State Economic Watch

Fifteen state treasurers have sent a letter to President Trump expressing significant concern over the economic impacts of the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies. They stress that these policies affect the willingness of people to go to work and travel freely within commercial districts and, as a result, are damaging economic activity in their states.The treasurers of Rhode Island, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Maryland, Vermont, Washington, Connecticut, New York, California, Nevada, and Delaware are signatories to this letter.

In its biennial report , the Kentucky Distillers Association concludes that the bourbon industry contributes $10.6 billion to Kentucky’s economy and supports direct and indirect state employment of approximately 24,000. To put that into context, the state’s current dollar GDP was about $295 billion in 2024, according to the US BEA, and its total employment was approximately 2.05 million in December 2024 according to the US BLS. Despite citing generally upbeat statistics, the report does identify several headwinds for the industry from foreign demand and changing consumer tastes, and raises concerns over the distillery industry’s future employment and capital spending trends given these challenges.

Food for thought from the Canada’s Fraser Institute. Its recently released report, Economic Freedom of North America , measures “the degree to which governments in North America permit their citizens to make their own economic choices”. The study uses data from 2023, incorporating government spending, tax, and labor market regulation statistics to formulate its rankings. It finds that the more “economically free” states enjoy higher incomes and faster population growth than their economically “less free” counterparts. The study gives New Hampshire the highest score of the 50 US states, and New Mexico the lowest.

A minor state economic story, but still highly symbolic. The Campbell’s Company has announced that it will close the Cape Cod Potato Chip production facility in Hyannis, Massachusetts, bringing an end to its 40 year operating history. The company cites efficiency and supply chain optimization as reasons for the closure. Production will move to the company’s other facilities in  Beloit, Wisconsin, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Hanover, Pennsylvania.

The Florida Council of 100 is launching a new promotional campaign to attract business and investors to the West Palm Beach-Miami Florida Gold Coast region. The campaign, called “Ambition Accelerated”, is funded with $10 million in seed money from Steven Ross and Ken Griffin, and is scheduled to be unveiled tonight at the Wall Street Journal Invest Live conference being held in West Palm Beach.

A new report from the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO) takes a very dim view of the state’s economic profile. The report targets the state’s high cost of living and below average economic growth as drivers of its high levels of outmigration. It notes that the state shouldn’t be compared to high growth, gentrifying regions with high housing costs that experience outmigration, but rather to “economically distressed or “left-behind” regions—marked by stagnant productivity and limited opportunity, though typically with much lower costs of living”. Finally, the report concludes that policy prescriptions shouldn’t only focus on affordability, but also on the underlying causes of the state’s economic stagnation.