GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino continues to argue against protectionism. A slice:
Daniel Hannan, in a speech to the House of Lords, wants to know why British citizens are being taxed extra when they buy tomatoes from Morocco.
Aside from having been a member of the European Parliament before Brexit, which he championed, Hannan is the president of the Institute for Free Trade. For all of protectionists’ talk about “strategic” tariffs on “critical” goods, actual protectionist measures currently on the books often make no sense and don’t even protect anything.
Arnold Kling explains that “our systems for determining who is influential seem to have decayed.”
Tevi Troy looks back on the career of New York Times columnist William Safire. A slice:
Safire’s weekly column made news and was read by world leaders, who were also his sources. Yitzhak Rabin was a friend and a source, even as the two men disagreed politically. Safire framed and hung on his wall a 1988 column of his that Vice President George H. W. Bush had heavily marked up. “I have the greatest job in the world,” Safire said. “I’m free to write, to select my subject and say anything I want about the subject.” When his name was broached as a possible Secretary of State, he scoffed, saying, “Why take a step down?” He ended his column in 2005 and died four years later.
