George Will describes Trump as “our socialist president.” His case is strong. A slice:
A more apt connection of current events to actual socialism was made by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Wisconsin Republican, when President Trump decided to validate the conservative axiom that government often is the disease for which it pretends to be the cure. When the president decided to give farmers a $12 billion bandage for the wound he inflicted on them with his splendid little (so far) trade war, and when other injured interests joined the clamor for comparable compensations, Johnson said, “This is becoming more and more like a Soviet type of economy here: Commissars deciding who’s going to be granted waivers, commissars in the administration figuring out how they’re going to sprinkle around benefits.”
Dan Mitchell argues that the only good carbon tax is a dead carbon tax.
Peter van Doren highlights the important role that Regulation magazine has played during this century in helping to keep the dangerous genie of antitrust more bottled up than otherwise. (I remain proud of my 1990 contribution on this subject to Regulation.)
“How capitalism brought ice cream to the masses.”
In other words, foreign companies appear to be importing as many goods as they can from the U.S. before their own governments retaliate against Trump’s tariffs with duties of their own. Once those tariffs are in place, American goods won’t be in such high demand, which will hurt future GDP growth.
“We’re getting explosive growth in the second quarter because of trade,” economist Ellen Zentner of Morgan Stanley tells the Times. “You’ve got a big hole on the other side of that.”
