the Fed,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. “It won’t just be the White House. It will be Treasury, it’ll be Commerce and the Fed all intersecting.”

Indeed, Trump is building a team of loyalists to implement his economic agenda, but much of the success depends on accommodative or at least accurate monetary policy that doesn’t push too hard to either boost or restrict growth. For the Fed, that is represented in the quest to find the “neutral” rate of interest, but for the new administration, it could mean something different.

The struggle over where rates should be will create “political and policy tensions between the Federal Reserve and the White House that would clearly prefer lower rates,” Brusuelas said.

“If one is going to impose tariffs, or mass deportations, you’re talking about restricting aggregate supply while simultaneously implementing deficit finance tax cuts, which is encouraging an increase in aggregate demand. You’ve got a basic inconsistency in your policy matrix,” he added. “There’s an inevitable crossroads that results in tensions between Trump and Powell.”

Avoiding conflict

To be sure, there are some factors that could mitigate the tensions.

One is that Powell’s term as Fed chair expires in early 2026, so Trump may simply choose to ride it out until he can put someone in the chair more to his liking. There’s also little chance that the Fed would actually move to raise rates outside of some highly unexpected event that would push inflation much higher.

Also, Trump’s policies will take a while to make their way through the system, so any impacts on inflation and macroeconomic growth likely won’t be readily apparent in the data, thus not necessitating a Fed response. There’s also the chance that the impacts might not be that much either way.

“I expect higher inflation and slower growth. I think the tariffs and the deportations are negative supply shocks. They hurt growth and they lift inflation,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The Fed will still cut interest rates next year, just perhaps not as quickly as would have otherwise been the case.”

Battles with Trump, then, could be more of a headache for the next Fed chair, assuming Trump doesn’t reappoint Powell.

“So I don’t think it’s going to be an issue in 2025,” Zandi said. “It could be an issue in 2026, because at that point, the rate cutting’s over and the Fed may be in a position where it certainly needs to start raising interest rates. Then that’s when it becomes an issue.”

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Economics

Congestion pricing in New York gets the go-ahead after all. Maybe

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NOVEMBER 20th marks the first “Gridlock Alert” day of New York City’s holiday season. This is the official designation for the city’s busiest traffic days of the year. But traffic is bad most days, with more than 900,000 cars entering Manhattan’s central business district. INRIX, a traffic-data firm, found that New York City leads the world in urban traffic congestion among the cities scored, with the average driver stationary for 101 hours a year. After years of false starts, including a cowardly pre-election pause by Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, congestion pricing has the green light.

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Economics

Howard Lutnick, Donald Trump’s pick for commerce secretary

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Editor’s note: On November 19th Donald Trump chose Howard Lutnick to be commerce secretary in his new administration. We published this profile of Mr Lutnick on November 16th and have updated it to include his appointment.

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