On April 29th, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative boasted, in a tweet, of its efforts to use protectionist measures to shield Americans from the depredations of various explicitly mentioned foreign countries – countries that allegedly are ripping us Americans off. Scott Lincicome then shared Grok’s comparison of U.S. per-capita GDP to the per-capita GDP figures for those mentioned foreign countries:
The per capita GDP (PPP) for 2025 for countries in the chart is: United States: $89,678; Turkey: $16,876; Argentina: $12,054; Tunisia: $4,396; Egypt: $3,160; India: $2,937; Bangladesh: $2,774; Kenya: $2,187; Cameroon: $1,923; Nepal: $1,486; Nigeria: $835. Lower GDP per capita often correlates with higher tariffs, as seen with Cameroon (19%) and Nigeria (14%), likely to protect domestic economies. The U.S., with the highest GDP per capita, has the lowest tariff rate at 3.3%.
By some estimates, the Republican Party spent more than $7 billion defeating Kamala Harris and Democrats last year. Donors might ask for their money back, seeing as how Ms. Harris’s worst ideas keep running through this White House.
The GOP Congress is neck-deep in negotiations for its reconciliation bill, debating how to realize at least $1.5 trillion in savings. Daily press sabotage notwithstanding, the House is inching its way toward overdue reforms of broken programs like Medicaid and food stamps. What’s needed now is a White House willing to back this once-in-a-generation opportunity and provide the air cover nervous Republicans need to jump.
Instead, the latest from anonymous White House officials is that they have a better plan, a Kamala plan. Forget Medicaid reform—too hard. Let’s duck that fight and let all those welfare programs continue to grow on autopilot. Instead, we will fill any accounting holes by imposing price controls on companies that make cancer treatments.
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Anonymous White House officials several weeks ago were hot to impose another Joe Biden special: a “millionaire’s tax.” The Bernie Sanders wing of the GOP is plentiful in this White House and flexing hard to impose its “populist” (read: left-wing) agenda. It sees a particular opening here, given Mr. Trump’s intense interest in lowering drug prices. Yet the proposals for tax hikes and price controls remain anathema to most of the party. The better question: Are congressional Republicans willing to fight truly bad policy, including bad ideas from the White House?
Those Republicans were certainly willing to throw punches when Mr. Biden was doing the price-controlling. They rightly lambasted his Medicare scheme, which is set to cover a growing list of drugs. That policy is so far turning out exactly as Republicans predicted: killing potential cures even as it fails to produce real savings.
And price controls are price controls, no matter how proponents try to spin them.
There is crying and gnashing of teeth in the White House over the obstacle that federal district judges have become to President Trump’s effort to make good on the mass deportation promises of his campaign. The president’s immigration strategist, Stephen Miller, has even taken to calling them “communist” judges — members of the “rogue, radical left judiciary” who have “shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”
On Thursday, however, it was a Trump-appointed judge — Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in the Southern District of Texas — who invalidated the president’s Alien Enemy Act invocation. Judge Rodriguez was plainly sympathetic to the president’s immigration-enforcement agenda; it’s just that the administration’s methods, outside the congressional laws the president is sworn to execute, were illegal.
Yes, there are some progressive judges, appointed by Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, who take unseemly pleasure in ruling against the Democrats’ archnemesis. In the main, though, President Trump’s immigration enforcement problem — like most of the problems that have arisen in his first hundred-plus days in office — are of his own making.
Peter Suderman asks: “Can the president refuse to spend money authorized by Congress?”
Virginia Postrel writes insightfully about MAGA and manly jobs. (HT Arnold Kling)
Katherine Mangu-Ward remembers Manny Klausner. A slice:
Tariffs are, among other things, a crime against Manny Klausner’s dinner table. As a man who reveled in the pleasures of a perfect bottle of wine and an impeccably crafted cheese—no matter what distant land they hailed from—he found the protectionist impulse that has taken hold in the current political moment not just economically illiterate but personally offensive. Manny’s libertarianism wasn’t an abstract policy preference. It was rooted in his life: a life lived joyfully, passionately, and without permission.
Klausner, co-founder of Reason Foundation and longtime torchbearer for individual liberty, passed away in March at the age of 85. He was many things—a lawyer, an editor, a generous mentor, a tireless advocate for free minds and free markets—but above all, he was a man who fully appreciated the fruits of freedom.
Juliette Sellgren talks about incentives with Peter Calcagno.
