NONPROFITS

Pakou Hang

Northwest Area Foundation, a St. Paul-based organization providing grants to Native American community nonprofits, announced the appointment of Pakou Hang as vice president of program. Hang is a founding member and executive director of the Hmong American Farmers Association. Northwest Area Foundation targets communities in eight northwest U.S. states, from Minnesota to Oregon, generally following the route of the former Great Northern Railway.

ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

The American Council of Engineering Companies announced that Barr Engineering, Minneapolis, has earned a National Recognition Award for its work on the Morningside Neighborhood Flood Risk Reduction project in Edina.

DEVELOPMENT

Kraus-Anderson Cos., a Minneapolis-based multi-disciplined real estate developer, announced Audra Williams as general counsel, succeeding Tom Wratkowski, who is retiring. Williams previously served as in-house counsel at Ryan Cos. US.

EDUCATION

Minneapolis College of Art and Design announced the appointment of Gwendolyn Freed as president, effective June 1. Freed has held higher education leadership roles at Gustavus Adolphus College, Cornish College of the Arts and Wallin Education Partners.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union, St. Paul, announced the election of Chad Trench as chair of its board of directors, as well as the election of Isaac Durant as a board member. Trench currently is director of operations at Special Olympics Minnesota. Durant is a software engineer.

HEALTH CARE

AMADA Senior Care Twin Cities, a Golden Valley-based in-home care agency for seniors and families, announced Kelly Merriman has joined the company as executive director of operations. Merriman previously was at PRESS Premium Alcohol Seltzer and was founder and president of Lice Lounge Hair Care Center in White Bear Lake and Duluth.

HONORS

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced it has recognized Jules’ Bistro in downtown St. Cloud as the 2024 Minnesota Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year. The business is owned by Donella Westphal. … The Performance Excellence Network announced the recipients of its 2023 Minnesota Performance Excellence Award: Benedictine, Duluth; State of Minnesota Department of Human Services Direct Care & Treatment divisions of Ambulatory Services, Community Based Services, Forensic Services, MN Sex Offender Program, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment Services; and River’s Edge Hospital, St. Peter. The award is based on the Baldrige Framework, a recognized business achievement criteria.

LAW

Dorsey & Whitney announced attorney Laura Morgan has rejoined the firm as a partner in the Healthcare Transactions and Regulations practice group in Minneapolis. Morgan previously was a senior counsel with the inspector general’s office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Morgan previously was with Dorsey from 2016–2022.

MANUFACTURING

Sleep Number Corp., a Minneapolis-based maker and retailer of specialty beds and mattresses, announced the following internal executive changes under the new leadership of CEO Linda Findley: Melissa Barra has been appointed executive vice president, chief product and enterprise strategy officer, a new position; Chris Krusmark, appointed executive vice president, chief retail and people officer; Tanya Skogerboe, appointed senior vice president, chief supply chain and transformation officer, and Amber Minson joins the company as executive vice president, chief marketing officer. Findley joined the company last month.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY

Lifecore Biomedical, a Chaska-based contract manufacturer of pharmaceutical equipment, announced that it has appointed Thomas (Tom) Salus as chief legal and administration officer and corporate secretary. Salus previously held a similar role with Viatris Inc., an international pharmaceutical company.

OPENINGS

Rosedale Center in Roseville announced Legendary Spice & Boba X has joined its Potluck Food Hall. The owner is Grace Huang. … The team behind Mr. Paul’s Supper Club and Mothership Pizza Paradise in Edina announced the opening of Carnival Bar, also located in the 50th and France commercial district of Edina. Tommy Begnaud is the chef/owner.

POLITICS

The Minnesota DFL Party announced Jim Heighington will become executive director in June, succeeding Heidi Kraus Kaplan. Charlene Briner will serve as transition director. Heighington most recently worked as chief of staff to Google’s chief diversity officer.

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EMAIL ITEMS to businessnews@pioneerpress.com.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Police in Brazil said on Sunday that two people have been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to detonate a bomb at a free Lady Gaga concert in Rio de Janeiro.

The Rio event on Saturday was the biggest show of the pop star’s career that sent more than 2 million fans flooding Copacabana Beach.

Rio de Janeiro’s state police and Brazil’s Justice Ministry presented the bare outlines of a plot that they said involved a group that promoted hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community, among others, and planned to detonate homemade explosive devices at the event.

“The plan was treated as a ‘collective challenge’ with the aim of gaining notoriety on social media,” the police said. The group, it added, disseminated violent content to teenagers online as “a form of belonging.”

Authorities arrested two people in connection with the alleged plot — a man described as the group’s leader in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul on illegal weapons possession charges, and a teenager in Rio on child pornography charges. Police did not elaborate on their exact roles in the plot or on how the group came to target Lady Gaga’s beach concert.

“Those involved were recruiting participants, including teenagers, to carry out integrated attacks using improvised explosives and Molotov cocktails,” police said.

The Justice Ministry said that it determined the group posed a “risk to public order.” It said the group falsely presented themselves online as “Little Monsters” — Lady Gaga’s nickname for her fans — in order to reach teenagers and lure them into “networks with violent and self-destructive content.”

During a series of raids on the homes of 15 suspects across several Brazilian states, authorities confiscated phones and other electronic devices. Even as police said they believed homemade bombs were intended for use in the planned attack, there was no mention of the raids turning up any weapons or explosive material.

Lady Gaga’s publicists and concert promoters did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Police said they carried out the raids quietly Saturday in the hours leading up to the concert while “avoiding panic or distortion of information among the population.”

The ministry said there was no impact on those attending the free concert.

Edward Lotterman

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis last week released its “advance estimate” of U.S. Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter of 2025.

GDP measures the total market value of all final goods and services produced in the country over a period of time and is one of the key indicators of how an economy is performing. Despite acknowledged one-off data anomalies, it showed a very slight decline from the start of the year.

This is not good news, it means the nation’s economy contracted, but the response to it has been overwrought.

If instead of a 0.3% decline in output, it had been a 0.3% increase, the hubbub would be much less.

Of the four basic elements to GDP, consumption, investment, government spending and net exports, the three most closely related to domestic production were all positive. The decline came from a sharp increase in imports clearly driven by fear of President Donald Trump’s forthcoming tariffs. Companies that import supplies were stocking up before the higher prices kicked in. The anomaly is how the bureau factors in the impact of these imports into its estimate of overall GDP.

The quarter ended a month ago. The tariffs are now kicking in. This rise above usual import levels almost certainly has already flipped to a sharp drop that will worsen, and be reflected in the second-quarter estimate come July.

Let it be clear. Trump’s overall economic policies are bad. They will harm our nation. His trade policies are the worst of these. The odds that we are sliding into recession — defined generally as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — are high. Any recession is likely to be severe. But this most preliminary of three estimates of a quarter’s GDP shows little that is definite.

This coming Tuesday, May 6, will bring us a report on “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services, March 2025.” The more reliable “second estimate” of January-to March GDP comes out May 29. April’s “U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services” will be out a week after that. These will all tell us more about where we are headed. However, we then need to wait until July 30 for the advance report on second-quarter GDP. That will give us even more certainty on how well our goose is being cooked.

In the meantime, if you want to understand events that are unfolding, begin by understanding GDP.

First, it is a measure of the value of output. That is important to remember. Don’t make it bigger than it is. Journalists have gushed, “Economists agree that GDP is by far the most important indicator of how an economy is doing.” Over 44 years in this field, I have never heard any economist say that nor seen it in any textbook. GDP is an important indicator, taken together with several others. Full stop.

Second, GDP has distinct limitations. Every 19-year-old taking intro macroeconomics at the U must memorize these by the second week. They are detailed in every textbook. Yet one constantly hears complaints like “but people don’t realize that GDP ignores ___________ !” The blank is filled with one of the limitations that are detailed in every macro textbook. Here are the important ones to remember:

GDP is a measure of the value of new things produced. It does not subtract things produced in previous periods that are thrown away. Do that and you get “net domestic product.”

