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… is from page 234 of William Shughart’s paper, “Robert Tollison: Underappreciated Economist,” which is a chapter in the hot-off-the-press book Unsung Heroes of the Market: The 24 Underrated Economists You Need to Know – a volume edited by Robert Whaples, Christopher Coyne, Gregory Robson, and Diana Thomas:

Tollison saw few differences between antitrust law enforcement and the perhaps more familiar industry-specific regulation of prices and entry conditions (e.g., public utilities). Both are vulnerable to influence by well-organized, politically powerful special interests having stakes in policy processes and, in catering to such lobbying pressure, undermine rather than promote competition.

DBx: Pictured here is Bob Tollison (1942-2016). He was a senior colleague of mine at GMU Econ in the late 1980s.

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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.

Editor:

How can you be so foolish as to oppose tariffs on quartz surface products (“Tariffs That Are as Dumb as Rocks,” June 1)?

As for me, I thank the U.S. government for protecting us poor, hapless Americans from heedlessly purchasing, at low prices, imported quartz surface products and thereby harming our great country!

Who cannot see that such protectionism is essential for America to guard herself against the wiles of the Chinese? Who dares deny that quartz surface products are a critical good for which we must, by all means, avoid dependence on foreigners? Who will not acknowledge the obvious strategic importance – to both America’s economy and national defense – of the quartz-surface-products industry? Who is so myopic as to overlook all the spin-off technological benefits that we Americans will enjoy by producing our own quartz surface products?

And who is so cynical as to portray U.S quartz-surface-products producers’ quest for protection as self-interested rather than as patriotic?

I’ll tell you who! Globalist cosmopolitan elite heads-up-their-butts academic economic “experts,” that’s who! Only they are blind to the fact that an American economy that imports too much quartz surface product is an American economy in perilous decline. Let every American of common sense join me in expressing gratitude to our government for protecting this vital industry and putting America first!

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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Here’s a letter to Project Syndicate.

Editor:

Glenn Hubbard rightly denounces Trump’s tariffs, but he weakens his case by conceding, to protectionists, points that shouldn’t be conceded (“The Policy Pivot Trump Needs,” May 26). Most importantly, it’s simply untrue that what Mr. Hubbard calls “distributional effects” – the demise of some industries and jobs and the rise of others – are uniquely caused, as many protectionists insist, by trade deficits.

Any and all economic changes – including improvements in labor-saving technology and changes in consumer tastes – affect some domestic industries, jobs, and regions negatively as they affect other domestic industries, jobs, and regions positively. Nothing in economics or ethics justifies singling out for special consideration the “distributional effects” caused by foreigners’ strong desire to use their dollars to invest in the U.S. rather than to buy U.S. exports. Such a concession inadvertently treats as factual two of protectionism’s most egregious fallacies, namely, that trade with foreigners differs categorically from trade with fellow citizens, and that countries that run trade deficits suffer greater economic disruption than do countries with ‘balanced’ trade.

Mr. Hubbard also mistakenly accepts as true the false belief that the dollar’s role as global reserve currency is a “detriment” to manufacturing employment. The steady decline in U.S. manufacturing employment, as a share of total nonfarm employment, began in 1954 (only to slow down a bit starting in 2010).* If this decline in manufacturing employment resulted from the dollar’s reserve-currency status pushing manufacturing out of the U.S., U.S. manufacturing output would also have fallen. But it hasn’t. Today, U.S. manufacturing output is 153 percent higher than it was in 1975 (the last year the U.S. ran an annual trade surplus) and 464 percent higher than it was in 1954.

Mr. Hubbard should continue to speak out against protectionism. But his welcome voice would be stronger if he were to stop treating as factual so many of protectionism’s fallacies.

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

* See attached screenshot.

…..

UPDATE: At Facebook, David Henderson offered this fair comment on my letter:

I read his piece and while I largely agree with your criticism, I didn’t find the part where he says the problems are uniquely caused by trade deficits.

Indeed, Hubbard wrote, “Trump’s economic agenda recognizes the adverse effects of globalization and technological advances on certain parts of American society, in contrast to economists’ emphasis on averages and overall benefits.” So notice that he granted part of your point–that technological advances can hurt certain segments of society.

And I replied there:

Fair enough. But the thrust of the piece is that the “imbalances” are real, with troublesome downsides that should be addressed, although with policies other than tariffs.

One can write a piece about the proper role of government in protecting workers from the downsides of economic change. But Hubbard’s piece is about trade – specifically, about what he (unfortunately) grants to be trade “imbalances.” I wonder how many readers will encounter his mention of technological advances and think that Hubbard is offering counsel, not about how to respond to trade deficits, but about how to respond to economic change more generally. I doubt many (but perhaps I’m mistaken). I’ll grant that the policies that Hubbard proposes at the end do address the more general phenomenon of economic change (rather than only change caused by trade or trade deficits). But, again, the thrust of the piece is about U.S. trade deficits, with the suggestion – if not strictly the logical implication – that these deficits are a sufficiently distinct source of economic problems, one that warrants attention and policy responses.

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Eric Boehm calls on governments to “stop giving property tax breaks to senior citizens.” [DBx: Eric is right, and I say this as a senior citizen.] A slice:

The federal government’s massive wealth redistribution machine is showering older Americans with money seized from the paychecks of younger, generally poorer, working-age people. But when it comes time for senior citizens to help pay property taxes—which foot the bill for schools and other state and local government services in most parts of the country—politicians want to give the olds a free pass. How is that fair? Where’s the payroll tax break for Americans under 40?

Here’s wisdom from Arnold Kling:

With computer technology, those who can, create. Those who can’t, regulate. Europeans are the leading regulators of tech, and you can thank them for the pop-ups that you get asking you whether or not you accept cookies. To me, those epitomize the wasteful, ineffectual policies that the regulators come up with.

The left leans heavily on “we.” That is why I cringed when I read Zvi [Mowshowitz] saying “we can steer this technology.”

The left wants us to think that “we” are all in this together, opposing the “they” of corporate elites and plutocrats. But my thought is that there is a narrow “we” of political elites, and I have no desire to give them more power.

Bob Graboyes reimagines commercial aviation.

GMU Econ alum Daniel Smith recounts “the bitter lessons of sugar control in World War I.” Here’s his conclusion:

Markets are not problems to be solved by committees; they are discovery processes that coordinate millions of decisions without central direction. When governments try to override that process, even with the best of intentions and the full powers of wartime emergency, the result is not order but the very chaos they sought to prevent.

The Trump administration deserves applause for rolling back this Biden administration EPA regulation.

Scott Lincicome and Chad Smitson explain why so-called “pro-worker” policies fail. A slice:

[Niklas] Engbom’s May 2026 update looks at worker-level data across individuals from 15 OECD countries, confirming his earlier finding that life-cycle wage growth is steeper in more fluid markets, but also demonstrating two additional, and important, findings.

First, the benefits of a fluid labor market do not solely accrue to job-switchers—even individuals in “continuing employment spells” experience faster wage growth in more fluid labor markets. Engbom offers two explanations for this result: human capital accumulation and employer competition for workers. In particular, workers in less rigid labor markets will see more job opportunities and thus have a stronger incentive to invest in their skills and make themselves better candidates. Their improvements increase their productivity and output—and, subsequently, their wages—even if they never leave their current job. At the same time, the heightened labor market fluidity pushes firms to raise pay to retain their employees who face lower barriers to switching jobs.

Second, Engbom finds that labor market fluidity has important implications for early-career individuals. In a dynamic labor market, workers will not only choose to develop their skills in the chance of a better opportunity elsewhere, but also actively sort themselves into “high learning” positions that might further this opportunity. This increased sorting leads young professionals to experience higher early-career wage growth as they become more productive. Rigid labor markets, meanwhile, experience the opposite results.

George Will describes how drones are helping the Ukrainians resist Putin’s aggressions. Here’s his conclusion:

A former senior Russian government official, writing anonymously for the Economist, says the war Russia started has reached a situation known in chess as “zugzwang,” when every move worsens the position. By the end of this year, two current unknowns might be known: how Putin might lash out in response to the pain of Ukraine’s military revival. And how Trump might lash out in response to the painful (to him) fact that, refuting his clairvoyance, Ukraine holds good and improving cards.

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… is from page 162 of Deirdre McCloskey’s superb forthcoming – in November – book, Equality of Permission; “Thaler” is Richard Thaler, who in 2017 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in behavioral economics; one of Thaler’s books is Nudge (co-authored with Cass Sunsteain), which proposes the oxymoronic policy of “libertarian paternalism”:

Paul Krugman enthusiastically tweeted about Thaler’s prize: “Yes! Behavioral econ is the best thing to happen to the field in generations.” Thaler gives Paul and the other plausible illiberals another reason to recommend bossing people around. For their own good, you understand.

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One of Cafe Hayek’s dozens of faithful readers, who prefers to remain anonymous, requests that I post again the “Quotation of the Day” from exactly five years ago. I’m happy to do so.
…………..
Quotation of the Day…

… is from page 14 of the first volume (“Rules and Order,” 1973) of F.A. Hayek’s brilliant trilogy, Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

In civilized society it is indeed not so much the greater knowledge that the individual can acquire, as the greater benefit he receives from the knowledge possessed by others, which is the cause of his ability to pursue an infinitely wider range of ends than merely the satisfaction of his most pressing physical needs. Indeed, a ‘civilized’ individual may be very ignorant, more ignorant than many a savage, and yet greatly benefit from the civilization in which he lives.

DBx: Who can seriously doubt either the truth or the significance of this insight?

Think of any five-minute slice of your life today: you munching on breakfast; you showering; you putting in your contact lenses; you driving to the gym; you using your smartphone to chat with your mother or with your child or with your business associate; you reading this blog post; you having a hard roof above your head and with your feet and furniture resting firmly on hard floors. You having indoor plumbing and artificial lighting. It’s impossible to comprehend all the uncountable different bits of knowledge that were put to use, almost all by strangers, to make each of these experiences possible for you.

You know virtually nothing about how to make any of these experiences a reality. And yet these experiences are not only a reality, their reality is so regular and reliable that you (as do we all) take them for granted. Each of us in modern society, every moment of every day, is served by the knowledge and efforts of billions of strangers.

Why are you not in awe of this amazingness? Why do you believe that the relatively few glitches, real or unreal, in the modern economy – “Damn, my Internet connection just went down!” or “Damn, Amazon’s delivery of my gourmet Keurig coffee pods is delayed by 24 hours!” or “Damn! Thomas Piketty has graphs that reveal that some people have lots more money in their financial portfolios than I have in mine!” – are the relevant facts to focus on rather than the sheer amazingness of modernity for ordinary people?

…..

I’ve often said that this book by Hayek – volume one of Law, Legislation, and Liberty – is the single most important book that I’ve ever read. I’m now re-reading it, cover to cover, for what is probably the fourth time since I first read it as a senior in college in 1979. My assessment of it stands. It’s not perfect, but it’s sublime. No book has had as big an impact on my worldview as has this one. Some works have come close: Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil”; Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity; Frederic Bastiat’s Economic Sophisms; Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker; Julian Simon’s The Ultimate Resource 2; Armen Alchian’s Economic Forces at Work; Adam Smith’s An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; H.L. Mencken’s A Mencken Chrestomathy; James Buchanan’s and Richard Wagner’s Democracy in Deficit; Thomas Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions; Geoffrey Brennan’s and Loren Lomasky’s Democracy and Decision; Robert Higgs’s Crisis and Leviathan; Richard Epstein’s Simple Rules for a Complex World; Don Lavoie’s National Economic Planning: What Is Left?; Paul Heyne’s textbook, The Economic Way of Thinking; Oliver Williamson’s The Economic Institutions of Capitalism; Etienne de la Boetie’s The Politics of Obedience – but none quite matches the first volume of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty.

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Here’s a letter to F&D Magazine, a publication of the IMF.

Editor:

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer wrote more than 2,100 words about trade yet managed to get correct approximately nothing (“Economics for the Real Economy,” June 2026). Just listing his errors would take nearly as many words, so I here address only one of his mistakes, namely, his claim that in the decades before Trump entered the White House tariffs were “left untried” – that the U.S. pre-Trump embarked upon an experiment with free trade based, not on experience, but only on the abstract, unrealistic models of dogmatic economists.

While it’s true that over the 70 years following the end of WWII tariff rates generally fell and trade became more free, it’s untrue that tariffs and protectionism were “left untried.” For example –

– In the 1970s, Nixon not only imposed, for several months, across-the-board import surcharges of 10%, he negotiated the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, which formalized restrictions dating back to the 1930s on imports of textiles. These import restrictions remained in effect until 2005.

– To avoid even harsher protectionist policies from Congress, the Reagan administration persuaded the Japanese to agree to “voluntary export restrictions” on automobiles. Reagan also tariffed motorcycles, semiconductors, and softwood lumber – the latter of which lasted well into the 21^st century.

– Obama slapped tariffs on tires.

– Imports of steel have been restricted for decades.

More importantly, tariffs have been profusely imposed throughout history – including in the United States – and across countries. And although you’d never know it from Mr. Greer’s essay, these actual, real-world tariffs and other trade restrictions are among the most empirically studied phenomena in economics. The consensus conclusion is strong: protective tariffs and trade restrictions make countries that impose them less prosperous than they would otherwise be. Protectionism slows economic growth and suppresses real wages. Removal of trade restrictions promotes economic growth.

Contrary to the impression conveyed by Mr. Greer, we economists oppose tariffs not because we sit surrounded by ivy-covered walls pondering only a priori thoughts and taking pleasure in spinning bizarre tales of imaginary worlds. We economists oppose tariffs because, first, we understand that the scarcity of resources means that no industry in a country can expand without some other industry or industries in that country contracting; second, we also understand – and we have evidence to back this understanding – that government officials have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to allocate resources as well as resources are allocated by market forces; and third, we’ve empirically investigated the effects of protectionism and overwhelmingly find that it enriches special-interest groups at the greater expense of the public.

It’s unfortunate yet forgivable that my dentist and Uber drivers are likely ignorant of this reality, but it’s alarming and unforgiveable that this same ignorance is not only apparently shared, but also peddled, by the U.S. Trade Representative.

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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The Wall Street Journal‘s Collin Levy decries the autocratic-like spread of the image of Trump. A slice:

This sort of leader-worship is common among autocrats. In Cuba, Vietnam and China, images of Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong have long been present in government buildings, schools and private businesses. (Not to mention T-shirts and key chains for despot tourist kitsch.) In North Korea, citizens are expected to hang pictures of Kim Jong Un in their homes.

Sober observers of our democracy note that these mundane flights of Mr. Trump’s ego don’t rise to the level of consequential decisions on policy or foreign affairs. But they are assaults on the country’s character as a republic born from distrust of monarchical grandiosity.

Billy Binion explains that “Trump’s proposed $250 bill is everything the founders despised.” A slice:

America’s 250th is a celebration of the Founding, an experiment defined, at its core, by a rejection of monarchs and leader worship. It is why George Washington opposed the U.S. Mint putting his face on coinage—that sort of adulation was incompatible with what he was trying to build. He was not alone. As the plan was debated by the U.S. House, one early representative cautioned against “imitating the flattery and almost idolatrous practice of Monarchies with respect to the honor paid to their Kings, by impressing their images and names on their coins.” Lawmakers settled on the emblem of liberty instead.

It is hard to know if Washington et al. would be disappointed that U.S. currency has since evolved to feature past leaders who made significant contributions. But the law’s constraint—that they no longer be living—is in keeping with the reservations the first president expressed about indulgent reverence for the top office, and whoever is in it at any given time. America was leaving that nonsense behind. A $250 bill dedicated to the current president is the exact sort of egomaniacal vanity project the Founders detested.

Noah Rothman is right: “Only the Cuban revolution’s true believers can still contend with a straight face that the island’s problems have been imposed on them by the United States.” A slice:

Yes, Trump’s sanctions and blockade tactics have throttled the island’s economy, Cuban economist Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo conceded in a New York Times op-ed. “But Cuba’s economy was already on the brink of collapse,” he added. “What is happening in Cuba today is essentially the result of decades of structural economic failure under a rigid political system that has consistently resisted any reform.” And that resistance is buckling.

Ossified revolutionary slogans might sustain the Cuban regime’s comfortable apologists in the West, but they are packaged and retailed to a foreign audience.

Adam Millsap makes the case that the real revolutionaries are the defenders of classical liberalism.

Pay attention to Timothy Taylor.

J.D. Tuccille calls for a renewal of federalism.

Hardwood Federation tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

Tariffs have rippled through the US economy, trickling down to home renovation and decreased numbers of home ownership.

Lumber demand is down because of tariffs.

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post opines on Beijing giving the Chinese people at least some of what is rightfully theirs: more freedom to trade with people in Africa. A slice:

China recently implemented a “zero-tariff” policy for 53 countries in Africa. As Chinese and African citizens increasingly reap the mutual benefits of trade, America is losing out by heading in the opposite direction.

China imports mostly raw materials and resources from Africa — crude oil, copper, cobalt, agricultural products and unprocessed minerals. Removing import taxes mean that Chinese consumers will benefit from lower prices and Chinese companies will pay less for inputs into their own manufacturing.

Tax-free imports to China won’t alone help the continent move up the value chain, but they provide African nations with much-needed hard currency. The young continent also benefits from imports of higher value manufactured goods that improve lives.

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… is from page 7 of Richard Salsman’s paper, “Alexander Hamilton As Economist: A Proper Verdict,” which is a chapter in the hot-off-the-press book Unsung Heroes of the Market: The 24 Underrated Economists You Need to Know – a volume edited by Robert Whaples, Christopher Coyne, Gregory Robson, and Diana Thomas:

He [Hamilton] knew that a capital surplus (net inflow), mirroring a merchandise deficit, was akin to an international vote of confidence in the United States.

DBx: Hamilton was correct. Private investors do not knowingly invest in declining industries or economies. They invest in industries and economics with promise.

This truth that was understood by Hamilton is no less real and relevant today than it was in the late 18th century. Yet President Trump and countless other protectionists – left, center, and right – incessantly repeat the myth that U.S. trade deficits are a signal that the U.S. is “losing” at trade, either because of our own incompetence or inadequate savings, or because of perfidious foreigners taking advantage of Americans.

I repeat: No economic concept is responsible for more confusion and lousy policy than the so-called “balance of trade.”