WSU assistant professor of economics Chris Clarke, who goes by the username econchrisclarke online, has had an eventful time keeping people up to date on global affairs via TikTok and other social media platforms.

Clarke got his start in economics because he could not decide what to study but found that economics studies everything, finding it rigorous with serious mathematical modeling and statistical testing. He found it had many insights into a variety of topics and they all connected together through economics. While completing his studies, he decided to become a teacher in the subject and found his way to WSU. 

Clarke first began posting videos in 2021, when he discovered many people were not well informed or up-to-date on government affairs and economic policy.

“People aren’t having the conversations, and I saw there was a need…I was going to go onto YouTube, but then I saw TikTok was even more desolate,” Clarke said. 

Clarke said the research that goes into every video he posts takes time, and with news being all around us and there being so much of it, it can be difficult to know where to start. 

“There’s all the papers, and the test and the journal articles, and the commentary and the analysis. There’s new news. When the news comes out, we have to see how these new numbers fit and you get to see the broad swath of research, which everyone’s doing with the current numbers,” Clarke stated

Before he’s able to create and post a video, Clarke first has to decide what points he would like to focus on. 

“Sometimes it’s how much time do I have to read and research this?” Clarke said. “If it’s a topic I don’t know a lot about and it’s important, the other is how viral, so we gotta go, ‘okay am I going to frame this in a way that people will care and people will want to share it?” 

Major news that has been circling for the past year or so has been around the Trump Administration and the tariffs they have been implementing. Clarke used the Liberation Day tariffs, which were implemented in the spring of 2025, as an example to explain the concept. He outlined how the justification for those tariffs was that the U.S. was going to match the rate we were being charged.

When looking at the numbers, it was found the U.S. was being charged roughly 3%, and the U.S. responded with 25%. These are called retaliatory tariffs.

“The tariffs we ended up getting were a lot less than what initially were promised,” Clarke said. “Therefore, we didn’t have a recession, but we still saw a slowdown in economic activity. The GDP grew at 2%, inflation still sitting close to 3%. On net next to zero jobs were created in all of 2025, so we are seeing some pain from it, but it’s not enough to completely slow down the economy.”

Additionally, much of current news has been filled with the war currently happening in the Middle East. Clarke, who has posted a video breaking down the cost of the war, said the economic cost of war from paying for soldiers and weapons is estimated to be $1 billion a day.

Clarke also said the Pentagon has asked for $250 billion to fund the war and said how USAID was an $8 billion dollar program that helped saved lives every year was cut by the administration to save that $8 billion.

Clark explained that America’s debt is estimated to keep growing and that the money being put into the war in Iran could be going to other things.

One of the highlights Clarke has found in posting online has been engaging with people and finding different perspectives on a topic that he previously had not considered. Comment that changes his perspective about a topic or makes him think about it in a different way is the engagement Clarke loves.

“It’s the dual learning, the exchange of ideas, that’s the best,” Clarke said. “Everyone knows something I don’t know and you can learn from everybody and having that positive mutual learning experience, that’s the best.”

From teaching in lecture halls to appearing on smartphone screens, Clarke enjoys discussing economics with everybody and finds it incredibly important people stay up to date with the news and current events.