Much of the declinist view of the U.S. (championed by the populist left and right) centers around the cost to individuals and communities that lose out as a result of economic change. I am broadly sympathetic to those costs and yet we cannot avoid the necessary other side of the coin that this is a […]
Archives
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Adam Smith 4, Donald Trump 0
13 May 2025
Yesterday we heard the announcement of a dramatic pullback from Mr. Trump’s trade war with China, and markets had a major rally. Predictably, some fans of the “master negotiator” cheered the market’s reaction, even while saying they didn’t care about Wall Street when markets first corrected. China was told not to retaliate, or they’d regret […]
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Short note on Trump’s mandate for Tariffs
10 May 2025
Some of Mr. Trump’s more ardent supporters say that because he won the election, and in the campaign regularly brought up his intent to have more tariffs, this gives him a mandate for his trade war. As I’ve said repeatedly, his mandate–such as it was–was to 1) stop the open borders, 2) get prices down, […]
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Admitted, this is very rough ballpark with a little help from our AI friends, but let’s assume Mr. Trump does an amazing deal with all countries and gets all imports now taxed at 10%, which he says is the minimum tariff rate. Given we imported about $4T in 2024, let’s assume we’ll now get $400B. […]
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Adam Smith 3, Donald Trump 0
25 Apr 2025
In a previous post I suggested Mr. Trump’s retreat on his tariff proposals (the 90 day pause) made the score Adam Smith 2, and Donald Trump 0. Bereans know that we have repeatedly condemned Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on trade as completely wrong, and to the extent he actually tried to do it, he would Make […]
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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
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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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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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 […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach