OF NOTE

George Bandy

Andersen Corp., a Bayport-based maker of windows and doors for residential construction, announced George Bandy has joined the company as vice president and chief sustainability officer. Bandy previously held sustainability leadership roles at Amazon and Mohawk Industries and most recently as chief sustainability officer at Darling Fibers, a polyester chip and fiber manufacturer.

ARCHITECTURE/ENGINEERING

Golden Valley-based engineering and consulting firm WSB announced the hire of Brian Hotovy as controller. Hotovy is a CPA specializing in the architecture, engineering and construction fields.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. Bancorp, Minneapolis, announced that Arijit Roy, who leads the company’s Consumer and Business Banking product division, will join the Managing Committee, a group of 16 executives responsible for the company’s revenue lines, enabling functions and independent risk teams.

HONORS

Malco Tools, an Annandale, Minn.-based maker of professional hand tools for workers in the HVAC, construction and automotive trades, announced that it has earned two of the state’s top safety recognitions: Minnesota STAR (MNSTAR) certification from the Minnesota Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the 2024 Governor’s Safety Award, awarded by the Minnesota Safety Council. … The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, St. Paul District, announced it has named Jon Hendrickson of Forest Lake as its 2024 hall of fame inductee. Hendrickson has served as a senior hydraulic engineer and regional technical specialist for ecosystem and water quality for the Mississippi Valley Division.

LAW

The Minnesota Judicial Branch announced that State Court Administrator Jeff Shorba has received the Mary McQueen Award for exemplary service to justice. The award is given jointly by the Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, the National Association for Presiding Judges and Court Executive Officers, and the National Association for Court Management. Shorba has served as the state court administrator since 2012. … Fredrikson, Minneapolis, announced that Emily Pontius and Ben Tozer were reelected to the board of directors for the Fredrikson & Byron Foundation. They join current Foundation board members Lisa Agrimonti, Leah Huyser and John Parzych, as well as Foundation administrator Julie Snow-Samanant. … Robins Kaplan, Minneapolis, announced that Logan Drew has been named chair of its National Intellectual Property and Technology Litigation Group. Drew succeeds Christopher Larus, who will join Roman Silberfeld in leading the firm’s trial practice as as National Trial Chair.

MANUFACTURING

Winnebago Industries, an Eden Prairie-based maker of large recreational vehicles, motorhomes and watercraft, announced Chris West has been named president of Winnebago brand products, succeeding Huw Bower. West previously was senior vice president of Winnebago Industries enterprise operations and its Barletta Boats line. The company also announced that Barletta Boats President Jeff Haradine will join the Winnebago Industries executive leadership team.

NONPROFITS

The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, a Minneapolis-based organization focused on funding and advocating for women, girls and gender-expansive people, announced that Briana Joyner has joined as executive vice president of People & Culture. Joyner previously served as interim executive director of the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center, an African American institution in St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood, and was chief human resources and inclusion officer with the Minnesota Historical Society.

SERVICES

Waytek Inc., a Chanhassen-based distributor of electrical components for industry, announced that CEO and Board Chair Charlie Kanan plans to retire as CEO in the first quarter of 2025 and as board chair at the end of 2026. Kanan has led the company since 2012. … The National Court Reporters Foundation announced it has presented a New Professional Reporter Grant in the amount of $2,000 to Karli Pikala, an official court reporter in Minneapolis.

SPONSORSHIPS

The Minnesota Timberwolves NBA franchise announced a multi-year partnership with Sezzle, a Minneapolis-based consumer payments platform, to be the “Official Jersey Patch Partner of the Minnesota Timberwolves.” The agreement also includes WNBA franchise Minnesota Lynx.

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EMAIL ITEMS to businessnews@pioneerpress.com.

Darius Taylor missed seven games last season, and the Gophers top running back has already missed one this year, the season-opening 19-17 loss to North Carolina on Thursday.

How many more game could (and should) Minnesota’s leading rusher be sidelined?

Taylor is believed to be dealing with a hamstring injury, a notoriously persnickety issue that can be prone to aggravation. It’s what cost him more than half of last season, and in the offseason, the U athletic training staff and Taylor focused on improving how Taylor cares for his body.

Taylor, who had 799 yards in six games a year ago, was ruled out before the Tar Heels loss, but bounced around in some warm-up exercises a few hours before kickoff at Huntington Bank Stadium.

“He’s really close from being out there, but I don’t make those decisions,” head coach P.J. Fleck said. “I support them 100%. I don’t make them. (We) have a whole medical staff that makes those things. I know he was disappointed and he really wants to go, but our medical staff always has our players’ best interest at heart and they are going to make those decisions. But he will be ready very soon.”

But how soon will that be? Minnesota has two nonconference home games remaining — FCS-level Rhode Island on Saturday and Nevada, which is picked to finish last in the Mountain West Conference, on Sept. 14.

The Big Ten season starts Sept. 21 with rival Iowa and the Hawkeyes’ annually stout defense. Do the Gophers keep Taylor on the sideline until then or give him some carries over the next two weeks?

Without Taylor, Marcus Major, a transfer from Oklahoma, averaged 3.6 yards per carry against North Carolina. He had a career-high 20 totes for 75 yards and one touchdown.

“I thought he ran really hard,” Fleck said of Major. “I think we got some really good tailbacks here. I’m really excited about the stable that we have, including getting Darius back. I feel really good about where we are at at that position.”

Jordan Nubin had two carries for three yards, while Ohio transfer Sieh Bangura, Michigan State transfer Jaren Mangham and true freshman Fame Ijeboi did not play. Fellow true freshman Jaydon Wright is out for the season.

Major, who proved to be the clear No. 2 tailback, impressed during training camp and said he had a week to prepare for a bigger role in the season opener. “I knew I had to come in and step up,” he said.

Major shared the offense was caught off-guard by varying fronts North Carolina’s defense presented, and the Gophers needed time to adjust. Minnesota managed only 22 yards on 11 carries in the first quarter, but were better with 44 yards on 11 carries in second quarter.

Major, who is listed at 6-foot and 220 pounds, scored his first Gopher touchdown from 5 yards out in the second quarter. “It felt wonderful,” he said. “Fans gave amazing energy. It felt amazing. They guys up front was moving the piles. It was good things for them.”

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Minnesota United’s long throw-ins have become a part of the team’s identity under head coach Eric Ramsay. But chucking it deep from the sideline is not considered a Hail Mary strategy.

It has recently produced big results: Joseph Rosales’ toss ended with Bongi Hlongwane’s second goal in a 2-1 win over San Jose on Saturday, and Michael Boxall’s heave was a precursor to Kelvin Yeboah earning a penalty kick in a 3-2 loss to Seattle last week.

Ramsay said long throw-ins are part of the repertoire, in part, because it’s one of his players’ strengths.

“First and foremost … we have probably an uncommon number of players in the team that can really throw the ball properly,” he said late Saturday from PayPal Park.

Going into Saturday’s match, Devin Padelford led the team with 136 throw-ins, with Rosales second at 98 and D.J. Taylor at 93. Boxall had chipped in 22.

Ramsay acknowledged it can “feel very repetitive” and not a lot might seem to be gained from it, but even incremental improvements in field position can add up.

“We’re getting corners as a consequence of throwing the ball long. We’re getting territory in a very meaningful, purposeful way, and we have the capacity to score in the way that we did (Saturday),” Ramsay said. “So, it would be … remiss of me to not use that when we have players that have real weapons in that sense. It’s something that we’re pretty persistent (in using).”

Forward thinking

With Yeboah scoring twice versus Seattle and Tani Oluwaseyi coming back from injury, it was tantalizing to think about the two of them starting against San Jose.

But MNUFC’s two-forward set-up is not limited to traditional strikers — Yeboah, Oluwaseyi and Teemu Pukki. Bongi Hlongwane, who usually plays in wider areas, was the one who started next to Yeboah at forward on Saturday.

“He’s earned his spot by me knowing that he has the attributes to play that position well for us, and he gave us dynamism and unpredictability, which was obviously very effective in the opening stages,” Ramsay said.

Hlongwane scored in the ninth minute and again in the 64th; he has now moved past Oluwaseyi with nine goals in MLS play this season. Oluwaseyi did return from a month-long absence to play the final 27 minutes next to Yeboah. Pukki didn’t come off the bench.

“We now are in a position where we’ve got some nice tools at our disposal on that front line and we can do a couple of different things,” Ramsay said. “I’m excited to see what we’re able to get from the team and what those guys are able to produce.”

Options are going to grow in midfield, too, with Argentine signing Joaquin Pereyra set to join the team in training sessions before their next game at St. Louis on Sept. 14.

Dotson on point

Midfielder Hassani Dotson, who won the ball back before Hlongwane’s first goal, was commended by Ramsay post-match.

“He’s been very good in the last two games,” Ramsay said. “He’s played with a real commitment. He’s been really dialed in. He’s obviously very athletic, very capable defensively as well as what he brings on the ball with his level of energy, his capacity to steal the ball in the middle and drive and give the team a really dynamic look.”

On duty

The Loons are off next weekend during the FIFA international window, but seven first-team players will head to their national teams: Dayne St. Clair and Tani Oluwaseyi (Canada), Robin Lod and Teemu Pukki (Finland), Joseph Rosales (Honduras), defender Michael Boxall (New Zealand) and Zarek Valentin (Puerto Rico).

Loaned-out midfielder MNUFC Alejandro Bran (Costa Rica) and MNUFC Academy Under-18 defender Tamer Ibsais of Eden Prairie (Palestine U20 team) are also off to represent their nations over the next week.

Edward Lotterman

In 63 days we will vote in the most momentous presidential elections of most of our lifetimes. The underlying political fundamentals seem clear to many on both sides, and many voters likely have already made up their minds.

But, for those still weighing the options, a structured review of the two candidates’ economic proposals may help. That the economy is the key issue has been ballyhooed for months. Both candidates have advocated actions they would take.

But regardless of how attractive any of these proposals seem on the surface, voters should consider the following factors:

• Legislative feasibility — is there any chance of passage of any of these ideas by our dysfunctional Congress?

• Political divisiveness — how sharply is our nation split? Does any powerful bloc, even if small, oppose any measure? Does any gain advantage inordinately?

• Administrative lag — once passed, how long would it take to put the measures into operation? How long until voters see any real effects of their choice?

• Adjustment costs — how would households and businesses have to change their daily practices in response?

• Transaction costs — what new, perhaps unseen costs would have to be borne by someone because of the measure? For taxes, would this be the “excess burden” of cost to society beyond the tax paid.

• Fairness or justice — would the change make our divided society more just or more unjust?

• Financial market reaction — would adopting or implementing the new measure roil financial markets in our nation or globally?

Now, let’s start with a simple example, the exemption of service workers’ tips from income taxation, and weigh it against the above criteria. Given that both major party candidates support this, let’s assume congressional passage would be easy. Divisiveness would be near zero. Implementing the change would entail relatively small changes to tax regulations and forms. Employers and taxpayers could rely on updates to their payroll or tax return preparation software. Financial markets would not blink an eye.

Transaction costs, however, would be large. Creating a separate class of effectively tax-exempt earners would create large incentives to find ways to transform wages into tips. The current plague of payment device screens suggesting large tips in bakeries or for oil changes would burgeon. The IRS would struggle to stay ahead, and rich Wall Street brokers could somehow style their fees as tip income. Such distortions would impose “dead weight costs” on the efficiency of the economy, unperceived by the general public, but real nevertheless.

Now let’s weigh Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ proposal to raise the child tax credit in the personal income tax from the current $2,000 to $3,600. This is popular with the public and could pass the House but perhaps not the Senate. As with the tip income exclusion, implementation would be easy. It is not divisive and would have little lag in seeing real effects. Household budgets would adjust smoothly to the increased net take-home pay.

There would be little drag on the economy. More importantly, it would move in the direction of returning individual income taxes to where they were 70 years ago, one that only a minority of households would pay. Contrary to 2012 GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s fretting about “only 47 percent of Americans paying taxes,” that number was even lower in much of the past. The $600 exemption per household member that prevailed for years meant that a single earner with a spouse and three children seldom paid tax. A large proportion of farmers fell into this group as well as workers earning median wages in manufacturing. There would be little change in excess burden. Most people would see it as just and financial markets would ignore it.

Those two are easy. But larger and more key proposals are not.

Harris has put anti-price-gouging laws at the center of her platform. Most economists, including me, think this one of the stupidest ideas to come down the pike in decades. However, we also know that thinking this is somehow “communist” is silly. Rather, it typifies the mercantilism that economics pioneer Adam Smith railed against and which continues to scourge the economies of many poor countries.

First, the measure is politically divisive. Odds of getting it through any Congress after this election approach zero. Looking at past history, including World War II, simply writing rules to get anywhere near accomplishing the anti-gouging goal without costly economic distortions would take months. A large bureaucracy would be needed to investigate violations, so it would require problematic ongoing budget appropriations.

This would be mirrored in the private sector as companies set up divisions to manage compliance. Time and money would be spent on litigation. Then, assuming all these pre-implementation hurdles are surmounted, there are after-effect unintended consequences that would hurt the consuming public. Shortages of goods would develop along with black markets. Opinions on fairness of justice would be sharply divided. And it is all intended to solve a problem that is disappearing. Annualized increase in Consumer Price Index inflation over the last quarter is 1.7% for all purchases and 1.3% for food.

Again, other considerations aside, the key drawback of an anti-gouging law would be the difficulty of really getting it operational before the end of Harris’ term in office. The measure is popular in polls of the general population, but experience shows opinions would quickly diverge once in operation. All this is largely moot because the chances of passage and enactment are low indeed.

Now let’s look at one of Republican Donald Trump’s signature ideas. About the only positive thing to say about Harris’ anti-gouging plan is that it isn’t as nutty as Trump’s proposal to impose 10% tariffs on all imports and 60% on those from China. The revenue, he suggests, might even be used for a complete substitution of personal income taxes.

Chances of Trump’s proposed tariffs actually getting passed through any Congress, even one with GOP majorities in both houses, are even lower than Harris’ pet measure. In his first term, Trump was able to impose some tariffs using loopholes in overall trade laws created by Democrats largely to force GOP presidents to limit imports from Japan. But Trump’s wholesale uprooting of 90 years of trade policies and institutions could not be done by executive order.

Some in the public do support his tariff boosts in the abstract. But as realization of the magnitude of impacts becomes apparent, opposition would grow. As with the Smoot-Hawley tariff a century ago, other nations would retaliate. Inflation would rise, the world economy would shrink.

Adjustment costs would be huge. U.S. export sectors, especially agriculture, medical technology, heavy ag and construction equipment and airplanes would be hit hard. Even if domestic production of raw materials and finished goods currently imported had a miraculous revival, prices of nearly all merchandise would soar. Yes, the Federal Reserve could step in, assuming economist Milton Friedman’s argument that a central bank can smother price rises with extremely tight money — but the cost would be extreme, a 1930s-style fall in output and rise in unemployment. The poor would suffer more than the rich.

And then there are the side-on impacts: Financial markets would fear this measure as Dracula fears sunlight and the Holy Cross. Big money donors to GOP candidates would dry up if the measure were even introduced. The GOP would quickly come to heel and legislation would be strangled in the Senate and perhaps the House. But markets around the world would remain jittery.

This gets us about halfway through the Trump and Harris agendas. Look for more next week.

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