Tweet

Here’s a letter of mine that is just published by the Washington Post:

George E. Bogden’s justifications for President Donald Trump’s tariffs in his Jan. 29 online op-ed, “Forget TACO. It’s GUAC that matters with Trump’s tariffs,” were far from being the nutritious feast that he supposes.

Bogden wrote that “tariff opponents judge the policy on whether it conforms to an economist’s ideal of friction-free markets.” We opponents point out that tariffs that enable some domestic industries to expand necessarily draw resources away from other domestic industries, causing these other domestic industries to shrink. This effect is as inescapable in real-world markets, with all of their frictions, as in “friction-free” textbook markets.

We also explain that tariffs used as bargaining chips, which are the focus of Bogden’s praise, are inconsistent with the president’s wish to increase American manufacturing or to raise revenue. Because bargaining chips are withdrawn when opponents capitulate, such tariffs won’t protect manufacturing long enough to spark increased investment. Nor are such chips a useful or reliable source of revenue.

It’s as unsurprising as it is undeniable that, as Bogden documents, Trump’s tariff threats often pressure foreign governments to alter their policies in ways that at least appear to suit Trump’s fancies. It’s equally undeniable that Trump’s tariff sturm und drang creates economic inefficiencies and policy and market uncertainties in the U.S., as well as ill will among the allies that America will be sorry to have antagonized if and when tensions with China further intensify.

Donald J. Boudreaux, Fairfax

The writer is the Martha and Nelson Getchell chair for the study of free market capitalism at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Tweet

Christopher Freiman celebrates “the warmth of cooperation.”

Former U.S. Treasury secretary W. Michael Blumenthal, who just turned 100 years of age, reflects on the current state of America. Two slices:

I came to the U.S. as an immigrant, seeking freedom, opportunity and a better life. It was the late 1940s, and I had $60 in my pocket. Immigrants weren’t suspect in those days. Americans welcomed me and wished me luck. Five years later, I became a proud U.S. citizen.

I got an education (California’s community colleges were free and the university’s fees were nominal) and started a family. With work and luck, I became a contributing taxpayer, and good things came my way. I even had the privilege to serve in three presidential administrations, including as Treasury secretary.

Things look very different for immigrants today.

America faces major geopolitical challenges, as always. But we are being pulled apart domestically by incessant turbulence. Our major institutions are under attack, immigrants and ethnic minorities are demonized, and there has been an uptick in political violence. Congress has gone AWOL, public trust is near historic lows and, increasingly, voters listen to demagogues and conspiracy theorists.

…..

These are fraught times for our cherished democracy. The White House attempts to govern by executive fiat as a polarized Congress fails to supply checks and balances, creating a dangerous situation. Some people fear more of the same over the next three years and beyond. Citing Europe in the 1930s, they think we will lose our democratic freedoms.

I have reached a different conclusion. Perhaps it is my long life, beginning in Europe, that helps me recognize the similarities but also the differences. Some of what’s happened has a familiar ring—raucous rallies, nationalistic rhetoric of grievance, ignoring legal constraints, attacks on minorities, judges, media and cultural institutions, threats against political opponents, flexibility with the truth, and extravagant promises mostly unmet. Not least are the opportunists and enablers who scramble for power and profit while those who know better let it happen by not fighting back.

But the U.S. today isn’t Europe 100 years ago. I have faith in our democratic institutions and the common sense of the American voter.

Americans aren’t ideologues, they are pragmatists. Politically they cluster around the middle and dislike extremism and overreach. They dislike the rhetoric of violence, the military on their streets, and the arrests of working people in stores, churches and schools. Nor are they on principle opposed to immigrants.

First and foremost, they expect elected officials to address urgent problems like rising prices and runaway healthcare costs, the lack of affordable housing, poverty and need. When politicians fail to deliver, the people make their views known at the ballot box, as happened recently in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere. With midterm elections coming this year, Congress is beginning to listen. Gradually and gingerly, party lines are being crossed in the House and Senate.

Tarnell Brown writes with insight about “the deportation labor shock.” Here’s his conclusion:

Mass deportation does not elevate American workers. It impoverishes them—quietly, broadly, and predictably. An economy grounded in voluntary exchange and secure property rights requires labor mobility, not forced scarcity. If the objective is abundance—more homes, lower prices, and rising real wages—the evidence points decisively away from deportation and toward legal, market‑driven labor flows.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reports that “Stephen Miller’s mass deportation strategy is backfiring at the polls.” Two slices:

How does a Republican lose by 14 points in a safe conservative Texas state Senate seat that President Trump carried by 17 points in 2024? Answer: When there’s a voter backlash against the Trump Administration, notably its mass deportation debacles.

That’s what happened Saturday in a special election to fill a GOP seat in Tarrant County in the Fort Worth area. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, romped over Republican Leigh Wambsganss, who had a Truth Social endorsement from Mr. Trump and vastly outspent Mr. Rehmet.

The election timing was awful for Republicans in the wake of the two killings by immigration agents in Minneapolis. Ms. Wambsganss has been a leader in the parental-rights movement in school boards and wasn’t a bad candidate. But state politics is often national these days, and the 31-point vote swing in a little more than 14 months can only be explained as part of a rising tide of opposition to Mr. Trump’s first year and a sour public mood.

…..

Mr. Miller ordered the immigration bureaucracy to fill a quota of 3,000 migrant arrests a day. This was bound to result in agent intrusions into homes and businesses, since there aren’t that many criminal migrants to fill such a quota each day.

Immigration has overall been a winning issue for Republicans, but it works better as a reaction to Democratic border enforcement failures. Mr. Trump has already largely closed the border. But immigration enforcement that turns ugly in the streets is turning off the swing voters who will determine who wins the race for Congress this year.

Jason Willick ponders the unexpected tardiness of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case challenging Trump’s tariffs punitive and arbitrary taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports. Here’s his conclusion:

It’s always perilous to make predictions about a case based on the deciders’ timeline, but some are possible. Criminal defense lawyers tend to be happy when the jury is out for a long time without convicting their client. And the longer a status quo stays in place, all else being equal, the less likely the Supreme Court is to disturb it. In a recent case on National Guard deployments, the Supreme Court sat on Trump’s appeal for a curiously long time before affirming the status quo — no National Guard in Chicago — that the lower courts had established.

Eric Boehm isn’t buying Trump’s claim that inflation is no more.

Joseph Epstein isn’t a fan of the current White House press secretary – or, indeed, of press secretaries in general. A slice:

If the press formerly accosted White House press secretaries, in recent days this has reversed, with the press secretary now on the attack. An all-too-vivid example of this occurred this month, when 28-year-old Karoline Leavitt attacked Niall Stanage, a White House columnist for the Hill, after he revealed that he thought that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Renee Good acted recklessly and unjustifiably.

Ms. Leavitt unloaded: “You’re a left-wing hack. You’re not a reporter. You’re posing in this room as a journalist. . . . And shame on people like you in the media who have a crooked view and have a biased view, and pretend like you’re a real honest journalist.”

She has taken the job to new heights (or is it new depths?). Ms. Leavitt seems more certain than President Trump of the efficacy of President Trump’s policies. She is also often more mean-spirited than he and is without his sense of humor. What was once a job that called for a voice of seemingly poised neutrality has, under Ms. Leavitt, become one of sullen partisanship. Hers is henchman-like behavior.

The natural intelligence that is Arnold Kling reflects on artificial intelligence and “average is over.”

Matt Yglesias tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Part of the affordability crisis is pretty clearly people just refusing to be thrifty — you should not be spending a quarter of your salary on DoorDash.

And this from Mike Bird:

People get angry at this point but aggregate American spending on eating/drinking out or having that food delivered is at a record high, and the proportion spent on store-bought food is at a joint-record low with the peak housing bubble era.

Richard Brookhiser tells what he learned from America’s founders. A slice:

Yet when we look past the tumult and the shouting, we find that Jefferson deeply believed two things. First, that people have rights. They have them not because Jefferson, or the Continental Congress, said so, but because of what people are. This is why Jefferson, philosophic Unitarian though he was, called rights the endowment of a Creator. This is why he recognized them, even through the gritted teeth of habit and personal dependence, in the people he owned.

The second thing Jefferson deeply believed was that the people would most often be right. He believed this in part as a Virginia gentleman playing at being a yeoman; in part because of the moral philosophy of his day. For Jefferson, the five senses on which empiricist thinkers of the previous generation had lavished so much attention were supplemented by a sixth, a moral sense, which all men had. “The moral sense,” he wrote one of his nephews in 1787, “is as much a part of man as his leg or arm.” He went on: “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

Jefferson’s two convictions don’t obviously agree. You could believe in rights yet fear people as a potential mob; alternatively, you could support popular rule even when it tramples on rights. Jefferson the politician experienced periods when the American people, ploughmen included, were led astray by panics and lies (he memorably called one such phase, during the administration of his sometime friend John Adams, the “reign of witches”). Yet, over the long haul, he believed in both rights and the people. Among those rights was self-rule. And the people, Jefferson believed, mostly exercised it wisely. We might carp at his analyses of specific political moments, or fuss over his intellectual justifications. But if either of his convictions is wrong, then America is wrong.

Tweet

… is from page 432 of Johan Norberg’s excellent 2025 book, Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages:

International trade, especially, tends to expose cultures to new ways of doing things and breaks down the perception that only one way is possible, even in non-economic areas like politics, art and religion.

Tweet

C. Jarrett Dieterle reports that “Trump’s tariff war is crushing American alcohol makers.” A slice:

Despite the crippling pain being borne by the industry, Trump has shown few signs of reconsidering. In response to news that French President Emmanuel Macron would not join Trump’s newly minted “Board of Peace” to resolve the ongoing Gaza conflict, Trump told reporters: “I’ll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and Champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join.”

In response to arch-protectionist Peter Navarro’s recent boast that “American steel production just surpassed Japan for the first time since 1999,” Eric Boehm tweets this apt image: (HT Scott Lincicome) (And Eric’s point is valid.)

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board urges states to expand education savings accounts in order to increase parents’ ability to rescue their children from the K-12 ‘education’ system run by governments. A slice:

The best case for school choice is that parents are free to take it or leave it—and they’re taking it in droves. Some 1.5 million students are using private choice programs in the 2025-26 school year, up from 1.2 million last year, according to the nonprofit EdChoice. But not all parents who want private options can get them, and state lawmakers can still do more to help.

The great news is that some 19 states now have universal choice programs, meaning any student is eligible. Iowa this school year opened K-12 education savings accounts (ESAs) to all, and 41,044 students are using them, about 13,000 more than last year. So did Arkansas, which awarded more than 46,000 ESAs this fall, up from about 14,000 last year.

New Hampshire’s ESA enrollment jumped to 10,000 students this year from 5,800 with the removal of an income eligibility cap. In Arizona, where ESAs have been available to all students since 2022, more than 100,000 are using them, up from 85,000 last spring.

Jack Nicastro documents the efforts of Virginia’s Democrats to restrict Virginians’ freedoms.

GMU Econ alum Matthew Mitchell and Vance Ginn ask: “How does your state rank on this Economic Freedom Index?”

David Henderson applauds “the wealth of individualism.” Two slices:

While it is true that the economy runs on self-interest, the dog-eat-dog metaphor is inaccurate. In a free market, we get what we want precisely because people are self-interested. Moreover, there’s a wider view of individualism that includes helping others out of generosity and fellow feeling.

…..

One of the great things about individualism is that we get to decide how and in what ways we serve our fellow humans. Some of us might focus almost entirely on building a business. And in a free market, the surest way to build a business is not to cheat customers but to provide something they are willing to pay for and don’t, after the fact, regret having bought. We often hear the famous P.T. Barnum quote that apparently drove his circus business: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The problem is that he didn’t say that. Indeed, as Charles L. Hooper and I point out in our book, Making Great Decisions in Business and Life, Barnum made a statement that contradicts the “sucker” quote. He stated that “no man can be dishonest without soon being found out and when his lack of principle is discovered, nearly every avenue to success is closed against him forever.”

A simple example of a good exchange is the sale to me, in 2015, of a new Toyota Camry. I still drive it and love it. The executives at Toyota don’t know me and, if they met me, might not even like me, hard as that is to believe. But in producing that car and selling it to me, they cared about me.

George Will ponders the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on the power of the president of the executive branch  of the U.S. government to remove executive-branch agencies’ principal officers. A slice:

The unitary executive theory charges that “independent” agencies are insulated from accountability. But voters can hold both Congress and the president accountable for the administrative state’s behavior. And [UVA Law professor Caleb] Nelson, a self-described constitutional “originalist,” adds:

“If most of what the federal government currently does on a daily basis is ‘executive,’ and if the President must have full control over each and every exercise of ‘executive’ power by the federal government (including an unlimitable ability to remove all or almost all executive officers for reasons good or bad), then the President has an enormous amount of power — more power, I think, than any sensible person should want anyone to have.”

If the court gives its imprimatur to a strong version of the unitary executive theory, presidential power will become even more formidable and less circumscribable than current events reveal it to be. This is a recipe for enhanced presidentialism — more government by executive fiats, more president-centric politics, more congressional anemia.

As Nelson says, the Constitution’s provisions concerning presidential power “are far more equivocal than the current Court has been suggesting … I hope the Justices will not act as if their hands are tied and they cannot consider any consequences of the interpretations that they choose.”

Yes. When considering the logic of our constitutional structure, the justices should not disregard their conclusions’ likely consequences for the nation’s political practices and civic culture. Quoting a member of Congress in 1789, the year the Constitution was adopted, Nelson warns against “interpretations of the Constitution that ‘legaliz[e] the full exertion of a tyrannical disposition.’”

Tweet

… is from Robert Higgs’s September 10th, 2009, essay titled “The Rise of Big Business and the Growth of Government“:

Because ideology and political movements develop reciprocally, the pervasive reactions to the rise of big business around the turn of the twentieth century gave rise not simply to a proliferation of newly organized interest groups seeking government protection of threatened positions; it also prompted intellectuals, both independents and “hired guns,” to develop new rationales for more active government. Thus Progressivism as ideology developed concurrently with Progressivism as politico-economic practice, each aspect reflecting the changing socioeconomic opportunities and hazards created by the rise of big business and its repercussions throughout the economy.

DBx: The great economic historian, and my dear friend, Bob Higgs today celebrates – in his adopted home of Lafayette, Louisiana, with his lovely wife, Elizabeth – his 82nd birthday. For his sake and ours, may he have many, many more.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Tweet

GMU Econ alum Julia Cartwright, writing in the Washington Post, argues – in the best Masonomics tradition – that the Federal Reserve’s discretion should be restricted with a monetary constitution. Two slices:

The Justice Department this month threatened criminal prosecution of a sitting Fed chair over construction budgets. Political pressure on the central bank is not new. One need only read the memoirs of Ben Bernanke or Paul Volcker to see how presidents have pressed Fed chairs behind closed doors. What is unprecedented, however, is how private interference has given way to overt, escalating political and legal theater, producing widespread economic anxiety.

Institutional stress has a way of transforming theory into necessity. A monetary constitution could take the form of a constitutional amendment that replaces the Fed’s discretionary rate setting with explicit constraints. For example, the amendment could require the Fed to follow a clearly defined inflation benchmark and permit interest rate changes only when the economy deviates from those targets. Binding the Fed’s discretion in this way would insulate monetary policy from political influence, addressing today’s economic anxieties and tomorrow’s vulnerabilities. We need monetary policy by principle, not by spectacle.

…..

The principle of a monetary constitution is straightforward: limit the scope for politically motivated interference. Such a framework could impose rules on money supply growth, requiring it to track the broader economy’s expansion. This would limit the kind of discretionary policy that allowed the Fed to expand the U.S. money supply by more than 20 percent in 2020, a move Warsh has criticized and a surge that greatly contributed to the inflation that followed.

Mandating regular audits of the Fed would enhance transparency, a requirement imposed on every major bank in America but curiously applied far more narrowly to the central bank. A monetary constitution could even allow or encourage private currency competition, including crypto, as an external check on official money. There are two potential paths for how such a monetary policy might be enacted. The first is a constitutional amendment proposed by Congress, which must clear Article V’s deliberately high hurdles. The second route is overhauling the Federal Reserve Act. Because the Fed exists by statute, Congress could rewrite that law to impose a narrow mandate or even phase out the current framework that allows for incredible discretion. This would admittedly be less durable than an amendment but far more feasible politically.

Either approach would deliver much the same result: monetary stability no longer tied to the preferences or fortitude of individual central bankers.

Scott Lincicome documents the capital-market distortions unleashed by what Lincicome calls Trump’s “state corporatism.” Two slices:

In my latest Bloomberg column, I explore an unseen cost of the federal government’s recent and unprecedented investments in private US companies: the distortion of capital markets that have underpinned American growth and innovation for decades. As I explain, Uncle Sam’s 10 percent equity stake in chipmaker Intel has caused its share price to spike, even though the long-troubled company is facing the same operational and strategic challenges that have dogged it for years. The government’s investment has thus likely “diverted tens of billions of dollars of private capital away from potentially more deserving firms and to Intel, with little support for the move beyond—as one semiconductor analyst put it—‘vibes and tweets.’”

…..

As I document, research shows that policy-driven capital misallocation can lead to lower productivity, weaker growth, and a smaller economy over the long term, even if state-backed champions don’t fail outright.

Such distortions have cost China hundreds of billions of dollars in foregone economic output (GDP). The United States would be wise not to follow Beijing’s lead.

Here’s economist Timothy Taylor on economists and Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports. Two slices:

Imports are about 14% of the US economy. Say that the tariffs, with all exceptions and delays factored in, are imposed at an average rate across all imports of about 10%. If 14% of the economy has a 10% increase in tariffs, then the pass-through to consumer prices would be 1.4%. The evidence suggests that’s roughly what’s happening.

…..

The Yale Budget Lab calculates that the additional cost of the tariff so far work out to about $1400 per year for the median household. However, if the cost of the tariffs is expressed as a percent of income, rather than dollar amount, the negative effect is biggest for those with the lowest income levels, because they rely more heavily on less-expensive imported products.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the long-run damage that Trump is likely doing to the reputation of the United States. Two slices:

The image of America also recovers because its fundamentals and soft power remain strong: people still want to go to its universities, watch its movies and admire its economy, says Mitchell Reiss, a longtime U.S. diplomat who is now at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

“A lot of damage is being done by Trump,” he says. “But we are also the most resilient country in the world.”

Others think it could be different this time around. Two things have changed. First, past presidents viewed the international order—the multilateral institutions and web of security and economic alliances set up by Washington—as an asset worth defending. George W. Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq after trying, and failing, to get U.N. backing, but still had a coalition of some 49 countries offering to help.

Trump is unapologetic about pursuing U.S. interests narrowly. He tends to see allies as grasping dependents rather than force multipliers. Gone is talk of promoting Western values like democracy and open markets.

Trump has broken a system of trust between the U.S. and its allies that created a relatively benign global order for the past 70 years, says Robert Kagan, a former member of Republican administrations and fellow at Brookings Institution think tank.

During that time, Kagan argues, American power helped protect allies. In exchange, they hosted American bases, shared intelligence and kept relatively open markets for U.S. firms. Together, the U.S. and its allies faced down challengers, like Russia and China, to this stable order.

Now, Kagan said, allies are unlikely to trust America as much again, regardless of a change in administration. “I think it’s virtually inconceivable to imagine recovery at this point. Let’s imagine three more years of this,” he said. “So he backed off a bit on Greenland. This isn’t the end of the problem, this is still the beginning.”

Another reason anti-Americanism might be stronger this time around is basic pride. Past presidents generally tried to not mock other leaders and nations.

…..

Local manufacturers who for decades sought American buyers are instead diversifying their client rosters. Paul Norriss, who runs a clothing factory in Vietnam with a largely American buyer network, said he has added non-American retailers to reduce his exposure to volatile trade policies.

The damage hurts in other ways. The number of tourists to the U.S. fell by 6% last year, led by a decline in visiting Canadians and Mexicans. After Trump slapped tariffs on Canada, grocers like Loblaws and Sobeys tagged products sourced locally. A popular new app, Maple Scan, lets users try to skirt tariffs and support Canadian companies by identifying local products.

“The U.S., we’ve been neighbors for years, and we’ve fought in wars together. But ultimately, things have become very unpredictable,” said Sasha Ivanov, a Canadian programmer from Calgary who developed the app.

Steven Greenhut is correct: “Free nations don’t have to care about the whims of elected officials.” Two slices:

The freer the nation, the less the public needs to care about anything that its leader might say or do. In freer nations, the leader’s powers are strictly limited, and the citizens’ rights are protected. Yet in America today, we are dependent on every whim, utterance and narcissistic rage post from our president, as he pursues policies that could disrupt our lives. In that way, we’re more like North Korea than our founders’ America.

This has always been true to a degree, but since Donald Trump took office last year, Americans have been experiencing a severe form of political whiplash. Firmly in control of the nation’s massive federal apparatus, MAGA and its Republican lickspittles in Congress have thrived on chaos. Every day, the president issues some new threat. He imposes new tariffs on countries that don’t kiss the ring, then backs off, then imposes even harsher ones.

After getting his feelings hurt for not receiving a peace prize that he believes he deserves, Trump threatened to invade a territory controlled by an ally.

…..

I’ve often criticized Trump-era Republicans for tossing aside their freedom birthright in favor of the stale porridge of authoritarianism. My vain hope today is to convince my newfound anti-Trump allies (who have disliked my years of writing against progressive policies) to view the current national nightmare as a teachable moment.

Both political sides assume they will always control the levers of power. But they forget this important axiom: Don’t ever support a new power that you wouldn’t want in the hands of your worst enemy. Maybe it’s time for Trump’s foes to recognize the importance of limiting executive power, so that no one can abuse it this way in the future.

Judge Glock decries the waste of government-imposed efforts to convert wind power into electricity – an effort that will be especially costly to him, me, and our fellow Virginians. A slice:

A federal judge ruled recently that the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project could continue despite the Trump administration’s efforts to pause it on national-security grounds. Supporters of the project argue that the administration’s effort is hypocritical given its “all of the above” energy strategy.

Although the administration’s claims about national security may be a fig leaf, President Trump is right that offshore wind is a bad way to get energy. The CVOW will be one of the most expensive energy projects in U.S. history, and it will burden Virginia’s consumers for decades. Gov. Abigail Spanberger and others claiming the project will foster “affordability” are wrong.

Ilya Somin, a GMU colleague over in the Scalia School of Law, tells us of “Minnesota’s compelling 10th Amendment case against Trump’s ICE surge.” A slice:

Control over state and local government personnel is one of the powers reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment. In addition, as legal scholar Michael Rappaport has shown, the original meaning of the Constitution indicates that such control is a basic element of the sovereignty inherent in being a state in the first place.

Tweet

… is from page 580 of the 1988 collection of Lord Acton’s writings and notes to himself (edited by the late J. Rufus Fears), Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality; specifically, it’s a note drawn from Acton’s extensive papers at Cambridge University:

Every doctrine to become popular, must be made superficial, exaggerated, untrue. We must always distinguish the real essence from the conveyance, especially in political economy.

Tweet

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, presents further evidence of the failure of industrial policy. Two slices:

Industrial policy is failing, and not just in Washington. Across America, officials promise to engineer the right economic outcomes by intervening in the market in just the right ways. Most people know that under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the idea has exploded. Less appreciated is how enthusiastically governors and state legislators are embracing their own versions.

They repeat the same claims: With the right mix of subsidies, protection, and political direction, one government or another can revive strategic industries and deliver durable economic strength. The results tell a different story.

Wherever it’s found, industrial policy is producing wasted resources, distorted incentives, and fragile outcomes that collapse the moment political support shifts or market realities intrude. Just look at the similarities between Georgia’s famous film-industry tax credits and a few of the federal government’s favorite projects.

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation into Georgia’s experience reads like a textbook example of how the model fails. Film–tax credit schemes are sold as investments in business “ecosystems” and middle-class jobs. In reality, they are either a subsidy to production companies to do what they would have done anyway, or they are bribes to highly visible, highly mobile capital that can leave as quickly as it arrives. Georgia was the latter.

…..

This helps explain why a promised auto-manufacturing renaissance hasn’t materialized. Automakers and suppliers have so far absorbed much of the tariff shock through smaller profit margins, restrained pricing, and selective job cuts. This is not sustainable. Investment decisions are now being reconsidered, and some manufacturers, like Volkswagen, warn that new U.S. plants no longer make sense.

Tariffs did not restore competitiveness or pricing power. They jacked up costs and made American production less attractive at the margin.

These cases all differ in detail but share a common logic: Industrial policy tries to engineer outcomes while ignoring processes. It assumes that political favor can substitute for market incentives. That innovation and customer demand won’t suffer. That shielding firms from competition will make them stronger. Instead, we get fragile industries that are dependent on even more political support.

Jeff Turnbull’s letter in today’s Wall Street Journal is correct:

I enjoyed Cole Murphy’s Cross Country about the Georgia film tax incentive (“Georgia’s Film Tax Incentive Bombs at the Box Office” Jan. 24). I had first hand knowledge of the excessive costs for labor in several Savannah, Ga., area film productions during 2022. I was merely a “background actor” along with hundreds of others, driven to the many set locations in the Savannah area by (spoiler alert) highly paid unionized Teamster workers.

When money is poured into an industry from a government handout, there will always be people ready with buckets to catch it.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal decries the economic hubris and hypocrisy of Hungarian strongman – a man admired by the clueless Tucker Carlson – Viktor Orbán. Two slices:

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán portrays himself as an opponent of European Union overreach. But he’s made a big state bet on electric vehicles, and he’s now relying on the EU’s green mandates to ensure it pays off.

Hungary has long subsidized car makers, and EV-focused German firms are the primary recipients of more than $871 million in subsidies for the automotive industry since 2004, according to Andrea Éltető of the Institute for World Economics, a Budapest-based think tank. She tallied more than $2.57 billion in paid or pending subsidies since 2018 for EV battery factories, with South Korean and Chinese multinationals the top beneficiaries. That comes to more than $3.44 billion in state support for green cars and their parts, in a country with a GDP of about $223 billion.

Mr. Orbán needs EU regulators to manufacture demand for made-in-Hungary electric cars and batteries.

…..

This is an industrial-policy warning for Mr. Orbán’s admirers in the Trump Administration. He needs the same EU he derides to keep his economy running.

Jeffrey Miron – always sensible – argues that the deeper problem exposed by the dispute over the name of the Kennedy Center

is that the federal government should never have created this center in the first place. No effective argument exists for government funding of artistic activity, since private actors consistently produce cultural institutions in response to demand. In fact, private art museums (such as the Museum of Modern Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum) have experienced a significant global boom in recent years. Cultural production more broadly also exists without federal funding, including commercial theaters like Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, film studios like Disney, and symphonies like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The way to avoid polarization over the naming or staffing of an artistic center is for government to exit.

Peter Suderman reports what all decent people ardently hope to be true: “Stephen Miller’s hardline immigration tactics are backfiring.” A slice:

Miller isn’t just seeking dutiful immigration enforcement. And he’s not just spouting ugly rhetoric on social media. He just doesn’t want the public to believe that immigration policy is equivalent to a war on America’s streets, he needs them to, because that’s the only way to justify the sort of wartime tactics he favors on American streets.

Trump’s second-term raids are not merely designed to sweep up immigrants for deportation; they are designed to act as shows of force, a dangerous and occasionally deadly form of political theater. And while Trump bears ultimate responsibility for the immigration sweeps and their consequences, it is Miller who has most clearly shaped their operational character. The masks, the menace, the militarism—these are all direct manifestations of a cruel and apocalyptic worldview, in which force is the only real governing power, illegal immigration represents a form of “invasion,” legal immigration mechanisms like birthright citizenship are “destructive and ruinous policies aimed at the heart of the Republic,” and public protest of deportation raids that turn violent is tantamount to “insurrection.”

Vladlena Klymova calls on the wolves of antitrust to leave Netflix alone. A slice:

By integrating horizontally, Netflix and WBD could both deliver direct savings and expand the assortment of content available through a Netflix–HBO bundle. Disney’s acquisition of Hulu in 2019 made it possible to package Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for $13—down from nearly $18 if purchased separately. To remain competitive, Netflix would likely adopt the same consumer-friendly strategy. Besides, as consumers grow increasingly dissatisfied with the fragmentation of streaming services, bringing multiple services under a single platform would likely prove a long-desired benefit.

Even under a narrow market definition, the streaming-service market includes at least six major rivals. The Netflix–WBD deal would not presumptively render the industry uncompetitive. Antitrust enforcers should bear the burden of proving otherwise. Moreover, platforms such as YouTube also vie for consumers’ screen time, alongside cable and broadcast television, leaving a combined Netflix–WBD with roughly 10.4 percent of what might be called the all-screen viewing market. Bizarre claims that “Netflix has long been a monopoly under even the most generous market definition” completely ignore the fact that there are lots of things on television to watch and plenty of ways (e.g., cable, YouTube TV, DirecTV, Netflix, Disney+) to watch them. This is the case now and will continue to be the case if the deal goes through.

Frank Stephenson is understandably unimpressed with Michael Lind’s 2023 book, Hell to Pay.

GMU Econ alum Daniel Smith warns against the allure of “the policy button.” A slice:

In Bill Cotter’s beloved children’s book series, Don’t Push the Button! a mischievous monster named Larry presents young readers with a tantalizing big red button, sternly warning them not to press it. Of course, the allure proves too strong for toddlers, who gleefully ignore the advice, unleashing a cascade of silly chaos – turning Larry into a polka-dotted elephant or summoning a horde of dancing bananas. The books’ humor lies in the predictable disobedience, but the underlying lesson is clear: some temptations are simply too powerful to resist.

This whimsical analogy holds a sobering truth for the world of economics. Far too many economists, in their policy recommendations, unwittingly craft similar “big red buttons” for policymakers. They design sophisticated interventions intended to fix specific market imperfections with the caveat that these tools should be used judiciously – only when necessary, and with precision. Yet, politicians, driven by electoral pressures, find these buttons irresistible in off-label uses and abuses. The result? Not playful pandemonium, but real-world economic distortions such as deficits, inflation, and moral hazard that often exacerbate the very problems the policy was prescribed to solve.

Economists often position themselves as impartial social scientists, perched in ivory towers far removed from the messy arena of politics. They deploy intricate models to pinpoint “optimal” policy response. For instance, during a recession, they might calculate the exact multiplier effect of a fiscal stimulus package, advocating for targeted government spending to boost aggregate demand. Or they may recommend an “optimal” tax rate or an exactly tailored tariff that can generate slight efficiency gains under rare conditions. In monetary policy, they endorse tools like quantitative easing or financial bailouts to stabilize banking systems. These recommendations stem from a genuine desire to mitigate harm and promote efficiency, rooted in the observation that markets aren’t perfect: externalities, information asymmetries, and behavioral biases can lead to suboptimal outcomes.

However, by blessing these expansive toolkits, economists inadvertently empower policymakers with levers that beg to be pulled in ways and contexts well beyond what the economists intended.  Even if the advice comes with implicit disclaimers, such as “use sparingly,” “monitor side effects,” or “phase out promptly,” these are as effective as Larry’s warnings to a curious child. Policymakers operate in a high-stakes environment where incentives skew toward action over restraint. Re-election hinges on visible results: cutting ribbons on pork-barrel infrastructure projects funded by stimulus or touting low unemployment figures propped up by easy money. Long-term consequences, like mounting public debt, systemic financial risk, or bubbles, are conveniently deferred to future administrations.

This oversight isn’t just a minor flaw; it’s a fundamental methodological error. As Nobel laureate James Buchanan, a pioneer of public choice theory, demonstrated, economists cannot claim scientific neutrality while ignoring the incentives of those who wield power.

Former Virginia governor Doug Wilder, a Democrat, offers wise advice to the new governor of Virginia and her fellow Democrats in Richmond. A slice:

The temptation of new leadership aligned in policy and purpose is to move quickly and expansively. Yet the first question must always be the same: Who will pay? And can they afford it?

Members of the General Assembly have rushed to introduce bills eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for numerous crimes, raising taxes and expanding spending. Each of these proposals deserves debate, but discussion without discipline becomes indulgence.

Will raising taxes shift the burden primarily to those with the greatest ability to pay, or will it squeeze working families already stretched thin? Will increased spending result in measurable improvements in public services, or will it drive the state toward deficits that future generations must repair? Will eliminating sentencing standards improve justice and public safety together, or produce unintended consequences that communities later regret?

Good intentions do not replace careful judgment. Every policy choice carries consequences, financial and otherwise. Gov. Spanberger must demonstrate that she is willing to exercise discipline and resist excesses that extend beyond the mandate voters entrusted to her.

Tweet

… is from page 260 of Thomas Sowell’s 1999 book, Barbarians Inside the Gates:

It used to be said that taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society. Today, taxes are the price we pay so that politicians can buy the votes of those who are feeding at the public trough.

DBx: I’ve one amendment: Despite the frequently encountered claim, taxes were never the price anyone has paid to live in civilized society. Taxes – however necessary you believe them to be – are taken by force in order to fund the use of force. This reality means that taxes are the price we pay for the existing shortfall of our society from being fully civilized. (I believe that I first encountered this refutation of the claim that ‘taxes pay for civilization’ from Ed Crane.)