Bruce Springsteen’s depressing lyrics to one of his best songs (My Hometown) seems to capture the mood of the declinist right portion of the MAGA movement: Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows, And vacant storesSeems like there ain’t nobody, Wants to come down here no moreThey’re closing down the textile millAcross the railroad tracks, Foreman says, […]
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Those textile jobs aren’t coming back, at least the way they were…and that’s a very good thing.
12 Apr 2025
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This morning over at National Review they made a comment that trade deals take years and we shouldn’t even want one sooner, but I disagree. The reason NAFTA took years is to negotiate carve outs–and free trade doesn’t need carve outs. Instead of 1500 pages, it could have likely been done in a couple of […]
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Tariff War Chronicles: Trump’s playing with fire, but we’ll be the ones burned for years if he’s wrong
09 Apr 2025
I’m willing to accept for the sake of argument that in the internal battle within the Trump Administration over whether the tariffs are tools to 1) negotiate free trade or are 2) non-negotiable to force manufacturers back to the U.S. that Mr. Trump wants free trade and believes that his tariffs will both get us […]
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Two silly arguments in today’s political economy
08 Apr 2025
Let’s apply one to each party. For the Republicans, I hear quite a few of those supporting the Administration’s trade war make the case that because Donald Trump has been talking about this for forty years, that this makes it good policy. Effectively he’s been the only one to stand up to the establishment for […]
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As I related in a previous post, I am encouraged that Mr. Trump understands what he is doing, he is not merely ignorant and pridefully so. That doesn’t mean he isn’t taking incredible risk, at what I see is for a very small reward. I (and most economists and informed observers) have told you for […]
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Dr. Art Laffer Speaking Event at CU now live
27 Mar 2025
I mentioned this in my last post; you should watch the presentation if you have the time. It’s lengthy but quite provocative. Student feedback was very good–they loved hearing this challenging view. Dr. Pincin and I subsequently had a follow on session the next day to discuss and we had about 30 students and faculty […]
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Trumpian fans will almost surely say “how could you not see it before?”, but I still believe it’s a reasonable response that when someone says “go and drink this poison–it will taste really good!” we should vehemently disagree. And I still disagree with his rhetoric on tariffs, but there is some small reason for optimism. […]
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In my last post, one of our frequent commenters repeated a critique that Donald Trump and so-called MAGA members make, which is that the WSJ specifically, but by extension anybody that opposes the national conservative movement, is a globalist. Here is a portion of the salient* remarks that Richie offered: Frankly, the WSJ is no […]
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Is Mr. Trump going to give us Biden 2.0?
14 Mar 2025
Joe Biden was elected president for basically one reason–the general public on the margin wanted an end to perceived Trumpian chaos and a return to normalcy. Mr. Biden had promised to be that candidate–bring us back to normal and he would be a caretaker until the next generation of leaders would arrive. And then in […]
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Ukraine Fallacy Day 5: The war is unwinnable
10 Mar 2025
The old saying “it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog” is something that is clearly rejected by some, including some of our beloved Bereans, when considering Ukraine. I have called for victory, if that is what the Ukrainians want, and suggested that they […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach