Fact Pack! Temporary Tariff Trim
By Hightower Las Vegas and RCG Economics on May 13, 2025
After weekend negotiations between the U.S. and China led to an agreement to temporarily cut tariffs — for the next 90 days, U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods will be 30 percent, and Chinese tariffs on U.S. imports will be 10 percent — U.S. stocks yesterday recovered.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,160.72 points (2.81 percent).
- The S&P 500 rose 3.26 percent to end at 5,844.19, bringing its gain since an April low to more than 20 percent — and cutting its year-to-date losses to just 0.6 percent.
- The Nasdaq Composite added 4.35 percent and settled at 18,708.34.
It was the best day since April 9 for all three indexes.
Unsurprisingly, shares of firms that rely the most on Chinese goods rallied the most:
- Best Buy rose 6 percent.
- Dell Technologies increased almost 8 percent.
- Amazon got a bump of more than 8 percent.
A reminder of where things were as of Friday for those still in the daze and haze of news whiplash: President Trump had raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145 percent, and Beijing had retaliated with 125 percent duties on U.S. goods.
Weird Roadway Names
As a tonic for those suffering from global chaos burnout, we note with delight that a sign familiar to Nevadans who regularly drive to California is featured on the home page of Realtor.com:
From the write-up:
Zzyzx is a fabricated name, conceived by Curtis Howe Springer, who proclaimed it the last word alphabetically in the English language. In 1944, he christened the road and the entire area with the Z-lific name, and established the Zzyzx Mineral Springs and Health Spa on the remote spot.
The Realtor.com story also mentions Windy Butte Way in Las Vegas, noting that Butte is “pronounced “byoot” as in “beautiful” — and not like the synonymy for derrière — but is still chuckle-worthy. (Apparently there’s also a Windy Butte Ranch in Spring Mills, PA, a Windy Butte retreat in Clancy, MT, and Windy Buttes in North and South Dakota. Send us your best jokes…)
Price Cuts
April data shows U.S. home sellers, on average, are continuing to lower asking prices:
As of April 2025
Recap of existing single-family sales for Q1:
As of March 2025
Fact Pack copublisher and cheerful economist John Restrepo has posted the latest Job Flash report for those wishing to review March / Q3 Nevada numbers:
As of March 2023
As of March 2023
As of March 2023
As of March 2023
As of March 2023
As of March 2023
Nevada Named in Line-up of Prison Boom States
The number of prisons in the U.S. increased from approximately 500 to more than 1,800 in the 35 years between 1970 and 2005, driven by population growth and a rise in incarceration rates, according to a recent Bloomberg article. The country’s prison population grew 700 percent during that period.
John Eason, a sociologist at Texas A&M University, explored how communities are shaped and economically benefit when they agree to host prisons in his book Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. A notable excerpt from Eason’s case study on a community in Arkansas:
The prison benefited them in so many ways. Forrest City got hundreds of thousands of dollars back every year from the state based on their prison population. Conservatively, they only had a third of the jobs in town, so the city had new people move in. That means new permits for new housing. That means home sales. That means even before the prison was built, there were millions of dollars placed in local banks. There was interest being earned for contracts to turn the dirt, and to put in the foundation and the plumbing. The black leaders in town got contracts set aside for minority businesses. The mayor at the time, Danny Ferguson? His wife got a job as an accountant at the prison.
Eason said he was inspired to study the U.S. prison system when he read an often-cited piece published by The Atlantic in 1998 entitled “The Prison Industrial Complex.”
Eason’s book cites a variety of data on expectations for prison growth, including a Nevada forecast: a 2007 Pew Research report projected that between and 2007 and 2011, Nevada would be one of the states with the most growth in imprisonment per capita:
As of 2007
The Pew analysis said the incarceration rate — a metric including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities — was expected to grow in Nevada from 540 to 599 prisoners per 100,000 residents between 2007 and 2011, and that Nevada was likely to continue the trend into the subsequent decade.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI), Nevada had an incarceration rate of 610 per 100,000 people as of 2023 — and for that metric “locks up a higher percentage of its people than any independent democratic country on earth.” PPI graph:
As of 2023
PPI noted in its write-up on Nevada that people cycle through local jails relatively quickly: each year, at least 38,000 different people are booked into local facilities. Nevada is one of more than a dozen states that have ended prison gerrymandering — the state counts incarcerated people where they legally reside rather than the location of their prison cell.
The largest number of imprisoned Nevadans are from Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, and Reno. A handful of rural counties — including Nye, White Pine, and Pershing — and small cities — including Ely, Elko, Yerington, and Boulder City — also have a high rate of imprisonment. Stats from PPI (also as of 2023):
- Clark County (Las Vegas Metropolitan Area) had the most residents imprisoned (5,957) of all Nevada counties and an imprisonment rate of 263 per 100,000 residents.
- Washoe County (Reno) had 1,191 of the total county population of over 486,000 people imprisoned, with an imprisonment rate of 244 per 100,000.
- Nye County had a total population of just over 51,000 county residents and had 189 people imprisoned.
- White Pine County had a population of 9,000 residents with 31 residents imprisoned.
As of 2023
- Only one Nevada city had a higher imprisonment rate in 2023 than Las Vegas’ rate of 330 per 100,000: Ely. The city had 19 residents in state prison and a population of less than 4,000), resulting in a rate of 482 per 100,000.
- Other Nevada cities with imprisonment rates greater than 300 per 100,000 include Reno (316 per 100,000) and North Las Vegas (313 per 100,000).
- In contrast, the City of Henderson — the state’s second most populous — had a relatively low imprisonment rate of 120 per 100,000. PPI noted in its write-up that 8 percent of Henderson residents were living in poverty in 2023, while statewide the poverty rate was about 12.5 percent, and in Las Vegas it was around 15 percent.
Infomap and table on Las Vegas incarceration rates:
As of 2023
As of 2023
The Nevada Department of Corrections has a staff of approximately 2,400 employees at last count (2024).
A Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) analysis said Mississippi (+14.3 percent), Montana (+8.8 percent), and Colorado (+8.2 percent) were the states that saw the largest increases in their incarcerated populations between 2021 and 2023.
The following graph notes that growth in the number of local jails in the U.S. is being driven more by pre-trial detention and agency holds than by convictions:
As of 2023
On the Horizon
Mike PeQueen: Tuesday’s consumer price index is important as are the many different Fed officials who are holding different speaking events. Nothing, however, will compare to any announcement of additional tariff rate adjustments or trade deals.
