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… is from pages 1-2 of Norbert Michel’s superb 2025 book, Crushing Capitalism: How Populist Policies are Threatening the American Dream:

Americans have been growing richer since the end of the 19th century and now enjoy levels of abundance and opportunity far greater than 50 years ago, and utterly unimaginable 150 years ago. The typical American can buy any fruit or vegetable in the dead of winter for a relatively small share of his or her wages, can own a wireless communications device with access to virtually unlimited information, and can enjoy more transportation options, a cleaner environment, more years of education, more leisure choices, and better long-term health than at any point in history. But all these benefits did not simply materialize, and they will not remain in such abundance if we fail to nurture the combination of knowledge, effort, and cooperation that enables their production.

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Every time Victor Davis Hanson comments on the economics of international trade he displays utter ignorance of the most basic facts and theories of that topic.

Editor, Real Clear Politics

Editor:

Victor Davis Hanson’s declaration of victory for Trump’s tariffs is premature and confused (“The Decline and Fall of Our So-Called Degreed Experts,” July 4).

First, no serious economist predicted that the tariffs would cause a “surge in inflation.” When buyers spend more for the outputs of producers who benefit most from protection, they must spend less for the outputs of other producers; the falling prices of the latter outputs must be set against the rising prices of the former outputs. In an economy as large and dynamic as that of the U.S. – and given that many of Trump’s tariffs have yet to be implemented (and might never be) – any net effect on the price level due to these tariffs has been, and might well remain, too small to detect.

Second, any respectable assessment of the economic effects of tariffs must be done over a time span longer than the three months that have elapsed since Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Indeed, because much of the relevant data for assessing the effects of tariffs, such as real GDP, are reported on a quarterly basis – and because the quarter in which these tariffs were announced ended only six days ago – we do not yet have the data that are most appropriate for assessing the tariffs’ economic consequences.

Third and relatedly, the economic case against tariffs is that these taxes make the people of the country poorer than they would be without the tariffs. Again, the U.S. economy is large and dynamic, and trade policy is only one of many policies that affect economic performance. To empirically isolate the net effect of tariffs requires careful analysis of a time span long enough for businesses and consumers to adjust to the tariffs. Hanson is sophomoric (to put it mildly) to crow that 250 years of economic analysis of protectionism has been disproven by the events of the past three months.

It’s worth noting that Hanson exposes not only impatience for proper scientific method, but also a comical ignorance of the economics that he takes unwarranted pride in mocking. In the same essay in which he applauds Trump’s desire to reduce U.S. trade deficits, Hanson praises Trump’s protectionism for leading “to several trillion dollars in promised foreign investment and at least some plans to relocate manufacturing and assembly back to the United States.” A person, such as Hanson, who is unaware that increased foreign investment in the U.S. tends to increase, rather than decrease, U.S. trade deficits is not a person whose economic commentary should be taken seriously.

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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David Henderson decries Donald Trump’s – and many of Trump’s supporters’ – battering of free speech. A slice:

Any interviewer is free to edit any interview any way he or she wishes. That’s part of freedom of speech. Sullum goes through the issues and lays out a strong case that Trump’s suit was unjustified. Indeed, I would bet that even most Trump-appointed judges would find in CBS’s favor. Read on to see why CBS settled.

I’ve been very disappointed by the absence of many conservative voices against Trump’s assault on freedom.

It’s actually worse. Some of them are not silent about his assault on freedom of speech; they’re triumphant.

Robert Whaples recommends George Selgin’s new book about the Great Depression and the New Deal, False Dawn. A slice:

Why was the recovery so feeble? The National Recovery Administration, established in 1933, has always been Exhibit A that the New Deal made things worse. Accordingly, Selgin devotes two chapters to it. One outlines the contours of its programs and surveys the growing literature by economic historians. The second mines an overlooked contemporane-ous “damning” report by the Brookings Institution, whose members “had no axe to grind with either the Roosevelt administration or with planning as such” (p. 123). The crux is that the program’s codes of “fair competition” mandated the cartelization of hundreds of industries, allowing them to increase their prices, which naturally caused a drop in sales and production, thereby reversing the recovery. Lower production was paired with rules that pushed up wages, so it is no surprise that the quantity of labor employed decreased. This is the consensus of the economic history profession and has been for decades, but Selgin adds an argument from the Brookings report that part of the rapid recovery in the middle of 1933 was in anticipation of the program going into effect. Employers raced to produce at lower costs before their workers’ wage rose—and then scaled back production afterward.

Amity Shlaes reviews Jill Eicher’s Mellon vs. Churchill: The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War. A slice:

Not only Britain’s Labour Party but other parties proved too tolerant of union demands, the result being that wages became higher than Britain could afford. As economists Thomas Hatton and Mark Thomas note in their contribution to The Great Depression of the 1930s: Lessons for Today, toward the end of the 1920s some politicians recognized the missteps. The eminent English economist Arthur Pigou—hardly a pure free marketeer—noted in 1927 that as a result of such policies “wage rates have, over a wide area, been set at a level which is too high” and “the very large percentage of unemployment during the whole of the last six years is due in considerable measure to this new factor in our economic life.”

Nowadays, conservatives treat as heresy the slightest criticism of Churchill. Heresy or not, the truth is that out of ignorance, opportunism, or pride, Churchill ignored such realities—and took the easier path of blaming the U.S. for Britain’s struggles.

Steven Greenhut reports some good news about California.

This letter in the Wall Street Journal is excellent:

Not one week after his win in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani told the press that we shouldn’t have billionaires (“The People’s Republic of New York City,” Review & Outlook, June 26). That, sadly, applies to only one of us. But it is no less nutty.

First, we aren’t too comfortable with anyone saying that “we shouldn’t have” a class of people. The young assemblyman merely wants to tax these scoundrels into oblivion, not something worse, though it’s easy to be confused about the intentions of the guy who seems OK with globalizing the intifada.

We have substantial inequality in this country. But it’s also true that on many broad-based economic indicators, the U.S. is doing wonderfully, regardless of what populists on either end of the horseshoe say. Unless you can claim that “billionaires” have made their money in underhanded ways—or ignore that they already pay a large tax burden, on which the city relies—where does he get off saying this? We could list the incredible innovations brought to you by companies founded by billionaires—who didn’t start out that way—but you’re likely familiar with the litany.

Instead of slogans that attack a class he finds it politically expedient to savage, perhaps Mr. Mamdani should focus on his own policies. Doubling down on rent control that economists, near ubiquitously and across political divides, say has destroyed every city it has touched. Coming for low-margin bodegas with city-run grocery stores. Wanting to seize “the means of production,” because, you know, real communism has never been tried. Such disastrous policies always hurt the poor, who mainly didn’t vote for him, more than the rich, who did.

We are tempted to end by saying, with considerably more evidence than Mr. Mamdani, that “we shouldn’t have socialists.” The country would be better off without such noxious and destructive ideas. But unlike him, we know we don’t get to decide who exists and who doesn’t.

Cliff Asness and Michael Mendelson
AQR Capital Management
New York

Pierre Lemieux ponders the arrogant and illiberal hostilities to Jeff Bezos’s Venetian wedding. A slice:

Claiming a right to control a geographical place that is not yours is analogous to the claim that one has a right to one’s customers against competing suppliers. For example, domestic workers would have a right to the patronage of their domestic customers and could thus to forbid them, through tariffs or bans, to purchase from foreign (or non-local) suppliers. This sort of theory is either incoherent or authoritarian. Having a right to one’s customers implies that the latter do not have a right to choose their suppliers, just like having a right to one’s own Venice implies that other Venetians don’t have a right to their own Venice. Enforcing one’s right then implies controlling what other Venetians can import or export. (Remember that tourism is an export.)

On the contrary, a coherent and non-authoritarian conception of free exchange—the right to buy from, or sell to, whomever is capable and willing to sell to you or buy from you—underlies the right of Bezos to marry in Venice on some property rented from owners who are willing to welcome his party; the same for his right to buy pastries from a local (or foreign, for that matter) baker who is willing to sell them. In a free society, neither buying nor selling is forbidden (with some very limited exceptions such as buying stolen goods or the services of a killer-for-hire).

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… is from page 88 of George Will’s 2021 book, American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 – a wonderful collection of many of his columns over these years; (the column from which the quotation below is drawn was originally published in the Washington Post on January 9th, 2020):

[U.S. Senator Josh] Hawley asserts, without demonstrating, a broad “collapse of community” across America, and blames this, without explaining the causation, on “market worship,” without identifying the irrational worshipers. His logic is opaque, but his destination is clear: Because markets do not properly allocate wealth and opportunity, much of their role must be supplanted by government.

Confidence in markets and confidence in government often vary inversely.

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Last evening – that of July 4th, 2025 – there gathered on the field and in the bleachers at Fairfax High School, in northern Virginia, thousands of people to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The (fulfilled) promise of a spectacular fireworks display no doubt attracted many, as did the live music and many food trucks.

I have no idea how many of these people were conversant with the words of the Declaration, or with the classical-liberal principles that those words convey. But there we all were, peacefully enjoying ourselves.

A not-insignificant number of these individuals were literally wrapped in American flags. Notably, only a minority of these people look like descendants of Mayflower passengers or of the cavaliers who were so prominent in Virginia’s early history. South asians. East asians. Middle Easterners. Blacks. Hispanics – lots of hispanics.

I’m no great fan of nationalism (to put it mildly). But I couldn’t help but feel some pride that, at least in our private capacities, we Americans overwhelmingly not only get along, but enjoy each other’s company. I observed no one poorly treating anyone whose skin was darker than Thomas Jefferson’s or whose accent revealed a birth place other than the U.S.A. I observed no one wishing to distance himself or herself from a fellow human being who was more likely reared in Mexico or India than in Michigan or Indiana.

People of different hues, native languages, religions, and (no doubt) political convictions and sensibilities joined together for a Fourth of July celebration. And, I’m sure, that what went on last evening in Fairfax went on throughout this land.

From where comes this loathsome urge – dominant today in official government policy – to deport or otherwise harass people whose only ‘crime’ is to wish to live in the land that Americans boast is that of the free? People who, outside of politics, mix and mingle and serve each other peacefully and to our mutual economic and cultural advantage?

When will this politics-fueled madness end?

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Eric Boehm exposes the lie (sorry, there’s no other word for it) Trump uses to celebrate the new U.S.-Vietnam trade deal. A slice:

In the lead-up to the “Liberation Day” tariff announcement in April, President Donald Trump often stressed the importance of reciprocity. He claimed that raising tariffs on imports from foreign countries was about fairness—and that America would drop tariffs if other countries agreed to do the same.

After the announcement of a new trade deal with Vietnam, we can safely conclude that Trump was not telling the truth about that.

Under the terms of that deal, announced Wednesday, American exports to Vietnam will face no tariffs while Vietnamese goods imported into the United States will face tariffs of between 20 percent and 40 percent. The higher rate is reserved for goods that are shipped through Vietnam from other origins. (The exact details of the deal are reportedly still being hammered out.)

Vietnam is giving the United States “TOTAL ACCESS to their Markets for Trade,” Trump wrote on Truth Social as he announced the deal. “We will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at ZERO Tariff.”

That’s great, but what happened to reciprocity and fairness?

Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins explains that “‘People Will Die’ isn’t the policy clincher it seems.” A slice:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has been a fiery proponent of “people will die” opposition to spending cuts. But people will die no less from Ms. Warren’s failure to push through new programs or expand existing benefits to new classes of Americans. People will also die if enticed to rely on programs that politicians know aren’t sustainable and must be changed. Medicare and Medicaid are certain to produce long waiting lists in the future. Social Security benefits are already scheduled to be cut sharply as soon as 2033 under existing law.

“People will die” is a safe bet too if opportunity vanishes from the economy due to heavy tax hikes to sustain these programs.

University administrators – including, alas, those at my beloved George Mason University – behave ridiculously with their “land acknowledgments.”

Chelsea Follett makes clear that “wealth doesn’t have to mean demographic decline.”

Here are John Stossel’s commendable Independence Day thoughts.

Debbie Harry turning 80 years old prompted these wise reflections from Bob Graboyes.

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… is from page 8 of Leonard Read’s 1975 book, The Love of Liberty:

Thus, the love of liberty for self and not for others is but a selfish, greedy, and unattainable dream. Why not be realistic? The formula? The Golden Rule: Do not to others that which you would not have them do unto you. Or, in this context, expect not from others that which you will not happily, graciously, intelligently accord to them!

