Friday, was not kind to Mr. Trump, but Adam Smith will have his day. And so will our Founding Fathers. As we predicted, Mr. Trump’s tariff’s did not pass legal muster at the Supreme Court, just as they did not in the lower court processes. His preferred path was to use the International Emergency Economic […]
Archives
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Mr. Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Maybe he should move to Australia?
23 Feb 2026
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The big news of the last week was the Trump Administration’s backtrack of his not-so implicit threat to take over Greenland by force. It’s of course not surprising that he backed off, as there is not American support to even buy Greenland, much less take it over by force. Further, his proposed tariff increases were […]
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A new year, but old bad ideas remain
01 Jan 2026
Happy New Year! We’ll try to be happy even though bad ideas remain. Ever since the Trump era began, we’ve continued to fight over what is conservatism. I believe in the central tenets of limited government, strong foreign policy, free markets, and pro-family, pro-life social policies.* All of these principles allow people to flourish, and […]
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Yes, I sometimes like alliteration. We’ve been chronicling the trials that Mr. Trump’s tariffs have caused the broader economy, and I have regularly warned about the political ramifications of Mr. Trump not meeting the real political market demand of reducing prices. In today’s post I want to highlight two issues. The first is Mr. Trump’s […]
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Why Mr. Trump’s manufacturing renaissance goals are at least short term having the opposite effect
25 Nov 2025
Numerous online commenters are sharing the chart above, which shows that since Liberation day, manufacturing jobs have been declining, not growing. Note the scale; this isn’t a huge drop (~50k+ jobs out of over 12.5M), but it’s down–not up–and Mr. Trump promised all these manufacturing jobs (“we’re bringing them all back”). The question is why. […]
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Mr. Trump’s failed political entrepreneurship. Why Trump 2.0 appears that peak Trump has passed.
22 Nov 2025
A big focus area for me in my day job as dean of the business school is to prepare our students for leadership in the market. This includes a large focus on entrepreneurship and innovation. One of the key lessons we push early on is the idea of listening to the market, following Eric Reis’s […]
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Adam Smith 5, Donald Trump Zero: Trump forced to pull tariffs back due to affordability concerns
16 Nov 2025
As we predicted here at BATG, consumers feeling the pressure of higher prices related to tariffs are expressing significant disillusionment with Mr. Trump’s economic policies. And as we talked about last week, the election results resonated with concerns over affordability. Even many conservative commentators are warning Mr. Trump to stop trying to tell people that […]
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First up is the results of off cycle elections last week. In short, they are are warning to Mr. Trump and the Republicans. While the outcomes were not surprising (as NJ and VA are very blue) the magnitude of the victory was quite a statement. For sure the government shutdown helped pad the margins in […]
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Ever since the Fall, humans constantly compare ourselves to others. Now that we are “naked and ashamed” and have to cover ourselves with fig leaves, we compare ourselves to others almost constantly. If we’re “better” than those we compare to (in some sense) we feel prideful. If we are inferior, we feel shame or envy. […]
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Mr. Trump repeatedly insists there is no inflation for his rationale for berating the Fed for not lowering interest rates, and yet the dollar has fallen ~9% since the beginning of the year. And Gold is up ~40% since his inauguration. Gold is an inflation hedge, and you can be sure, the market is pricing […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach