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
-
Mr. Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Maybe he should move to Australia?
23 Feb 2026
-
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 […]
-
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. […]
-
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 […]
-
Trump’s embrace of Socialism is Increasing
19 Sep 2025
According to the Horseshoe Theory of Politics, the extreme left and right are much closer to each other than they are to the center. And that is true of MAGA conservatism; much that distinguishes it from traditional conservatism is precisely its embrace of values and methods from the left. As I’ve repeatedly said here at […]
-
Mr. Trump’s capital call
04 Sep 2025
For a politician that ran against the socialists in the Democratic party, and is currently railing against the socialist mayoral candidate of New York City, Mr. Trump’s actions in governing are, shall we say, inconsistent. Freedom loving conservatives* understand that the government’s control in any facet of our lives, leaves less liberty for us in […]
-
Trump: Trumped and Thumped
30 Aug 2025
When Joe Biden tried his patently illegal scheme to transfer billions of dollars of debt from student loan takers to a favored constituency, the only question was would someone have legal standing to get the case before the courts. There was little doubt that once there, it would be squashed, and it was in Biden […]
-
Bailing out Intel is a bad idea
21 Aug 2025
But industrial policy advocates will nevertheless proudly promote it. Their primary argument is based on national security. “We have to have a chip industry, so a major employer like Intel must be saved.” This is really bad economics, and it comes out of a lack of understanding of what the alternative would be. First of […]
-
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 […]
-
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. […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach