By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

The tariffs had a significant effect on trade volumes: Facing higher U.S. tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices but reduced the volume of shipments to the U.S. by 18%-24% relative to the European Union, Canada and Australia, the report found.

Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans, the report said.

Not ideal.

Find the full Kiel report here.

Tags: economy, tariff, Wall Street Journal

In his song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, Billy Joel makes 119 historical references from his life at the time. Of those, 57 of them are people, and as the internet likes to remind us, the number of those on the list who are still alive approaches zero with time.

With the passing of Brigitte Bardot at the end of 2025, the count is down to three. These are the timelines of everyone on the list.

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In some counties, vaccination rates increased after the pandemic, which got them past the recommended level of protection. Many more counties decreased their rates though. The Washington Post made an interactive map to see where your county stands.

I’m into the lede map that makes the decreasing counties fall into the depths below the rest of the country.

Tags: school, vaccination, Washington Post

Bandcamp’s mission is to help spread the healing power of music by building a community where artists thrive through the direct support of their fans. We believe that the human connection found through music is a vital part of our society and culture, and that music is much more than a product to be consumed. It’s the result of a human cultural dialog stretching back before the written word.

Similarly, musicians are more than mere producers of sound. They are vital members of our communities, our culture, and our social fabric. Bandcamp was built to directly connect artists and their fans, and to make it easy for fans to support artists equitably so that they can keep making music.

Today we are fortifying our mission by articulating our policy on generative AI, so that musicians can keep making music, and so that fans have confidence that the music they find on Bandcamp was created by humans.

I hope this works. Of course, the hard part is that it’s going to get more difficult for fans to know if a song was made by a human.

Tags: Bandcamp, human, music

For the Minnesota Star Tribune, Jeff Hargarten and Jake Steinberg report on the growing count of federal personnel:

A potential 3,000 federal agents from ICE and CBP is equivalent to five times the manpower of the Minneapolis Police Department.

It’s close to the total headcount of sworn officers among the region’s largest 10 law enforcement agencies and equals nearly one agent for every 1,000 of the Twin Cities’ 3.2 million residents.

Good use of unit-based pie charts to show the counts and breakdowns.

Tags: government, Minnesota Star Tribune, police

What is the most middle name in the United States? Erin Davis grew curious enough to find the answers in data. For females, the most middle names are Rae, Marie, and Mae. For males, the most middle names are Lee, Kumar, and Ray.

The answers are straightforward, but finding the answers was more roundabout, because you can’t just dig into the annual baby names dataset from the Social Security Administration. Instead, Davis used voter registration data, which comes with its own challenges.

Tags: Erin Davis, middle, names

Hi all. Nathan here. This is the Process, the newsletter for FlowingData members on data and charts beyond defaults. This is issue #371. Today, we rework a chart to focus on the useful bits.

Become a member for access to this — plus tutorials, courses, and guides.

A SpaceX rocket explosion elicits images of spectacle and maybe thoughts of a lot of funds up in flames. But if you’re a pilot flying in an area suddenly defined by the FAA as a debris zone, you probably have other things on your mind. ProPublica analyzed flight data where a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded on January 16, 2025.

We compared the plane’s locations and maneuvers to the FAA’s debris zone, which was based on coordinates it released to air traffic personnel. We identified planes inside the zone during or just after the explosion in January, as well as others that appeared to take significant action to avoid the area. Planes that had just crossed the zone or flew in parallel to it were not included. This analysis may not be comprehensive of all evasive maneuvers or disruptions caused by the explosions.

Tags: explosion, ProPublica, SpaceX

But Trump has made it clear that some data collection simply didn’t align with White House “priorities” that no longer include “woke” topics such as climate change (a “hoax”) or diversity, equity and inclusion. Many of the cuts have also been aimed at data that would reflect poorly on the administration’s policies.

The administration will no longer conduct an engagement and satisfaction survey of the federal workforce after gutting its ranks, and it tried unsuccessfully to disable a website on government spending. The Social Security Administration quietly stopped publicly reporting its live call-center wait times as it was experiencing significant customer service changes and staffing reassignments. The Environmental Protection Agency is moving toward ending a majority of reporting requirements under a “burdensome” greenhouse gas program as the administration rolls back emissions controls. The US Department of Agriculture canceled its food security survey just days before the government shutdown disrupted food aid for tens of millions of people. The USDA also released a delayed trade report that was stripped of its usual analysis, reportedly because the comments ran counter to the president’s messaging.

A lot of people who think these takedowns are a good thing are going to experience the effects of not having enough data to see properly.

Tags: Bloomberg, government, takedown

Probability expressed as a percentage is a value between 0% and 100%. If there is a 0% probability that something happens, then the thing is impossible. If there is 100% probability that something happens, then the thing is definite. This uses words to describe a number.

Now turn it around. What probability do you use to describe the words? If something is unlikely, what are the chances that something occurs? Adam Kucharski made a quiz that lets you assign probability to common words used to express probability. Then compare against what others answered.

See also: the distributions of likelihood and the CIA rendition from the 1990s.

Tags: Adam Kucharski, uncertainty, words