GDP is a measure of flow, not a balance sheet of assets and liabilities. It measures new lumber, gasoline or steel cranked out, but is not adjusted for trees cut down, oil pumped or iron ore mined.

GDP is not adjusted for external effects, either positive or negative. If producing something harms health or the environment, that is bad, unless such damages can be measured in monetary terms, such as medical bills, they must be accounted for in other ways. If a product benefits people beyond those who bought it, that’s great. But again, this positive side effect must be measured some other way.

GDP makes no value judgement about the inherent goodness or badness of any good or service. You may think sports activities for disadvantaged teens do more for society than strip clubs, or that yoga classes are better than shooting ranges, or vice versa, but what goes into GDP is the money paid for each activity.

Some “goods” may reflect societal “bads.” If more people get drunk and drive and crash, then we will spend more money on tow trucks, body shops, ambulances, emergency rooms, orthopedic surgeons, undertakers and tombstones, all of which will add to GDP. A crime wave may force people to spend money on pepper spray, triple door locks, car and home alarms, safe rooms and self-defense classes. All will add to GDP.

Do these limitations mean that GDP is useless? No, not at all. It remains vital information. But again, it must be taken in context with other data.

Now understand what is counted.

Econ students memorize that “GDP equals consumption plus investment plus government spending on goods and services plus net exports.” All these involve “final goods,” ones that need no more handling before being used.

So purchases of food, clothing, shelter, medical care and so on make up consumption by households, the largest component of GDP. This includes “consumer durables,” things like appliances or vehicles that serve for years, but does not attempt to factor in the lifelong value these goods supply beyond the period in which they were purchased.

Purchases of expendable items, like parts, by businesses are different, since most go into goods or services ultimately bought by households. It is important to avoid double counting these. So most business spending falls into “investment.” These are “physical investments” by which economists refer to equipment, machines and infrastructure used in production that last a long time. Understand that this “investment” component of GDP does not refer to “financial investment,” such as putting money into stocks, bonds, mutual funds or bank accounts.

The government category includes all government spending on goods: patrol cars, aircraft carriers, locks and dams, school buildings and school supplies and compensation of government employees. Importantly, it does not include “transfer payments” of money to individuals via Social Security, SSI, SNAP or student aid grants.

For both consumption and physical investment, the value component used is the market price of the good or service in question. What did we pay for the underpants, yoga lessons or locomotives that we bought? But there is no market value for students educated or protection afforded by the USS Harry Truman. So government spending in GDP comes from the amount spent itself with no estimate of its value to society. This results in anomalies. In Nebraska, I-80 parallels the Union Pacific’s triple-tracked main line. The rail line produces millions in revenue each day for the UP, but I-80 supposedly produces no measurable monetary value to society beyond Nebraska DOT spending on maintenance.

“Net exports” or “exports minus imports” are the final category, and here’s where we get what happened in last week’s initial first-quarter estimate. If we produce bulldozers or airplanes sold abroad, that is part of our nation’s production. But when we import cars or toys, those are the production of some other nation. So we need to calculate the net amount. Whenever we import more goods and services than we export, we have a “trade deficit on goods and services.” That equals negative net exports.

Whenever imports climb, GDP shrinks. The new Kia car or LG TV produced abroad counts in household consumption, but it wasn’t produced here, so we need to subtract it off in the net exports category to get an accurate estimate of what we did produce.

Imports jumped in the past quarter in the weeks after Trump amped up his tariff talk. Importers rushed to get product here and through customs before the tariffs were actually charged. The big jump in imports made a big drop in net exports and hence the 0.3% drop in overall GDP.

Our nation and the world are in very troubled waters. And important data points to come out later will reflect this. People naturally want to know what is happening. But the information we use to justify our perceptions needs to be kept in context.

