CEPR News December 4, 2025
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Hondurans voted in general elections Sunday, and several days later the results are still too close to call. While governing Libre party candidate Rixi Moncada appears to have only around 20 percent or less of the vote, hard-right National Party candidate Nasry Asfura is statistically tied with center-right Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla, with about 79 percent of votes counted.
Ahead of the election, US President Donald Trump interfered by posting an endorsement of Asfura and denunciations of Moncada and Nasralla, whom he labeled “communists.” Trump also threatened to cut off US assistance to Honduras if Asfura were to lose and vowed to pardon convicted drug trafficker and former National Party President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández (which he subsequently did). Trump’s comments echoed statements by Republicans in Congress, including some who had planned to travel to Honduras to “observe” the elections; as Mark Weisbrot noted in an op-ed, it appeared to be more of a political intervention to promote the idea that the governing party could steal the election.
CEPR is urging patience and restraint as Honduras’s electoral authority continues to count votes. See our recent Q and A on Honduras’s elections for more background.
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| Black Friday Deals Won’t Save You From EA’s New Private Equity Overlord
The holiday retail season is here, so it’s a good time to ask: What will the private equity takeover of video gaming giant EA mean for gaming enthusiasts and industry workers? Daniel Stone lays out what’s at stake, and explains how a company with a shoddy reputation was actually the perfect target for a PE takeover that involves the Saudi investment fund and the Trump family.
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| Americas Live Update Blog
As the Trump administration builds up a military presence in the Caribbean and increasingly threatens Venezuela, Members of Congress have introduced bipartisan War Powers Resolutions in both houses. CEPR is tracking these developments daily, and more — from US actions targeting Venezuela and Colombia, and interference in Honduras’s election, to Trump’s detente with Lula.
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What Real Freedom Requires: A Conversation with Joseph Stiglitz
On CEPR’s Mostly Economics podcast, Dean Baker speaks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz about his new book “The Road to Freedom,” which argues that real economic freedom means more than just keeping government small. Stiglitz breaks down how access to healthcare and education create freedom, why drug companies profit from taxpayer-funded vaccines, and how pollution is really about property rights. Through it all, Stiglitz shares an optimistic vision for building an economy that works for everyone.
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Trump Extends Waiver on Syria Sanctions as Congress Debates Repeal
Cuba’s shortages and health crises worsen under US restrictions; new Russia sanctions advance as recent measures take effect; Gaza’s humanitarian emergency remains severe despite ceasefire; and the US designated another Venezuelan group a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” All this and more in our latest Sanctions Watch bulletin. |
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| The Economy After the September Jobs Report
The first jobs report after the government shutdown was treated as good news by many, with a stronger than expected overall jobs figure. But Dean Baker explains why this number hardly implies robust job growth; it’s significantly lower than last year, and previous months’ data was revised down. Manufacturing and mining jobs are down, and the significant losses in the federal government workforce have yet to show up in the employment data. All in all, the evidence shows a weakening of the labor market – which is bad news for millions of workers.
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Guillaume Long on Texas Public Radio on the Resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine
Guillaume Long spoke with Texas Public Radio about the US military buildup in the Caribbean near Venezuela. Long explained that despite the Trump administration’s statements, the buildup has “a completely different agenda which has nothing to do with drugs,” but rather “the reassertion of US power in the Western Hemisphere, the resurgence of the Monroe Doctrine. I do think it is fundamentally about regime change in Venezuela.”
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Ecuador’s Message to Trump
Guillaume Long's new op-ed on Project Syndicate highlights how in the recent referendum Ecuadorians rejected Noboa’s militarized security agenda. “A security crisis will not be resolved through the militarization of poor neighborhoods or the expansion of the US military’s presence, ” a message the Ecuadorians sent to Noboa, but one “that the Trump administration should also hear,” writes Long.
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Know someone who would want to work at what The Washington Post calls one “of the most prominent think tanks on the left?” CEPR has an opening for a Director of Development and invites applications for the Digital Communications Congressional Fellowship Program. See details and how to apply here.
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Newsweek, citing Dean Baker, Blue-Collar Jobs Are Collapsing Under Trump
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RealClear World, quoting Pedro Labayen Herrera, Noboa’s Total War on Gangs, and Democracy
- El País, citing CEPR, La inyección de Trump y una alta polarización marcan las elecciones de Honduras
- Huffington Post, quoting Dean Baker, MAGA Pumps The Brakes On AI As Trump Goes All In
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Al Jazeera, quoting Francisco Rodríguez, Venezuela Denounces Trump’s Airspace Remarks as ‘Colonialist Threat’
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