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From inflation to recession, we who cover the economy and business at NPR get asked about tariffs all the time. Here are some of the most frequent questions — and what we answer.

Right now our public debt is about 97% of our GDP. The last time we had a ratio that high was around World War II. A key number that economists are focused on right now is how much interest the U.S. Government is paying to manage the national debt. Right now, we’re paying almost $1 trillion dollars per year in interest. That is more than we spend on the military budget and almost as much as we spend on healthcare, including Medicare and Medicaid, every year. So, in order to get an overview of how the U.S. national debt works, how the government borrows money to service the debt or even pay it back, how we’ve found ourselves in a place with such a high debt to GDPT ratio, and how concerned we all should be, we talk with the author of a recent piece in The Journalist’s Resource titled “The national debt: How and why the US government borrows money.”

Healthy increases in construction and home sales are boosting things like sales of pickups and landscaping, which, in turn, lead to more hiring. But federal budget cuts may undermine that momentum, economists say.

Despite low unemployment, the United States economy isn't in the clear. The personal savings rate and real wages, which are waged adjusted for inflation, are not as good as they could be.

Turns out New Jersey's economy — not the George Washington Bridge scandal — may be the biggest threat to the governor's presidential ambitions.

Japan has embarked on a massive effort to stimulate its economy. Both the government and the central bank are collaborating to end a long period of stagnation and deflation. But the effects are also being felt outside Japan.

Certain sectors of the state's economy are more robust than they were four years ago, but that doesn't mean everyone's happy with the recovery. The state is sharply divided about the role of government in the economy, an issue that will be at the forefront of the upcoming presidential debate there.

Japan's economy was a world beater in the 1980s. But the country has now gone through two tough decades and there's no end in sight. What lessons might it hold for the U.S. as it confronts the "fiscal cliff"?

As part of the "fiscal cliff" deal moving through Congress, a two-year-old payroll tax holiday comes to an end. Under the tax holiday, the 6.2 percent payroll tax was cut to 4.2 percent for all American workers. NPR's John Ydstie talks about what the change will mean for employees and the economy.

Unemployment numbers for November are out and they paint a bleak picture. Employers cut 533,000 jobs, putting the unemployment rate at a 15-year high. What does this mean for people who are out of jobs and the rest of the economy?