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 […]
Archives
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Trump’s embrace of Socialism is Increasing
19 Sep 2025
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Yesterday the U.S. Court of International Trade issued a unanimous three judge* ruling against Mr. Trump’s ambitious claims to virtually unlimited power to enact his “Liberation Day” tariffs on the world, as well as his tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China over fentanyl. Mr. Trump will no doubt appeal, but markets already celebrated in the […]
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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 […]
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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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