Research | Public Data Infrastructure
Introducing PEPI: Real-Time Trade Policy Intelligence
Commercial data sources. One composite index. Updated daily.
API Automations Research, May 2026. Trade Policy, Public APIs, Economic Intelligence.
Trade policy does not move slowly anymore. In 2026, a single executive order can shift tariff expectations across an entire sector before markets open. A Federal Register filing lands at midnight. A press briefing reshapes import cost assumptions by noon. The institutions that track this, including BLS, Census, and USITC, publish the data. The problem is not access. It is synthesis.
PEPI, the Presidential Economic Pressure Index, is a real-time composite index built entirely on public government APIs, updated daily, and available as a live dashboard. It measures the cumulative pressure U.S. trade policy applies to domestic markets as a structured data product.
What PEPI Measures
PEPI is not a sentiment index. It does not scrape news headlines or weight social volume. Every signal in the index is sourced from a federal government data publication.
Signal layers:
- Announcement Signals: Federal Register filings, executive orders, and White House policy statements.
- Trade Flow Signals: Import and export volume changes from Census FT-900 and USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule data.
- Economic Impact Signals: BLS Producer Price Index, employment in trade-sensitive sectors, and FRED economic indicators.
Metrics presented:
- 15+ public data sources
- Daily index updates
- 3 signal layers
- 100% public government data
Data Architecture
Primary sources referenced:
- BLS: Producer Price Index, employment in trade-exposed sectors, import/export price series.
- Census FT-900: U.S. trade in goods and services.
- USITC HTS: Harmonized Tariff Schedule.
- Federal Register API: Executive orders, proposed rules, and final rules.
- FRED: St. Louis Fed economic data.
- DOC / ITA: Trade enforcement actions, anti-dumping filings, and countervailing duty proceedings.
- USDA: Agricultural trade data.
- WTO: MFN tariff database.
- Additional sources: Treasury TIC data, CBP enforcement statistics, Congressional Research Service publications, and USTR reports.
How PEPI Scores Each Event
Every event is classified, monitored through a five-stage lifecycle (threat → escalation → deadline → action → outcome), and scored across six weighted dimensions to produce a composite from 0 (full follow-through) to 100 (total reversal):
| Weight | Dimension | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| 30% | Reversal Magnitude | How far the final action deviated from the original threat — for trade events, computed directly from the statutory-vs-applied tariff-rate gap. |
| 20% | Timeline Slippage | Duration of deadline extensions relative to the stated timeline. |
| 15% | Rhetorical Dilution | The measured softening in language between the initial threat and later statements. |
| 15% | Scope Reduction | Share of originally targeted entities, countries, or products exempted from the final action. |
| 10% | Framing Shift | Whether a reversal was reframed as a victory. |
| 10% | Repetition Pattern | Whether the same threat has been made and reversed before. |
The headline index is a 30-day exponentially-weighted moving average of resolved event scores, with a parallel live-pressure signal so a deadline that passes without follow-through moves the index in real time.
Calibration & Validation
PEPI is calibrated against historical events with well-documented outcomes — from the 2018 Section 232 steel tariffs and the China Phase One deal to Liberation Day's 145% China tariff (which settled near a 28% applied rate). Economic-impact figures are validated against the Cavallo, Llamas & Vazquez (2026) 24% retail pass-through estimate, and foreign-policy scoring against external force-threat datasets. Every methodology change is versioned and published.
How API Access Works
- Scheduled ingestion.
- Schema normalization.
- Weighted scoring.
- Daily index calculation.
- Dashboard and API publish.
Why This Matters Post-2025
Trade policy now moves through compressed announcement-to-implementation cycles, creating a need for signals that operate faster than conventional publication and planning cycles.
Dashboard
PEPI is available at pepi.apiautomations.com. Full methodology, data-source documentation, and API access details are available through our research team.