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My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy notes an irony in Trump’s border-wall scheme [2].
Also on Trump’s border wall is Alex Nowrasteh [3].
Dan Mitchell explains well that the World Trade Organization promotes Americans’ prosperity [4].
GMU Econ student Alice Calder and I argue for repeal of the cronyist and protectionist Jones Act [5]. A slice:
One of the greatest costs of the Jones Act is the one it imposes on consumers. Emeritus professor of economics Thomas Grennes, who has written extensively on the Jones Act, found that for every $1 gained by U.S. sailors, ship builders, and carriers as a result of the Act, U.S. consumers lose more than $1 [6], resulting in a net loss.
File this item under “cleaned by capitalism [7].” (HT GMU Econ alum Darwyyn Deyo)
The Cato Institute is suing the Securities and Exchange Commission [8].
Jonah Goldberg documents just how regressive are so-called “Progressives [9].”
My Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold makes a case for ending the government shutdown and securing a future for the Dreamers [10]. Here are his opening paragraphs:
Despite President Trump [11]’s hyperbole about the need for a big new wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, the cold, hard data tells us there is no true border crisis. But there could be an opportunity for political compromise on the fate of the 1.8 million “Dreamers” living in the United States.
On its own merits, the wall fails any test of public necessity. First, there is no emergency at the U.S. southern border. Apprehensions at the border — a proxy for the inflow of people trying to enter the United States illegally — have actually fallen to their lowest levels [12] in decades.
As a result, the illegal immigrant population living in the United States has been slowly shrinking in the past decade, from a peak of 12.2 million in 2007 to the most recent estimate [13] of 10.7 million in 2016.
Net migration from Mexico has turned negative in recent years. According to the Migration Policy Institute, “More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico than have migrated to the United States, and apprehensions of Mexicans at the U.S.-Mexico border are at a 40-year low.” This makes the president’s demand that Mexico pay for the wall downright silly.