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… is from page 215 of Matthew Hennessey’s superb 2022 book, Visible Hand:

History makes a mockery of all utopias.

DBx: Indeed it does. And so thank goodness that the American Revolution wasn’t launched to create any sort of heaven on earth. It was meant, instead, to create a government committed to the truth “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

That government in America since 1776 has often fallen short of this goal is indisputable. But insofar as it has successfully striven toward this this goal it has done so by refusing to attempt to create here on earth some politician’s or professor’s or pundit’s or preacher’s idea of heaven. For this humility, we Americans can be grateful. And we should recommit to reject the utopias peddled today by the progressive left and the MAGA right.

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GMU Econ alums Scott Burns and Caleb Fuller steel-man the argument that Trump’s tariffs are meant to be bargaining chips to make trade freer and U.S. national security stronger. Two slices:

If forced to devise a “strategic trade war plan” to bring about freer trade, our strategy would be grounded on three pillars. We’ll call them the “three T’s” of trade wars.

First, a strategic trade war should be Targeted. In particular, its scope should be squarely focused on “bad actors” nations and “strategically important” industries. For our purposes, “Bad actors” refers to nations that impose significant trade restrictions on American firms and exports; “strategically important” refers to products and industries deemed essential for economic and national security.

Why is it so vital that the trade war be targeted? Since trade promotes peace and prosperity, we want to avoid inflicting any collateral damage on friendly trading partners. Reliable trading partners don’t need to be catching strays in a well-executed trade war. To the extent they do, we’re unnecessarily hurting our relationship with those allies and harming our own economy. We also want to minimize any blowback we might face in the form of retaliatory tariffs. When it comes to using tariffs and other weapons in our strategic trade arsenal, we want to shoot with a sniper rifle, not a shotgun.

Second, it should be Transparent. This means that officials should announce any tariffs or sanctions well in advance. There’s also a case in which they should be phased in rather than going into effect all at once.

Why telegraph your maneuvers? In chess or traditional warfare, the element of surprise is essential. You don’t want your foe to predict your next move or see your attack coming. Trade wars, however, operate under very different rules of engagement. If the goal is to negotiate better (i.e., freer) trade deals, guerrilla warfare and surprise attacks aren’t the best course of action.

Instead, you want your counterpart to know exactly what you plan to do and when you plan to do it. This gives them ample time to negotiate and strike a deal before a mutually destructive conflict begins. Telegraphing your actions is also smart because it gives businesses more time to adjust their supply chains and plan for the future. As any economists worth their salt can attest, uncertainty is a surefire recipe for economic stagnation. If we want to avoid an economic quagmire, transparency is critical.

The key thing to keep in mind is that tariff threats should be a form of deterrence. The goal is to avoid hostilities, not incite them. Remember: trade is, by definition, “win-win.” When people trade, they’re both made richer. This is just as true for trade between people in different nations as for trade within a country. Thus, anything that impedes trade is a “lose-lose”—it makes people in both nations poorer. It’s one thing to talk tough and threaten tariffs. But it’s another to enact them. The moment those talks fall apart and a trade war actually breaks out, both sides have already lost.

Third, trade wars should be Temporary. For tariff threats to be effective, they must be negotiable and, ultimately, reversible if your terms are met. The sooner an armistice is reached, the better.

…..

Contrary to the President’s claims, most of his tariffs weren’t “reciprocal” or “retaliatory”in any meaningful sense of the words. Most of the nations we imposed our steepest tariffs on did not have exorbitant tariffs or non-tariff barriers on us. In fact, America’s track record isn’t exactly above reproach when it comes to free trade. Before April 2, the average tariff rate the U.S. imposed on foreign imports was approximately 2.5%; the average tariff rate that foreign nations imposed on U.S. exports was only about 2%. After “Liberation Day,” our average tariff rate shot north of 25%. Even after the President’s 90-day pause on April 9, our trade-weighted average tariff rate still exceeds 24%, making the U.S. the most protectionist nation in the developed world. Even the alleged “worst offenders”— China, the EU, Mexico, and Japan—charged no more than 4-5% tariffs on U.S. exports, which is well below the President’s 10% baseline tariff rate that’s been in place since April 2.

“Trump’s economists say the darndest things.”

Arizona Supreme Court justice Clint Bolick – who cofounded, with Chip Mellor, the Institute for Justice – is speaking out against the further battering done to the rule of law by the Trump administration. Two slices:

Clint Bolick is worried.

The Arizona Supreme Court justice and rock star of the political right stood before a crowd of lawyers recently and rebuked “deeply disturbing” attacks on the American justice system coming from senior Trump administration officials.

“It’s almost dystopian. And when I think of people wrapping themselves in the Constitution while they are simultaneously doing violence to it … it is really scary stuff,” Bolick told those gathered at the May event hosted by Society for the Rule of Law, a right-of-center legal organization.

Though he didn’t name names, the speech showed an extraordinary level of openness for a Supreme Court justice, as justices typically refrain from commenting on public affairs to avoid perceptions of bias.

…..

Bolick emphasized multiple threats in his speech, including Vice President JD Vance flippantly referring to “due process” on social media, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller threatening to suspend habeas corpus if judges didn’t “do the right thing.” Habeas corpus protects against unlawful imprisonment.

He also chastised local threats to judicial independence, including a fierce campaign from the political left against his retention election in 2024, which focused on his decision to uphold an 1864 near-total abortion ban in Arizona.

Chandran Kukathas explains what shouldn’t – but, alas, what nevertheless today does – need explaining: The tighter are government controls on immigration, the tighter are government controls on its own citizens. Three slices:

Yet the danger to those American values comes not from immigration itself but from immigration control. You cannot control outsiders (immigrants or would-be immigrants) without controlling insiders (citizens). The more vigorously you try to control immigration, the more you end up limiting the freedom of your citizens and violating equality and the rule of law.

This isn’t hypothetical. As Hiroshi Motomura and others have noted, during the Great Depression and in the years following World War II, an estimated two million people were forced to leave the United States. Astonishingly, more than half were American citizens, mostly people who were (or were suspected of being) Mexican. They were blamed for taking jobs and public resources and were deported or self-deported under intense pressure from authorities after targeted raids on neighborhoods.

…..

Immigration control is not necessarily about restricting entry but about controlling what those who enter do: determining whether they can work, study, reside, buy property, open bank accounts, set up businesses or marry. This is a challenge because many citizens are all too ready to employ outsiders, admit them to schools and universities, sell to them, buy from them or fall in love with them — in short, welcome them.

The only way for a government to prevent this from happening is to control its citizens by limiting their freedom to live as they choose. This means citizens must be controlled with penalties or punishments: fines, imprisonment or violence. They must be inspected, monitored, scolded, threatened and made to be fearful of finding themselves in violation of the law and at risk of being punished.

…..

The more determined governments are to control immigration, the more they will have to abandon due process and act as if the corruption of the rule of law were justified. Or turn a blind eye to the misuse of power by its agents.

We have to consider what these measures do to a society. They affect America’s core values, particularly liberty and equality. Liberty, because Americans see freedom to live as they choose as central to their way of life. Equality, because liberty is the natural endowment of all, not just some. Americans are not alone in thinking this, but they have said it more loudly and clearly than anyone else.

Proponents of such control will have to persuade at least some citizens that this violation of liberty is warranted and even normal. As the use of power by immigration authorities to stop and search citizens becomes routine and the voices of dissent are suppressed, citizens will even come to accept the militarization of society.

But the efforts at control will be divisive among citizens: Some will accept them as necessary, but others will resist them. So as governments try to normalize the violation of liberty, those who buy this story will look at those who object or resist not as fellow countrymen but as enemies. This is what we are seeing now unfolding on the streets across the United States.

Immigration control will transform America. The more vigorously it is pursued, the more it will turn us into people who do not care about the liberty of others. Worse still, it may turn us into people who do not care about our own.

George Will writes insightfully about the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A slice:

This is today’s judicial morass concerning redistricting: Race-consciousness is mandatory; race as “predominant” is forbidden. The path to this conundrum is explained in “Deconstructing the Republic,” the invaluable 2008 book by Anthony A. Peacock of Utah State University.

Emmanuel Rincon updates us on Argentina under Javier Milei.