MIT Econ alum Arnold Kling offers what is, maybe, the MIT Economics canon.
Today, three questions are: Does impoundment violate the separation of powers by allowing presidents to exercise essentially legislative power? Does the ICA unconstitutionally limit the president’s implied power to exercise discretion when taking care that “the laws be faithfully executed”? And if Congress can so limit the president, should it? The answers are: sometimes, no, and yes.
In addition to FTAs approved by the United States, it’s also worth noting a major opportunity missed. Under President Barack Obama, US negotiators helped reach an agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that would have expanded those reciprocal zero-tariff benefits to an even wider circle of nations. President Donald Trump, however, withdrew the United States from the TPP shortly after taking office in 2017. The remaining members went ahead and ratified the agreement without the United States. Now dubbed the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, the agreement includes six current US FTA partners—Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Australia, and Singapore—plus Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, and New Zealand. The United Kingdom also negotiated entry into the agreement and will soon join as its 12th member. South Korea, China, and Taiwan have also applied to join CPTPP. Failure to join the agreement has placed US exporters at a competitive disadvantage and means an added burden for US businesses and consumers importing goods from CPTPP members with whom the United States does not have FTAs [Free Trade Agreements].
Vanessa Brown Calder rightly criticizes “Kamala Harris’s misguided family policy.”
Consider an example involving automation which is expected to adversely impact workers who are a substitute to industrial robots. Imagine that there are two islands that experience automation. In the first, labor markets are heavily regulated with stringent hiring and firing laws, high minimum wages, widespread closed-shop unions, costly occupational licensing and there are high tax rates on labor income. The second island has none of these features. On which island would you expect it would be harder for people to adjust to the shock created by the arrival of industrial robots? The answer, obviously, is the first one. The heavy hand of the government can rigidify markets and make it harder for people to adjust to the unexpected. In that case, it would be unsurprising to see that workers displaced by robots will be left worse off for so long that their children will be affected as well.
