One of the sad spectacles of our modern hyper-partisan age is the complete abandonment of principles depending on where you are in the political power game. You actually can listen to Democrats now on some foreign and economic policy issues and some of what they are saying make sense. But they are only making sense […]

It all comes down to really one question. Is it acceptable to the United States for the Iranian regime to have nuclear weapons? If the answer is no, then Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have performed a tremendous service to the world. The wicked Iranian regime has directly and indirectly killed perhaps 1000 Americans since […]

It’s fairly normal for the Vice President to be in the role of attack dog on those opposing the administration’s agenda, so it wasn’t surprising to see Mr. Vance’s criticism of the Fed’s current policy position. Mr. Trump has been pushing for easier interest rates in both of his terms in office, and it is […]

Regular Berean readers know that I have a very simple and historically conventional view of foreign policy: there are countries that are implacably against the U.S. and its interests (e.g. Russia), those that allied with ours (e.g., the U.K) and those that are not hostile but may or may not support our interests (e.g., India). […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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. […]

After the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, numerous reviews highlighted both the good and the bad. Most of the good focused on the complete stoppage of the porous border that Mr. Biden created. Most of the harshest hit at his misguided trade war, with some (rightly so!) focusing on his abominable siding with […]