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Mark Perry (citing my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold) clearly explains that so-called “trade deficits” are generally cause for celebration rather than for consternation.  Here’s Mark’s conclusion (original emphasis):

The continual focus by politicians and the media month-after-month on the “trade deficit” is misplaced, and the ubiquitous media reports that describe “trade deficits” disparagingly miss the bigger picture of international trade. Rising exports and rising imports are both signs of an expanding, healthy economy, and tracking the total monthly volume of international transactions (exports + imports) is, therefore, a better measure of the importance of international trade to our economy than tracking net exports (exports – imports).

In this essay at RealClear Policy, Alice Calder and I argue that nationalist immigration policies are self-defeating.  A slice:

Immigrants not only increase the number of people employed; they also increase worker productivity in general. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that immigrants stimulate investment, in turn producing efficiency gains and boosting income for immigrants and natives alike.

Speaking of immigration, Shikha Dalmia is dismayed by Trump’s Orwellian machinations on this front.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, EconLog’s David Henderson – prompted by a recent Oxfam report – explains that the poor are not helped by a war on the rich.  A slice:

Finally, the Oxfam report mentions nothing about what would be the quickest way to reduce world-wide economic inequality: let people emigrate from poor countries to rich ones. Michael Clemens, an economist at the Center for Global Development, has written that wealthy nations’ tight restrictions on immigration leave “trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk.” Allowing people to move to jobs in which their productivity would soon multiply by fivefold or more would make everyone better off.

George Will discusses some economics of professional baseball.

Ilya Somin, a colleague over in GMU’s Scalia School of Law, has a proposal to fix “the dark side of the Olympics.

Can Americans’ health-care system be improved by Amazon?

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy wisely doesn’t fall for the commonly heard claim that the GOP is a party of fiscal responsibility.

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