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… is from Reason magazine’s February 1974 interview of Milton Friedman:

A high rate of monetary expansion would not be desirable but a free society can live with any rate of monetary expansion, provided there isn’t an attempt to eliminate its effects by price and wage controls. What a free society cannot live with is an attempt to repress inflation.

DBx: I suspect that even Friedman would agree that he here overstated the case that “a free society can live with any rate of monetary expansion”; at some point, such expansion becomes destructive in and of itself. But Friedman’s larger point is correct and important: As undesirable as inflation is, matters are made much worse if governments attempt to suppress increases in nominal prices, wages, and interest rates.

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Marian Tupy disabuses American socialists of their economically ignorant belief that successful entrepreneurs steal their wealth from workers and consumers. Two slices:

Early economists, such as James Mill and David Ricardo, theorized that the physical labor exerted to create a good is the real measure of its value. Karl Marx took the concept to its extreme: If labor creates all value, then profit must require unpaid labor, making every employer an expropriator and every fortune a crime.

Then, beginning in 1871, economists countered the labor theory of value. Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons and Léon Walras demonstrated independently that value resides not in hours of toil but in the judgments of consumers. Writing a 500-page novel takes the same amount of physical labor as typing out 500 pages of the word “banana” repeatedly. Only the novel commands a price. Value is created whenever someone rearranges the world into a shape that others want. It is measured by the buyer, not the worker.

Entrepreneurs are the arrangers. Economist Israel Kirzner argued that entrepreneurship is alertness — noticing an opportunity that nobody else has found. The entrepreneur sees that resources combined in a certain way and priced at a certain level can be recombined into something consumers will value even more. The gap between the two is profit. Nothing is taken from workers, who are paid the wage they agree to, or from customers, who buy the product only when the purchase leaves them better off.

…..

A movement that believes wealth is stolen will tax it, cap it and make everyone poorer. Ideas drive growth, and ideas come from people who can profit from them. A world that cherishes entrepreneurs will enjoy advanced chips and revolutionary cures. A world that punishes its innovators will at least enjoy plenty of slogans.

“America has a huge trade surplus with Brazil. Trump just put 25 percent tariffs on Brazilian goods anyway.” Here’s a slice from another excellent piece by Reason‘s Eric Boehm:

Trump administration officials have offered a variety of overlapping and competing justifications for the new tariffs in comments to The New York Times, including “inadequate policing of deforestation” and the fact that Brazilian courts had tried to order “U.S. social media companies to take down certain political content.”

Those might be real problems, but how will tariffs address them? Forcing American businesses and consumers to pay higher prices on imports from Brazil seems like an odd way to combat deforestation or stand up for free speech.

“These tariffs are a blunt tool with a weak connection between the practices at issue and the American companies that will bear the costs,” Dan Anthony, executive director of We Pay the Tariffs, a nonprofit coalition representing more than 1,200 American small businesses, said in a statement. “Businesses buying everyday products from Brazil will now pay new tariffs because of disputes over digital payment rules and other policies they have nothing to do with.”

For all the talk about trade deficits, the new tariffs once again reveal that there are no principles underpinning the Trump administration’s trade policies. The president will use any and every justification to slap new tariffs on foreign imports and leave Americans with the bill.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, rightfully criticizes Congress for its indifference to the coming Social Security fiscal reckoning. A slice:

When politicians do raise the issue, they make the fix sound easy. Sens. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) want you to believe that eliminating the cap on payroll taxes would fix the problem. That solution fails on its own terms.

Using data from the Social Security Administration’s own actuaries, my colleague Jack Salmon demonstrates that scrapping the taxable maximum closes only 58% of the gap. National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru noted last month that it would push the federal marginal rate on top wages to an untenable 49.4%, and overall rates would climb past 60% in high-tax states like California and New York.

The senators aren’t alone in wanting to tax our way out of this problem. In one recent survey, 89% percent of Americans aged 65 and older favored protecting current retirees’ benefits even if doing so requires higher taxes on younger workers.

That position is popular only because it rests on the image of retirees living off nothing but Social Security. That image, partly an artifact of bad data, fails to capture the situation.

In a March 2025 government survey, 24% of seniors reported that Social Security supplies 90% or more of their income. But when Census Bureau researchers matched responses with IRS filings and benefits records, they found that retirees frequently omitted their 401(k) and IRA withdrawals, making the real figure only about 14%. Meanwhile, 58% of retirees draw less than half their income from the program.

The remaining 42% are the retirees that Social Security reform of any kind should protect. They already receive a raw deal under the current formula, which does a much better job of protecting wealthier seniors.

As the Cato Institute’s Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia documented last month, seniors aged 65 to 74 had a median net worth of $410,000 in 2022, compared with only $135,600 for those aged 35 to 44 (who pay a significant share of the taxes). Roughly 34% of Social Security dollars go to filers with adjusted gross incomes above $100,000. Too often, Social Security is less a need-based program than a transfer of wealth from the young and unpropertied to the old and comfortable.

“Beijing wants to lock down AI. Washington should open it up” – so argues Mark Jamison. A slice:

America has repeatedly become the world’s technological leader not by keeping its innovations at home, but by making them indispensable abroad. American operating systems, cloud computing, software platforms, financial services, entertainment, and internet companies became global standards because businesses and consumers everywhere wanted to use them. This meant enormous profits for U.S. companies—and expanded influence for the U.S. It also ensured that America remained the top destination for global talent, and set the stage for future innovation that would further U.S. dominance.

We have the opportunity to do this again with AI. The United States leads the world in AI innovation and investment. Our frontier models have always been best-in-class. But the gap is narrowing.

Speaking of AI…. (HT Brian Mannix)

On Friday, Thinking Machines released its first manifesto, outlining its vision for a future in which AI was decentralized and built on local knowledge. The company, whose CEO, [Mira] Murati, witnessed the collapse of communism in her native Albania as a child, compared the current dominant AI paradigm of close-source frontier labs to “central planning”—great for bounded tasks like chess and math, but not for the real work humans do every day.

Stu Smith takes us “inside the rise of the anti–data center movement.” A slice:

Across the country, DSA chapters are taking up the data center cause. In Seattle, that has meant calls for a statewide moratorium on AI development, targeted at Microsoft and Amazon facilities in particular. In the Washington, D.C., region, Metro DC DSA has focused on blaming facilities in Maryland and Virginia for rising utility costs while advocating for community control of electrical infrastructure. A similar effort is underway in Arizona, where DSA activists are pushing to take over Tucson Electric Power, which has shown a willingness to work with data-center developers.

In New York State, these campaigns have found tangible political backing and influenced policy discussions and outcomes. At the DSA Ecosocialism event, State Senator Kristen Gonzales noted that the legislature had approved a bill establishing a one-year moratorium on data-center construction, allegedly to shift power away from Big Tech. In Ithaca, the local DSA is actively opposing a TeraWulf data center project—an opposition effort that has won the backing of New York State Representative Anna Kelles. Now that DSA has gained representation on Ithaca’s city council, members have said they intend to “electorally punish” those who supported and enabled the project, while continuing to push for a moratorium and pursuing legal action against TeraWulf.

Charlie Trumbull makes the case that “Trump’s boat strikes are crimes against humanity.”

Phil Magness, writing at his Facebook page, is less than favorably impressed with the intellectual abilities of scholars on the “new right”:

It’s genuinely amusing how all of the leading “intellectuals” of the new right – Deneen, Pappin, Hazony, Pecknold, Pinkoski – are complete lightweights.

Their “research” invariably shows signs of being way out of their depth and lacking even minimal competence in what they purport to describe. It could not pass peer review at even a 3rd tier journal specialized in the same subject areas. So they create their own publication ecosystem of blogs, vanity journals, and “popular” outlets that insulate them from basic scrutiny. And when they put something into print, it repeats basic errors that betray its shallowness.

So you get Deneen making sweeping claims about the American founding that contradict the founders themselves, or Pappin mistaking LaRouchie conspiracy theories for economics, or Pecknold claiming Catholic theological sanction for positions that senior Vatican officials have explicitly denounced, or Pinkoski peddling white nationalist dystopian novels as serious policy analysis, or Hazony trying to repackage incoherent right-Hegelian babble as if it was a derivative of Burkean political writings that he does not understand and has probably never even read beyond a superficial glance.

A functional scholarly ecosystem would have flushed these buffoons out a while ago. Then again, a functional scholarly ecosystem would have also flushed out Nancy MacLean etc.

Virginia Postrel tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

People getting sick from cyclospora or avoiding fresh produce to avoid sickness are all casualties of the superstition against irradiating food.

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… is from page 77 of Jerry Z. Muller’s 1993 book, Adam Smith In His Time and Ours [original emphasis]:

Smith did not believe that there was a natural harmony of interests in society. He believed that the public interest would be best served if every man channeled his self-interest through the market. But he realized that from the point of view of the individual producer or group of producers it was most beneficial to circumvent the competitive market with its attendant risks, and use all available means to prevent competition, in order to obtain the highest possible price for their wares.

DBx: Yep. And as Smith understood, no scheme to circumvent market competition in order to enable the few to profit at the larger expense of the many is more pernicious than protectionism.

…..

Smith died on this date – July 17th – in 1790.

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Editor:

Brandon Farris’s defense of steel tariffs is defective (Letters, July 16). He cites a 2023 U.S. International Trade Commission study, but that study analyzed the 25% tariff then in effect, not the 50% rate imposed since then. It cannot vouch for today’s tariffs

The study also undercuts, rather than supports, Mr. Farris’s argument. Prices of final goods did rise only modestly. But the report found near-complete pass-through: foreign exporters barely cut their prices. American importers and the manufacturers and consumers downstream of them — not foreigners, as the administration claims — bore almost the entire cost.

The Commission found that “for downstream industries, the effects are largely negative…. The average annual decrease in production values for these industries was $3.4 billion during 2018–21.” Even so, the report calls its own findings incomplete, as it “focuses on short-term effects during 2018–21 and does not address long-term effects,” omitting consequences such as the drag on U.S. exporters from foreign retaliation, which it notes occurred but are not measured. Significantly, yet ignored by Mr. Farris, the report adds that it “is not an assessment of the complete, economy-wide impacts of the tariffs.”

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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George Will documents the “endlessly pliable” J.D. Vance’s many politically convenient changes in his ‘principles.’ Three slices:

JD Vance has an aptitude for conversions. His have involved politics, economics, history and religion, so far. Whatever his next one is will probably not be his last.

…..

When interviewed concerning his book “Communion” about his religious conversion, Vance recalled that when he was a senator, his son, during a flight, dropped a cookie and said “shit.” Vance worried that people might think “I am apparently a terrible father because I’ve raised my kids, my 3-year-old, to use that language.”

Five months ago this column listed examples of Vance’s many public vulgarities, as when he denounced a “dipshit” critic, and others who can“eat shit.” Five months is, however, plenty of time for a Vance conversion, this time to decorousness. In “Communion,” his new delicacy causes him to obscure the adjective “p***y.” So, presumably, he will not again talk of tech corporations telling a “bullshit story” about the need for more foreign workers.

Christianity, Vance says, “is America’s creed.” His Christianity often dovetails with MAGA commandments. He says a “Christian statesman” must preserve “social cohesion.” This is code for restricting immigration. Something already has, Vance says, made America a place where “you don’t have to apologize for being White anymore.”

Especially if you are properly descended. “I think,” Vance says, “the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America.” More “claim” (whatever that means) than most of today’s Americans, whose descendants arrived too late to fight. What conversion convinced Vance of this?

…..

“I’ve always liked” Nixon, Vance said, because Nixon, like Vance, was a young senator, then a young vice president, who wrote books and was “hated by the media.” This narcissism as a rationale for historical revisionism did not impress National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, who says celebrating Nixon is part of Vance’s “ongoing effort to downplay the political success of Ronald Reagan.”

Disparaging Reagan is a prerequisite for running in 2028 as Trumpism’s second wind. The political left, like the Trump-Vance administration, favors wielding uncircumscribed executive power to erase the distinction between public and private economic sectors. This administration has made the federal government an investor in 30 companies. And the administration’s Kulturkampf, Vance believes, has not gone far enough. He wants to “seize the endowments” of universities that he thinks are politically incorrect.

The Washington Post‘s Editorial Board decries New York governor Kathy Hochul’s hostility to data centers. A slice:

But Hochul is sending a loud market signal that New York is not a smart place for companies to make long-term investments in AI infrastructure. It doesn’t matter that the moratorium would last only a year, because companies will allocate resources elsewhere. Other states are racing ahead and will reap the sizable tax benefits.

Why is foreign tourism to the U.S. declining under Trump? Eric Boehm has some answers.

Scott Lincicome explains what shouldn’t – but, alas, what always does – need explaining: An economy becomes more resilient the freer is its trade. A slice:

Shortly before Independence Day, President Donald Trump suspended US tariffs on fertilizer from Morocco after declaring that threats to domestic supplies of the product constituted a “national emergency.” As Bloomberg News reported at the time, the action was intended to help farmers and consumers worried about Iran-related price hikes. The Department of Agriculture estimates that lifting the duties will reduce phosphate fertilizer prices by 22%, saving farmers more than $1.8 billion this year – savings they’d presumably pass on to consumers.

In isolation, the tariff-happy Trump administration’s fertilizer decision is a comical footnote in a lamentable Iran war saga – a mundane, albeit legally dubious, government move to alleviate a sliver of the war’s inflationary effects and to placate an important political constituency before the Fall midterms.

Yet this is no one-off. Instead, it’s the latest in a long string of US trade actions that no one in an increasingly protectionist Washington is eager to acknowledge: Seemingly every time domestic supplies of essential goods – and politicians’ standing with voters – are at risk, the government lets imports ride to the rescue.

Philip Klein reports this happy reality: “Black voters keep putting the brakes on the socialist revolution.” A slice:

In last year’s mayoral primary in New York City, Zohran Mamdani lost black voters to Cuomo among first-choice voters, but once all votes were tallied in the ranked-choice system, it ended up 50–50 among that demographic. Yet a closer look at the age breakdown showed a stark age gap. Cuomo won the over-60 crowd by 28 points (64–36), while Mamdani won black voters under 50 by 42 points (71–29).

The Democratic mayoral primary electorate in New York City is obviously a lot different than the presidential primary electorate in South Carolina and, it seems, in Michigan. So I am still skeptical. Flipping deep blue districts from progressive to socialist is a lot different than putting together a successful national campaign.

GMU alum Tom Savidge reviews Romina Boccia’s and Ivane Nachkebia’s Reimagining Social Security.

Gale Pooley explains that “the time price of air conditioning has fallen 98.6 percent since 1952. That ordinary luxury saves lives every summer.”

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… is from page 363 of the late Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution:

Yet the [Jeffersonian] Republicans did have a criterion for determining who was right and who was wrong, and it was the opinion of the whole people. Their arguments in favor of freedom of speech rested on the assumption that opinions about politics, like opinions about other subjects, were no longer the monopoly of the educated and aristocratic few. Not only were all opinions equally to be tolerated but everyone and anyone in the society should be equally able to express them. Truth was actually the creation of many voices and many minds, no one of which was more important than another and each of which made its own separate and equally significant contribution to the whole.

DBx: Such admirable support for freedom of speech and the press does not, of course, imply that every voice is equally well-informed or responsible. When speech and press are free, the ignorant, the childish, the venal, and the cunning have just as much right to express themselves as do the informed, the mature, the public-spirited, and the honest. But freedom of speech and the press do not imply any right to be heard or heeded. Nor do these freedoms imply a right to be free of criticism; quite the opposite.

And yet, while freedom of expression doesn’t guarantee that light (or even the better arguments) will triumph over darkness, such freedom provides the best prospects of moving in that happy direction.

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Wishing Boston Globe columnist – and my friend – Jeff Jacoby the very best as he struggles with some health issues. A slice from Jeff’s most-recent column:

AS SOME of you know, I am on medical leave from my job at The Boston Globe and have not been able to write my regular op-ed columns or my Arguable newsletter. For several months I have been contending with a number of worrying and seemingly unconnected symptoms — everything from unplanned weight loss to increased clumsiness to difficulties with speech to muscle atrophy. These symptoms are all the more distressing since my doctors so far can’t explain what is causing them or why they should suddenly have appeared.

All of which means that instead of spending my days trying to write opinion pieces that are interesting, timely, and thoughtful, I have instead been devoting my hours to blood draws and CT scans, to being examined by specialists, to getting prescriptions filled and dosages adjusted, and to navigating the maze of “patient portals” that even doctors tell me they find maddening.

I’m also spending time reflecting on what this experience can teach me and how I can use those insights to be a better person. One of the great sages of the Talmud, Rabbi Tarfon, said more than 1,900 years ago: “The day is short, and the work is very great.” The meaning of those words has always seemed straightforward to me. Only now am I struck by their urgency.

Which isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to the world around me! I haven’t stopped following the news or instinctively thinking about what I want to write — especially on the issues that matter most.

Like immigration.

Though I wish the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara, the birthright citizenship case, had been unanimous, I always knew it was inconceivable that a majority of the justices would let this president — or any president — shatter one of the most sublime promises of the nation that declared its independence 250 years ago this month. From the very beginning of our history as a sovereign country, the rule has been clear: Children born on American soil begin life as equals. That is America at its best.

I wish I had been well enough to pen a fresh column as soon as the court handed down its decision last week. It’s a subject I have followed for years, since long before this litigation began. My first column on the topic, which I wrote in 2010, made no mention of Donald Trump, who was still years away from launching a bid for the White House.

Here’s the abstract of a new paper by William Cline: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Proposed tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent under the forced labor provisions of Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 would be more than forty times the magnitude that could be warranted on the basis of US exports lost and US imports increased as a consequence of trade in goods produced using forced labor. The basic reason is that in economic terms, global forced labor is small, accounting for an estimated 5.5 million workers in tradable goods, compared to almost 2 billion workers in these sectors globally. As a consequence, the forced-labor provisions do not constitute a credible basis for replacing the reciprocal tariffs ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.

Colin Grabow introduces the Jones Act Waiver Tracker.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reports on yet another instances of the regressiveness of so-called “progressives.” A slice:

New York’s ban on fracking for oil and gas has been an act of monumental self-sabotage. Now Gov. Kathy Hochul is making a similar blunder by imposing a one-year (yeah, right) pause on new large AI data centers. Why are Democrats so intent on blocking development that would benefit their citizens?

Ms. Hochul announced the moratorium Tuesday in an executive order that suspends permitting for data centers while her administration works on a “regulatory framework.” “As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” she said.

Translation: It’s an election year. Polls show voters turning against data centers, largely owing to misconceptions fueled by climate activists. Ms. Hochul is trying to get ahead of the backlash and shift blame for her state’s rising electric rates caused by its climate policies.

Democrats in Albany have shoveled billions of dollars on projects to boost economic growth upstate. So it’s strange that Ms. Hochul is spurning data centers, which could generate thousands of jobs and more tax revenue. Teachers in Louisiana’s Richland Parish recently received annual bonuses of up to $50,000 thanks to increased tax revenue from construction of Meta’s massive AI data center.

Also writing about this regressive New York state policy on data centers is Tosin Akintola.

Kevin Gentry talks about higher education with Joshua Hall.

GMU Econ alum Jeremy Horpedahl isn’t favorably impressed by “Trump Accounts.”

Tyler Cowen predicts that the future belongs to “AI maniacs.” A slice:

I also believe that immigrants are especially likely to be AI maniacs. Immigrants have fewer channels to rise through credentials, family connections, and establishment modes of thinking and doing. They are more willing to try something new, they tend to be younger than average, and, because they were willing to switch countries, they tend to have higher levels of energy, courage, and ambition.

Recently I was giving some talks in England, and I contrasted the AI maniacs with the Oxbridge elite. Very often the Oxbridgers end up with high-paying jobs in law, consulting, finance, or perhaps the life sciences, typically in or near London. They are very smart and hardworking, and they know how to chart their advancement through social and professional systems. They have helped to create a very prosperous London. Yet in the next two decades they are likely to face very serious competition from the AI maniacs, who will try to provide services at lower cost from much smaller start-up companies.

Chelsea Follett encourages Europeans to put a higher value on life and install air-conditioning. A slice:

Air conditioning is one of modern civilization’s most important yet underappreciated inventions. One study from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that the spread of air conditioning in the United States led to a roughly 75 percent decline in heat-related deaths during the 20th century. But policymakers in Europe have discouraged this technology through taxes, regulations and a stubborn refusal to admit its benefits.

The consequences have been tragic. Heat waves kill more than 175,000 Europeans every year, according to the World Health Organization. Eighty percent of the continent’s population does not have AC. In the United States, almost 90 percent does.

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… is from page 26 of the late Tom Wolfe’s brilliant 1981 book, From Bauhaus to Our House:

In fact, here was the great appeal of socialism to architects in the 1920s. Socialism was the political answer, the great yea-saying, to the seemingly outrageous and impossible claims of the compound architect, who insisted that the client keep his mouth shut. Under socialism, the client was the worker. Alas, the poor devil was only just now rising out of the ooze. In the meantime, the architect, the artist, and the intellectual would arrange his life for him. To use Stalin’s phrase, they would be the engineers of his soul.

DBx: Collectivists of whatever stripe are marked by their arrogance, by their imagined superiority to ordinary people. They, the collectivists, know how income should be distributed. They, the collectivists, know just what kinds of jobs ordinary people should hold. They, the collectivists, know how best to provide schooling for the children of ordinary people. They, the collectivists, know what is the minimum hourly monetary wage ordinary people should be allowed to accept in exchange for labor services. They, the collectivists, know how political campaigns should be funded. They, the collectivists, know what goods and services, and in what quantities, are best for ordinary people to purchase from foreigners. They, the collectivists, know which medicines and medical devices peaceful people should be prevented from consuming. They, the collectivists, know what are ‘the industries of the future’ and how best to ensure that the domestic economy has a comparative advantage in those industries. They, the collectivists, know how best to arrange for the provision and payment of health care.

They, the collectivists, are nothing if not arrogant.

……

Although Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead is no brief for collectivism, I must say that I’ve never liked that novel. I first read it only after learning economics. And so the architect Howard Roark’s refusal to design a building according to the preferences of the persons who pay for his services and for the building immediately struck me as arrogant. The fictional Mr. Roark and his real-world counterparts certainly have a right to regard themselves as brilliant artists who never stoop to satisfy the tastes of hoi polloi and to refuse to design anything except that which they – the architects – fancy. But it’s a darn good thing that the profit motive is powerful enough to enable people spending their own money to get supplied with whatever peaceful goods and services they desire.

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Here’s a letter to a commenter at my Facebook page.

Mr. Beveridge:

In a comment on this Facebook post of mine – a post in which I criticize Trump’s tariffs – you write that my post “seems to ignore the fact that we are tariffed to the max by other countries. What gives, sir?”

Other readers’ several responses to your comment do much to remedy your misunderstanding – for example, by noting that we are not, and we were not, “tariffed to the max by other countries.”

But another point is worth making. If (also contrary to fact) Trump and his fellow protectionists are correct to incessantly insist that free trade harms the American economy by “hollowing out” our industrial base and making us dangerously dependent for supplies on foreign countries, then other countries would do us a great favor by tariffing us “to the max.”

Extremely high tariffs abroad would dramatically reduce demand for American exports. This reduced demand for American exports would, in turn, reduce the global demand for U.S. dollars. As a result, the value of the dollar against other currencies would fall. As the dollar’s value falls, it takes more dollars to buy any given amount of foreign currency – meaning that, as the dollar’s value falls, foreign goods would become more expensive for Americans to purchase. Americans would import less.

In short, as American exports fall, so too do American imports.

Being tariffed to the max by other countries would achieve Mr. Trump’s and other protectionists’ goal of reducing America’s imports and her ‘dependence’ on foreign countries for supplies. It’s unclear, therefore, why protectionists complain about (what they falsely believe to be) differentially very high foreign tariffs.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

P.S. For a more comprehensive treatment of the connection between imports and exports, see here. I also recognize that my conclusion assumes that extremely high tariffs abroad would not raise foreigners’ demand to invest in America by so much as to offset the foreign-tariffs’ depressing effect on the value of the dollar. If this assumption were to prove unjustified in reality, however, the other Trumpian bête noire – U.S. trade deficits – would grow even more bête noire-ish.