Related Articles

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St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

By AAMER MADHANI

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump is circumspect about his duties to uphold due process rights laid out in the Constitution, saying in a new interview that he does not know whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike deserve that guarantee.

He also said he does not think military force will be needed to make Canada the “51st state” and played down the possibility he would look to run for a third term in the White House.

The comments in a wide-ranging, and at moments combative, interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” came as the Republican president’s efforts to quickly enact his agenda face sharper headwinds with Americans just as his second administration crossed the 100-day mark, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Trump, however, made clear that he is not backing away from a to-do list that he insists the American electorate broadly supported when they elected him in November.

Here are some of the highlights from the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that was taped Friday at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida and aired Sunday.

Trump doesn’t commit to due process

Critics on the left have tried to make the case that Trump is chipping away at due process in the United States. Most notably, they cite the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was living in Maryland when he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador and imprisoned without communication.

Trump says Abrego Garcia is part of a violent transnational gang. The Republican president has sought to turn deportation into a test case for his campaign against illegal immigration despite a Supreme Court order saying the administration must work to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S.

Asked in the interview whether U.S. citizens and noncitizens both deserve due process as laid out in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, Trump was noncommittal.

“I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know,” Trump said when pressed by Welker.

The Fifth Amendment provides “due process of law,” meaning a person has certain rights when it comes to being prosecuted for a crime. Also, the 14th Amendment says no state can “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Trump said he has “brilliant lawyers … and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said.”

He said he was pushing to deport “some of the worst, most dangerous people on Earth,” but that courts are getting in his way.

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” Trump said.

Military action against Canada is ‘highly unlikely’

The president has repeatedly threatened that he intends to make Canada the “51st state.”

Before his White House meeting on Tuesday with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump is not backing away from the rhetoric that has angered Canadians.

Trump, however, told NBC that it was “highly unlikely” that the U.S. would need to use military force to make Canada the 51st state.

He offered less certainty about whether his repeated calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland from NATO-ally Denmark can be achieved without military action.

“Something could happen with Greenland,” Trump said. “I’ll be honest, we need that for national and international security. … I don’t see it with Canada. I just don’t see it, I have to be honest with you.”

President bristles at recession forecasts

Trump said the U.S. economy is in a “transition period” but he expects it to do “fantastically” despite the economic turmoil sparked by his tariffs.

He offered sharp pushback when Welker noted that some Wall Street analysts now say the chances of a recession are increasing.

“Well, you know, you say, some people on Wall Street say,” Trump said. “Well, I tell you something else. Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history.”

He also deflected blame for the 0.3% decline in the U.S. economy in the first quarter. He said he was not responsible for it.

“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” referring to his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump doubled down on his recent comments at a Cabinet meeting that children might have to have two dolls instead of 30, denying that is an acknowledgment his tariffs will lead to supply shortages.

“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

Trump plays down third-term talk

The president has repeatedly suggested he could seek a third term in the White House even though the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Trump told NBC there is considerable support for him to run for a third term.

“But this is not something I’m looking to do,” Trump said. “I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward.”

Trump’s previous comments about a third term sometimes seem more about provoking outrage on the political left. The Trump Organization is even selling red caps with the words “Trump 2028.”

But at moments, he has suggested he was seriously looking into a third term. In a late March phone interview with NBC, Trump said, “I’m not joking. There are methods which you could do it.”

So JD Vance in 2028? Marco Rubio? Not so fast.

Trump said in the interview that Vice President JD Vance is doing a “fantastic job” and is “brilliant.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whom Trump last week tasked to simultaneously serve as acting national security adviser, is “great,” the president said.

But Trump said it is “far too early” to begin talking about his potential successor.

He is confident that his “Make America Great Again” movement will flourish beyond his time in the White House.

“You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic,” Trump said. “You look at — I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here. No, I think we have a tremendous party. And you know what I can’t name? I can’t name one Democrat.”