Shortly after then-President Donald Trump launched his “good and easy to win” trade wars in 2017, Peter Navarro sat down with CNN’s Jake Tapper to defend the use of tariffs.
Asked whether Americans would end up paying the brunt of the tariff cost, Navarro told Tapper to “look at the data.”
“China is bearing the entire burden of the tariffs,” Navarro said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that American consumers are paying any of this.”
The data, of course, say the exact opposite. American consumers and businesses bore roughly 93 percent of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, according to one analysis by Moody’s. The U.S. Trade Commission concluded in 2023 that American companies and consumers “bore nearly the full cost” of the tariffs Trump levied on steel, aluminum, and many goods imported from China.
Then again, analytical rigor and an understanding of basic economics have never been all that important to Navarro—who will serve as “Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing,” President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.
The danger is that RFK Jr. would use his regulatory power at HHS to further discourage biopharmaceutical investment and undermine innovation. He says he wants to end alleged corruption between drug makers and government—by which he seems to mean curbing pharmaceutical profits by making it harder for medicines to come to market.
Donald Trump partisans want to drain the Beltway swamp, but it helps to have nominees with the knowledge and experience to do it. That applies to Paul Atkins, whom Mr. Trump said Wednesday is his choice to replace Gary Gensler as Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr. Atkins served as a Republican Commissioner from 2002 to 2008 during the post-Enron climate when the SEC sought to expand its reach in the name of preventing fraud. He frequently criticized the agency for needlessly meddling in markets by issuing rules that raised costs for public companies and investors.
He notably dissented from a 2004 rule that sought to expand the agency’s authority over hedge funds under New Deal era laws. The rule was blocked by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, though Mr. Gensler tried to take another swipe at hedge funds with his private funds disclosure and dealer rules. Those, too, were jettisoned by courts. Mr. Gensler may have the worst record in court of any regulator in history.
We know now that the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration had it exactly right—a reality we can plainly see given that many European countries, such as Sweden, followed exactly their guidance and had far fewer excess deaths than the United States. Lockdowns, school closings, mandatory masks for first graders—these were disastrous policies. So it’s only natural to view Bhattacharya’s nomination as karma.
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Amazingly, to this day, Bhattacharya’s critics still refuse to acknowledge that their authoritarian approach to ending the pandemic was wrong—and that Bhattacharya was right. “Trump’s NIH Pick Guaranteed to Destroy Country’s Health,” read the headline in The New Republic. According to The New York Times, his critics are now accusing those who, having considered the data and decided to give his ideas a second look, of “sane-washing.”
Rubbish.
It is Dr. Bhattacharya who is the sane one—and who kept his head and his humility while his critics lost theirs.
Under his leadership, we expect there will be no more gaslighting of patients, no more suppression of dissenting views, no more blacklisting of scientists who don’t toe the majoritarian line. For these reasons, his nomination is something all Americans should applaud.
Jonah Goldberg writes insightfully about 21st-century America’s tribal politics. Two slices:
History rarely lines up perfectly with the calendar, but politically, the 21st century neatly began in 2000, when the presidential election ended in a tie and the color coding of electoral maps became enshrined as a kind of permanent tribal color war of “red vs. blue.”
Elite understanding of politics has been stuck in this framework ever since. Politicians and voters have leaned into this alleged political reality, making it seem all the more real in the process. I loathe the phrase “perception is reality,” but in politics it has the reifying power of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Like rival noble families in medieval Europe, American elites have been vying for power and dominance on the arrogant assumption that their subjects share their concern for who rules rather than what the rulers can deliver.
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It’s worth noting that red vs. blue America didn’t emerge ex nihilo. The 1990s were a time when the economy and government seemed to be working, at home and abroad. As a result, elites leaned into the narcissism of small differences to gain political and cultural advantage. They remain obsessed with competing, often apocalyptic, narratives.
That leaves out most Americans. The gladiatorial combatants of cable news, editorial pages and academia — and their superfan spectators — can afford these fights. Members of the exhausted majority are more interested in mere competence.
I think that’s the hidden unity elites are missing.
This is why we keep throwing incumbent parties out of power: They get elected promising competence but get derailed — or seduced — by fan service to, or trolling of, the elites who dominate the national conversation.
