Tweet

Antón Chamberlin warns of the confusions caused by the careless use of language in matters economic. A slice:

Suppose that after a rainstorm, you make a literal mud pie. You have produced something in the everyday sense of the word: a tangible object that did not previously exist. But have you engaged in production in the economic sense?

Economic production is not solely defined by effort, creativity, or physical output. It requires the creation of value as demonstrated through voluntary exchange. If no one is willing to purchase your mud pie, then no economic production has taken place. What you engaged in instead was a form of consumption — you enjoyed the activity for its own sake. Either that, or it was merely a failed attempt at production. Any value created was internal to your experience, not reflected in the allocation of scarce resources across society.

This distinction becomes far more important when we move beyond childish examples. Governments are routinely described as producers of goods and services, including roads, schools, healthcare, and national defense. In a colloquial sense, this is understandable. Physical infrastructure is built, employees are hired, and services are rendered.

Economically speaking, however, production cannot be separated from profit and loss accounting. Market production requires prices for inputs and outputs that emerge from voluntary exchange. These prices enable producers to assess whether they are utilizing resources in ways that consumers value more highly than alternative uses.

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal – which severely and rightly criticized Trump’s threatened invasion and tariffs over Greenland – also severely and rightly criticizes Davos Man (and Woman). A slice:

Call it the Davos disconnect. The bien pensant political and business leaders who show up to these confabs espouse a “liberal order” of democracy and free markets. But they then rely on the U.S. to enforce their values around the world while also generating sufficient global prosperity to allow them to fund their growth-killing welfare states and climate pieties at the expense of their own militaries.

As Mr. Trump reminded them, European leaders required sustained U.S. prodding before they ramped up defense spending to provide for their own security. They depend on the U.S. to lead them in supporting Ukraine as it fends off a Russian invasion that Europe was unable to deter or end.

Mr. Trump harps to an unhelpful degree on this helplessness, and his insults and bullying threats over Greenland have alienated Europe to a needless extent. His Greenland threats also aren’t playing well in Congress or with American voters.

But the barbs hit hard among the Davos crowd because they know they depend on the U.S. more than they’d like, and they know it’s their own fault. Yet even now that Mr. Trump is calling into question American support for allies, many of them assume the only alternative is to cozy up to China, at least economically.

The Washington Post‘s Editorial Board applauds Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s wise remarks during oral arguments in the case involving the president’s power to remove Federal Reserve governors “for cause.” A slice:

Trump tried to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden appointee to the Fed’s seven-member board, last August. The law says the president needs “cause” to remove Fed governors, so Trump pointed to unsubstantiated allegations of mortgage fraud dug up by one of his allies. There was no hearing, and Cook denies wrongdoing.

“What goes around comes around,” Kavanaugh observed in an exchange with Solicitor General D. John Sauer. If Trump can fire Cook, then all of his own Fed appointees “would likely be removed for cause on January 20, 2029, if there’s a Democratic president, or January 20, 2033,” the justice pointed out.
It’s hard to imagine a Democratic president acquiescing to a Fed stacked with Trump appointees if Trump prevailed in this case.

When Sauer protested that “I cannot predict what future presidents may or may not do,” Kavanaugh responded: “Well, history is a pretty good guide. Once these tools are unleashed, they are used by both sides — and usually more the second time around.”

Jack Nicastro decries the Trump administration’s on-going antitrust harassment of Meta. A slice:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Tuesday that it will appeal the ruling in its monopoly case against Meta. Legal and economic antitrust experts see no way the FTC can win on appeal, given the factual findings of the federal court in November.

While the actual appeal has not yet been filed, the FTC Bureau of Competition Director Daniel Guarnera said that “the Trump-Vance FTC will continue fighting its historic case against Meta to ensure that competition can thrive across the country to the benefit of all Americans and U.S. businesses.” The decision to appeal, coupled with Guarnera’s statement, is yet more evidence that President Donald Trump’s FTC has embraced the big-is-bad mantra of its Democratic predecessor.

Jeff Jacoby is understandably appalled. Two slices:

In just the past few weeks, the American president has threatened military action against Denmark, a NATO ally, if it doesn’t surrender Greenland to the United States. He moved to punish a US senator — a retired Navy captain and combat veteran — for reminding service members they must not obey illegal orders. He posted a grotesquely cruel message on social media jeering the deaths of director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. He sent his press secretary to warn CBS News that unless it broadcast a presidential interview complete and unedited, we’ll sue your ass off.” He deposed Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, then announced that the United States was now “in charge” of that country, and “we’re going to be taking oil.” He summoned Justice Department attorneys to berate them for not moving fast enough to prosecute his critics and opponents. And when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, the White House instantly pronounced her a “domestic terrorist” and refused to open an investigation into the shooting.

This is not normal political combat. It isn’t just more of the partisan roughness that Mr. Dooley had in mind when he remarked that “politics ain’t beanbag.” This is unabashed White House thuggishness, a vengeful aggressiveness that makes no effort to disguise itself by pretending to care about constitutional norms or democratic values. And all of it is cheered by tens of millions of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of President Trump’s cascade of gratuitous cruelty, insults, and threats.

When the president was asked in a recent interview whether he recognizes any check on his powers, he didn’t bother with euphemisms. “Yeah, there is one thing,” he said. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

For anyone who takes the American constitutional system seriously, that statement is genuinely terrifying. Not because Trump is wrong but because — let’s face it — he’s right.

The British statesman William Gladstone praised the US Constitution as “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.” For more than two centuries, the self-correcting durability of the constitutional framework the Framers devised has rightly been regarded as a masterpiece of statesmanship.

But now the checks and balances on which that system depends are failing. For built into the constitutional architecture was an assumption of public virtue. It was not designed to contain a president who would openly declare himself restrained only by his own (nonexistent) morality and whose outrages would be endorsed by a major political party.

…..

The Trump phenomenon isn’t an aberration our constitutional machinery can correct. It is the failure the Founders anticipated when they warned what happens after virtue collapses and applause replaces judgment. The Constitution still exists on paper. What is disappearing is the public will to enforce its meaning. A republic does not fall when a strongman declares himself unchecked. It falls when millions hear him say it — and approve.

Noah Rothman tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

*Trump does an objectionable thing with no rationale save his interest in it.*

Trump fans: Brilliant and necessary!

*Everyone else freaks out, prepares for the worst, readies consequences, provides an offramp. Trump reluctantly takes it*

Trump fans: See? There was never anything to worry about. You guys just can’t exercise any discretion, can you?

Stephen Slivinski points out that “the federal government simply should not be in the business of telling a homeowner to whom and when they can sell their house.”

National Review‘s Dan McLaughlin wonders how much longer the politically ambitious J.D. Vance will continue to remain uncritical of the (to put it mildly) seriously confused Tucker Carlson. A slice:

Space does not even begin to permit a full recounting here of the ways in which Carlson, since moving his program to X/Twitter, has become steadily more extreme, paranoid, and detached from reality. This includes flacking for Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Hamas, and Qatar; hysterically predicting world war if the Trump administration hit Iran’s nuclear program; obsessing over Jews; arguing that we’d be better off as feudal peasants; and promoting World War II revisionism in which Churchill, not Hitler, was the real villain. But the provocation that really proved the tipping point in public attention to Carlson’s moral and intellectual descent was his choice to hold a sycophantic softball interview with notorious white nationalist and Hitler-loving and Stalin-praising antisemite Nick Fuentes a little over a week before Election Day 2025.

Tweet

… is from page 428 of Joseph Epstein’s 2009 short essay “Sound Off” as this essay is reprinted in the 2016 collection of Epstein’s short essays, Wind Sprints:

As for presidential press secretaries, their message never changes: The president is, was, and always will be correct, so please don’t bother me with contradictions, misquotations, or simple logic.

DBx: Yep. It’s difficult to imagine a job that demands so much dishonesty and deceitfulness as presidential press secretary.

…..

Note that I chose the photo above only because it is of the current presidential press secretary. Had I featured this quotation, say, ten years ago or three years ago a different person would be pictured above. Ditto if I had chosen instead to feature this quotation sometime in, say, 2031.

Tweet

Here’s a letter to a second cousin of mine. (Because he mentions his lifetime, I note that he’s in his early 80s.)

Prentiss:

On Facebook, you offered the following comment in response to one of my posts:

I will gladly pay more for prescription drugs that are made in the US, not China. Actually, I will happily pay more for jeans, auto parts and most of the other stuff that in my lifetime was produced domestically. I would happily pay more to see all the dead towns in America come to life again, towns who died when its industry was “GLOBALIZED”. I will pay more to buy products from anywhere the leadership, unlike the CCP isn’t devoted to destroying America and the West.

Your sentiment undoubtedly comes from a noble place. But noble motives fueled by misunderstanding are often as destructive as are ignoble motives. And your misunderstanding is significant.

Let’s here examine some facts. In a follow-up letter I’ll explain why you would harm, rather than help, your fellow Americans were you, motivated solely by the belief that imports are harmful, to “pay more for jeans, auto parts and most of the other stuff that in my lifetime was produced domestically.”

Although there are surely a handful of “dead towns” in America – it’s a big country, and towns died in America long before the era of globalization – it’s untrue that the towns most affected by increased foreign trade are dead. In fact, the great majority are thriving. After looking at the locales hardest hit by the so-called “China Shock” – a “shock” that occurred in the years 1999 through 2011 – the economist Jeremy Horpedahl found that those locales have performed well economically

Horpedahl’s finding is consistent with new research by Stephen Rose and Scott Winship who “find that the ‘core’ middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time. The upper-middle class boomed from 10 percent of families in 1979 to 31 percent in 2024, and its share of income doubled. The share of families whose income left them short of the core middle class fell from 54 percent to 35 percent.”

And let me report some of my own research, done with the superb help of my research assistant, Gabby Beaumont Smith: From 1958 through 1980 (before globalization really took off), the average monthly rate of job loss for American manufacturing workers was 1.6 percent. But since January 1994 (the month NAFTA began) through today (November 2025), the average monthly rate of job loss for American manufacturing workers has been lower, at 1.2 percent. (I can find no data for 1981 through 1993.) And if we look only at the period December 2000 through November 2025, that rate is, at 1.1 percent, even lower.

Although trade isn’t the only or even the main source of manufacturing-job loss – technology is – the era of rapidly increasing globalization saw a slowing of the rate of manufacturing job loss compared to the rate of earlier years going back to 1958.

Findings such as these are practically impossible to square with your assertion that globalization has generally harmed America and her middle-class.

You make other mistaken claims that I’ll address in a follow-up letter.

Sincerely,
Don

Tweet

James Ragan reported in his May 1981 paper, “Turnover in the Labor Market: A Study of Quit and Layoff Rates,” that the average monthly rate of manufacturing-job layoffs in the U.S. from 1958 through 1980 was 1.6 percent. (See this paper’s Table 1, and that Table’s footnote.)

FRED has monthly data, starting in December 2000, on layoffs and discharges in manufacturing. By dividing these data by total manufacturing employment – which the FRED site easily allows users to do – we can calculate the monthly layoff and discharge rate of manufacturing workers in the U.S. from December 2000 through today. (November 2025 is the most recent month for which these data are reported.) That rate is 1.1 percent.

Here’s a screenshot of this graphic depiction of these data.

So what about data for the years 1981 through November 2000? I asked my excellent research assistant, Gabby Beaumont Smith, to track down these data. She found nothing for 1981 through 1993, but she did find enough reliable data to construct sound estimates of the monthly manufacturing layoff and discharge figures starting in January 1994 through November 2000. The average monthly rate of manufacturing layoffs and discharges during this time period was 1.3 percent – so lower than for the years 1958 through 1980.

Note two relevant facts. First, 1958-1980 was before globalization accelerated. Second, January 1994 is the month that NAFTA began.

Calculating the average monthly rate of manufacturing-employment layoffs and discharges for January 1994 through November 2025 yields this rate: 1.2%

In summary, from 1958 through 1980, the average monthly manufacturing-job layoff rate was 1.6%. From January 1994 through today (November 2025), that monthly rate is lower, at 1.2%. And it’s even lower (1.1%) if we start the analysis in December 2000.

American manufacturing workers were more likely to lose their jobs before globalization accelerated than since.

Tweet

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal warns of ill consequences to come if the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to restrict the power of the president of the executive branch to remove Federal Reserve governors. Two slices:

In 1913 Congress established the Fed to maintain a stable currency and financial system. Modeled on the quasi-private First and Second Banks of the U.S., it was structured to be insulated from political winds. Board member terms run for 14 years. The Fed draws its funding from regional reserve banks and open-market operations rather than Congressional appropriations.

Congress in 1935 removed executive-branch officials from the board and instituted removal protections for its members. The Federal Reserve Act lets a President fire governors “for cause,” though it doesn’t define the term, unlike other statutes with removal restrictions. The Federal Trade Commission Act defines “cause” as “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

The Administration says the Fed law’s broad language grants the President sweeping authority to fire board members. “Congress chose to allow removal ‘for cause,’ without specifying required causes. That gives the President discretion so long as he identifies a cause (which excludes policy disagreement),” Justice says.

Under its argument, there are no constraints in practice on a President’s removal authority. That’s because the Administration also argues that Article III courts cannot stop the President from removing Fed officers. If the President can fire Ms. Cook based on mere allegations of misconduct without judicial review, the for-cause restriction is meaningless.

…..

But regarding the Fed, America’s framers sought to prevent the nation’s currency from being manipulated by the executive because they understood the risks of political control over monetary policy. This is wisdom born out in countless examples across the world.

The Fed has made many mistakes and taken on more executive power than it should over financial regulation. Congress can address both if it wishes. But handing Presidents control over monetary policy is more power over money in one man’s hands than the framers wrote into the Constitution.

Jim Geraghty – appalled by Trump’s childish message to Norway’s Prime Minister – decries Trump tearing NATO apart “over a trinket.” Three slices:

The president’s diatribe is unhinged, false, or bonkers in at least ten ways.

One: The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Peace Prize; the Nobel committee does; its members are appointed by the Norwegian parliament; current members of the Norwegian government or parliament are barred from serving on the committee.

…..

Three: Trump has not “stopped 8 wars plus.” Let’s give him credit for Israel and Hamas, and Israel and Iran. Everything else is an exaggeration, either about the intensity of the conflict or the U.S. role in ameliorating it. Trump’s persistent boast that he ended the shooting war between India and Pakistan is a serious, and entirely unnecessary, irritant to the Indian government.

…..

Nine: Trump contends, “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

As many have observed, up until Trump took office, the U.S. and Denmark largely agreed on their roles protecting the island. I hate to disrupt a good controversy with facts, but the U.S. already plays a significant role in the national defense and economy of Greenland. The island is the location of the Pentagon’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base (pronounced “bee-doo-FEEK”), formerly known as Thule Air Base.

Ten: Trump sounds like an angry toddler throwing a tantrum; in his recent interview with the New York Times, Trump emphasized that his priority is to own Greenland because of his feelings, and ownership is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success.”

Here are some other National Review staffers on “Trump’s ‘manic’ Greenland pursuit”:

“If the United States genuinely believes,” Charlie [Cooke] says, “that the acquisition of Greenland is necessary for its national security — and that’s an argument that Trump has started to make in fits and starts — then it can advance that case without, for example, sending missives to the Danish authorities complaining that the president didn’t receive a Nobel Peace Prize, without randomly threatening tariffs on the United Kingdom, on France.”

“He’s unfocused, and he’s wild. I don’t know if it warrants the 25th Amendment, but we ought not to downplay how capricious and manic he seems.”

Noah [Rothman] agrees, saying, “This whole enterprise is impossibly stupid. This administration privileges and is very sensitive toward the intangible aspects of statecraft. They are really obsessed with honor and respect and prestige, and they are very sensitive to violations perceived or otherwise of that. But totally dismissive of any other country that might privilege the same intangibles as they do, and they mete out embarrassment after embarrassment, provocation after provocation, and expect no response.”

George Will, of course, offers wise thoughts on Trump’s quest for Greenland. A slice:

Trying to imagine the unimaginable is a useful mental calisthenic. So, suppose Vladimir Putin faced this choice: He could assuage his fury about the Soviet Union’s disintegration by conquering Ukraine. Or he could destroy the cause of that collapse — NATO. Now, imagine that he might not need to choose, because of the American president’s obsession with seizing a possession of Denmark.

Averse to using a scalpel when there is a machete at hand, the president threatens Greenland with military conquest if Denmark will not sell the island. Were Congress to refuse funds for this purchase, he would declare a national emergency and “repurpose” money appropriated for other uses.

Using chest-thumping mob-speak, he says, “If we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.” If NATO, history’s most successful collective security instrument, perishes, he might consider that a bonus.

And here’s Holman Jenkins on the Greenland calamity. A slice:

If Donald Trump’s foolishness over Greenland gets out of hand, recall the U.S. Senate has ratified numerous treaties codifying U.S. duties under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which under the U.S. Constitution are now the “supreme law of the land.” NATO’s Article 1, for instance, makes it illegal for the U.S. to exercise the “threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

The U.N. Charter, adopted by the Senate 89-2 in 1945, giving it also the force of U.S. law, bans the U.S. from issuing the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity” of a nonoffending member state. In 2023, for the benefit of any adjudicating judge, Congress further expressed its will by preventing a president from withdrawing from NATO without a two-thirds Senate vote.

This isn’t international law, MAGA types, it’s U.S. law. A Trump order to occupy an otherwise peaceful and unthreatened Greenland would likely be illegal six ways from Sunday. The U.S. military wouldn’t obey it. The Supreme Court would enjoin it.Congress might promptly remove such a president through impeachment.

These realities, widely unmentioned in the current moment, probably aren’t lost on Mr. Trump. The whole kerfuffle fits better under the heading: Why is he throwing his presidency away? Look at his tariff and immigration overkill, his sagging approval ratings, likely GOP defeat in the House midterms, his probable impeachment soon after.

Jack Nicastro is correct: “Trump threatens NATO members with tariffs paid almost entirely by Americans.”

Also correct is Eric Boehm: “America’s large and growing national debt is not just a budgetary liability, but increasingly a geopolitical one too.”

My Mercatus Center colleague Alden Abbott is no fan of the Department of Justice’s antitrust prosecution of Visa. A slice:

The government isn’t alleging collusion, price-fixing, or output restrictions. Instead, it takes aim at Visa’s use of volume discounts and contractual incentives that encourage banks to route debit transactions over its network—standard tools firms use to win business.

The DOJ recasts these arrangements as “de facto exclusivity,” claiming they prevent rivals from reaching efficient scale. But that framing stretches antitrust law past its limits, treating price competition and customer loyalty as exclusionary conduct and risking the mistake of condemning success in the market rather than harm to competition.

Yuval Levin reflects on America’s founding. A slice:

The founding generation of our nation was trying to do something we are also trying to do: enable a vast, diverse, complicated society full of dynamic, crazy, freedom-loving people to live together and address common problems while taking the truths about the human condition seriously. In some respects, they did it better than we could. George Washington was a better natural leader than any of us. James Madison thought more deeply about institutional design than any of us. We should preserve and reinforce what they built.

In other respects, they failed terribly to live up to their own standards and to ours. Washington and Madison both held other human beings in bondage. We should not excuse that. We should learn from it about the human temptation to avert our eyes from plain injustice—a temptation to which we are far from immune today.

A mature patriotism can hold these truths together. The founders were neither superhuman heroes nor subhuman villains. They were human beings confronting human problems, and they left us institutions and lessons of incalculable value. We can be grateful, clear-eyed, and reverent all at once—rooted in the knowledge that we did not earn the gift they bequeathed to us, but confident that we can earn it now by handing it down improved to our children.

Tweet

… is from pages 178-179 of Thomas Sowell’s Compassion Versus Guilt, a 1987 collection of some of his popular essays; specifically, it’s from Sowell’s May 31st, 1985, column titled “Staff Infection”:

People in many occupations serve the public: grocers, doctors, bus-drivers, telephone repairmen. Indirectly, so do farmers, factory workers, and in fact everybody who produces a good or service that others use. But when the deep thinkers speak of going into “public service,” with that special unction in their voice, they mean becoming a bureaucrat or politician.

The vision that is unfurled to the departing graduates is one of self-sacrifice for the common good. This is contrasted with going into the grubby world of business to make money for yourself.

Why it is nobler to seek power over others rather than be a producing part of the economy is never really explained.

Tweet

In light of Trump asserting that his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize is sufficient reason for him to impose tariffs on American imports from Europe as a means to pressure Denmark into ‘selling’ Greenland, the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal reminds us of the enormous importance of what will hopefully be a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that severely reduces executive power to impose tariffs. Two slices:

The world is waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of President Trump’s “emergency” tariffs, and Mr. Trump’s weekend tariff spree against European allies underscores again why his abuse of his authority needs to be reined in.

Mr. Trump unleashed a new tariff volley against several European countries (see nearby) to coerce Denmark to sell or cede Greenland to the U.S. He cited no legal authority for doing so. He simply said he is imposing the tariffs.

Though he didn’t say this, presumably he is doing so under what he has claimed is his power in an “emergency” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But what emergency? Greenland isn’t under threat of invasion, and Denmark has said the U.S. can have more or less free run of the island for defense purposes.

But Mr. Trump wants ownership of the island on his legacy resume, so he is likely to say that control of Greenland is an emergency even if it isn’t in any normal understanding of the term. The only observable emergency is the threat to the NATO alliance that Mr. Trump’s demands and tariffs are creating.

…..

Like Joe Biden’s abuse of the spending power on student-loan forgiveness without Congressional assent, Mr. Trump’s abuse of the taxing power cries out for a Supreme Court correction.

Greg Ip, with whom I often disagree, is correct in this:

This tariff threat isn’t like the others.

In the past year, President Trump has used tariffs extensively to pursue trade and investment deals, or address domestic complaints like illegal immigration and drugs.

His threat to hit several European countries with tariffs of 10%, rising to 25%, if they oppose the U.S. annexation of Greenland is entirely different. It would be an unprecedented use of tariffs against an ally for a strategic, as opposed to a domestic, goal.

This is the logical endpoint of Trump’s core doctrine: that the U.S.’s economic size and influence give it leverage to achieve a variety of goals through tariffs, including some that previously required military force. If it succeeds, it could usher in a new sort of trade war, one whose aims aren’t mercantile but geostrategic, including the annexation of more territory.

Presidents of both parties have for decades exercised economic coercion, from sanctions, blockades and embargoes to capital and export controls. The goal wasn’t to acquire territory but to contain hostile actors such as North Korea or Russia. (One exception: In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower used financial pressure to get Britain to withdraw forces from the Suez Canal.)

The modern analog to Trump’s latest gambit is China’s regular use of economic coercion, such as against Japan recently for its support for Taiwan.

National Review‘s Andrew Stuttaford explains what shouldn’t – but, alas, what today nevertheless does – need explaining: Greenland rightfully is a dominion of Denmark.

Robert Finnell’s letter in the Washington Post is excellent:

Asked recently by the New York Times whether there are any limits on his power, President Donald Trump responded, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” These words from a president should concern all Americans but especially conservatives.

Conservatism was never meant to be a celebration of personalities. It is a commitment to institutions, to restraint, to the slowly learned lessons of history. The system the Founders designed reflects that wisdom. James Madison reminded us that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The problem with government is not that it is evil but that it is powerful. Thus the Constitution was not built for perfect leaders. It was built for ones who are human.

The conservative response to Trump should be firm: No person stands above the system, and no conscience substitutes for the law.

“Texas rare-earth magnet maker Noveon Magnetics has raised $215 million from investors as the U.S. pushes to develop domestic sources of a vital electronics component that China, the world’s largest supplier, has under a chokehold.”

Kate Andrews argues that the Trump administration’s policy of staging high-profile ICE raids, and of encouraging videos of such to go viral, is backfiring on the administration. Two slices:

Donald Trump likes visual proof of his influence and legacy. In the business world, this meant putting his name on the towers he built (or selling his name to adorn some he didn’t) and making cameo appearances in movies filmed on his properties. In government, it has also meant putting his name on things, like the Kennedy Center and the TrumpRx website, which is supposed to connect patients to cheaper drug options.

In the same vein, the Trump administration has directed attention to its ICE raids, working to make arrest videos go viral, The Post reported. The effort is backfiring spectacularly. Federal law enforcement is both consequential and delicate: It necessarily allows some people to have power over others, on the condition that officers do not impinge on fundamental rights afforded to citizens and immigrants. Turning their operations into a warped form of entertainment has almost certainly helped drive down Americans’ support for ICE since last summer as they question the legality and humanity of its operations.

