Questions & answers
Frequently asked questions
The Presidential Economic Pressure Index, in short answers
Photo by Samuel Scalzo on Unsplash
The Presidential Economic Pressure Index, in short answers
Photo by Samuel Scalzo on Unsplash
PEPIndex (the Presidential Economic Pressure Index) is a daily data feed that tracks U.S. presidential threats, ultimatums and policy announcements — tariffs, sanctions, deadlines, executive actions — and measures whether each one was carried out or walked back. “TACO Index” is the popular shorthand for the same pattern; see what the TACO Index is. PEPIndex is published by API Automations and written by Kurt Sather.
Each resolved event is scored from 0 to 100. A score of 0 means the threat was carried out in full; 100 means it was fully reversed or abandoned. The score blends six behavioral dimensions — reversal magnitude, timeline slippage, rhetorical dilution, scope reduction, framing shift and repetition pattern — described on the methodology page.
The settled index is a recency-weighted average of resolved event scores; it is what the free /api/v1/index endpoint returns. The live index, shown as the dashboard headline (index.live_value in /api/v1/snapshot), adds pressure from forward-looking threats that are past their deadline with no outcome yet. An official document that itself imposes a measure never adds pressure. When few threats are overdue the two figures are close. Both are published, so cite which one you mean.
The chicken-out rate is the share of resolved events whose outcome was a full reversal, an abandonment, or a threat dropped and reframed as a win. Events whose outcome cannot be determined either way are recorded as indeterminate and excluded rather than guessed.
From public records: a public archive of the president’s statements, and Federal Register executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, determinations and agency notices such as USTR trade actions. Language models classify each statement or document with human review, and only a new forward-looking threat creates an event; restatements and later claims are attached to the threat they concern. See the data sources.
From the strongest public record available: Federal Register documents that implement or withdraw a measure, federal court rulings, congressional records, USITC applied tariff rates, and eCFR regulatory text. Where no official record settles an outcome, it is checked against independent reporting, which is weighted above the president’s own statements. Every outcome carries its evidence source, and uncorroborated self-reported reversals are discounted in scoring.
Two free sub-indices (/api/v1/index/branch/{branch}) measure how actively each branch is acting on tracked threats. The judicial sub-index counts court activity on tracked matters in the trade courts, the Supreme Court and the courts hearing executive-order cases. The congressional sub-index counts actions on the bills threats name and on the joint resolutions Congress files in response — for example, resolutions to terminate the national emergency a tariff rests on — with recorded votes and Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, listed in related_bills. A response resolution adds activity but never decides an outcome. Both read 0 when the branch has not acted recently.
A free view (/api/v1/labor/government, and the dashboard’s Live Data tab) of federal, federal-excluding-Postal-Service, state and local government payrolls and federal job openings, hires, quits and layoffs from the monthly labor data, with the change since January 2025 and the tracked threats aimed at government workers. It is display data and feeds no score.
The dashboard and these API endpoints are free with no key: the settled index, the teaser snapshot with the live index, aggregate stats, branch reaction, government workforce trends, source and API status, and event alerts. Standard ($49.99 a month, 1,000 requests a day) adds the full event history, index history, domain sub-indices, tariff rates, indicators and sector reactions. Premium ($199.99 a month, 10,000 requests a day) adds per-event economic, price, market and sector impact. See pricing.
Yes. API Automations lists a free live sample on the Snowflake Marketplace, refreshed daily: a 30-day event teaser, a 90-day daily index, the re-threat lineage, benchmark-event economics, court records and a research bibliography. The full dataset is served by the REST API; private enterprise data shares are available on request.
Sources are ingested several times a day, and the live index and event data refresh with them. The settled index is published daily. Economic tables update with each agency’s release, and the Snowflake sample refreshes daily. Live freshness for every source and endpoint is on the status page.
No. PEPIndex is not offered in certain jurisdictions. Visitors from them see an availability page, API requests from them are refused with the error unavailable_in_region, and no subscription is issued for a billing address there. See the terms.
Neither. PEPIndex measures a behavioral pattern — a threat followed by follow-through or reversal — and makes no judgment about whether any policy is good or whether follow-through would have been desirable. It is research and analytical data, not investment or legal advice.
Cite it as: PEPIndex Methodology v1.2.20, K. Sather, 2026 — https://pepi.apiautomations.com. Public teaser data may be quoted with attribution; redistribution of the underlying dataset requires a license. Questions: data@apiautomations.com.