…..

This is not a government strategy so much as it is a spectacle — one that has little to do with the president’s promise to deport violent criminals. The performance starts at the recruitment stage. “America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out” reads the current ICE sign-up page. “CHOOSE YOUR MISSION.” Deportation operations are being treated like a video game — one that comes with a signing bonus of up to $50,000, significantly scaled-back training and the federal government’s full backing.

Matthew Continetti credibly points out that “big government won’t help President Trump on affordability.” A slice:

Rather than pursue a short-term strategy of demand-side subsidies and price controls, Mr. Trump should embrace supply-side solutions that incentivize choice, competition and investment. The Republican Study Committee’s “Making the American Dream Affordable Again: A Framework for Reconciliation 2.0” document, released this week, is full of worthy suggestions. Among them: the president’s creative proposal to have ObamaCare subsidies flow directly to consumers

The Republican Study Committee’s plan would reduce regulations, ease permitting, cut taxes and spending and direct federal agencies to sell unused property. It isn’t perfect. Anyone who lived through the 2008-09 financial crisis ought to be leery of government-subsidized no-downpayment mortgages, for example. But it’s far better than what Ms. [Elizabeth] Warren’s wing of the GOP has to offer.

Wendy Edelberg, Stan Veuger, and Tara Watson update their investigation of the “macroeconomic implications of immigration flows in 2025 and 2026.” A slice:

Reduced migration will dampen growth in the labor force, consumer spending, and gross domestic product (GDP). We estimate the sustainable pace of monthly job growth to be between 20,000 and 50,000 in late 2025 and believe it could be negative in 2026.

About China’s infamous one-child policy, John Puri writes:

The one-child policy will go down as one of the greatest self-inflicted catastrophes in human history. Not just by helping collapse China’s birthrates, but by creating a permanent imbalance between the country’s younger male and female populations. (We can attribute this to abortion and even more appalling tactics by families who learned they were having a girl but wanted a boy.) America’s impending debt crisis will be a disaster of epic proportions, but even that will look like peanuts compared to what the Chinese government has done to its own population.

Speaking of China, the Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board reports evidence that busts the myth that the thugs holding power in Beijing are geniuses whose economic interventions are enriching that nation in ways that demand economic interventions by the U.S. and other governments. A slice:

At home, China is developing something of a Potemkin economy. Retail sales depend to a large degree on trade-in subsidies for items ranging from white goods to mobile phones. It isn’t sustainable. Electric vehicles offer a revealing example: Years of purchase subsidies encouraged households to buy EVs but also stimulated rampant overproduction. Now that Beijing is dialing back the subsidies, some auto makers are struggling.

Investment fell off a cliff near the end of 2025, with fixed-asset investment contracting 3.8% for the year—the first decline since data began in 1996. That figure includes local-government spending on public works, which is weighed down by mountains of debt hidden off official balance sheets. Business investment in the private economy fell 6.9%. Rapid expansion in politically favored industries such as artificial intelligence is masking a broader and deeper malaise.

Scott Lincicome tweets this finding by Derek Scissors:

“For at least a decade prior to that, Chinese wealth grew far more rapidly than official GDP and American wealth did. Since 2015, however, Chinese wealth gains have been uneven, and the American wealth lead has expanded”.

Tweet

… is from page 220 of the 2021 35th anniversary edition of Steven Rhoads’s superb 1985 book, The Economist’s View of the World: And the Quest for Well-Being [footnotes deleted]:

One of the most pernicious effects of the modern project to make economics more “scientific” is the accompanying tendency to ridicule all beliefs that are “empty of empirically verifiable content.” The older economists knew that good economics, like good politics, can settle for less certainty than that.

Tweet

Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Editor:

So much can, should, and will be said about this flabbergasting message that Pres. Trump sent to Norway’s Prime Minister: “Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America” (“Trump Links Greenland Threats to Missing Out on Nobel Prize,” January 19).

But one troubling implication that shouldn’t be ignored is that the President of the United States just admitted that in his quest for a personal award he was not thinking about what is good and proper for the United States of America.

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