Matthew Hennessey gets the better of Vice President JD Vance in arguing that the market isn’t a tool (Letters, May 29). Mr. Vance tries to support his proposition by citing that FDR directed the automobile industry to build the arsenal of democracy. That effort, however, isn’t an example of “operationalizing” the market. The president used government as a tool to override the market, and the private sector responded.
Mr. Vance writes that President Trump has also “leveraged access to America’s markets” to get “fairer treatment from foreign partners” on trade, illegal immigration and illegal drugs. But that isn’t using markets as a tool, either; it’s coercively regulating markets to get the president’s desired results. Parenthetically, do Messrs. Trump and Vance really believe Canada’s government can substantially reduce the amount of fentanyl passing through its border with the U.S., which at 43 pounds in fiscal 2024 was 0.2% of the volume seized along the U.S.-Mexico border?
Mr. Vance asks, “Should we allow enormous volumes of Mexican produce or Chinese autos to decimate productive American industries—or should we use tools like tariffs and trade remedies to protect them?” Allowing Chinese electric vehicles into the U.S. wouldn’t decimate domestic production, especially if Mr. Trump succeeds in ending EV mandates so that U.S. firms can do what they do best: produce gasoline-power vehicles and hybrids. Preventing people from buying cheaper foreign produce disproportionately hurts poorer families. The vice president unwittingly gives the game away: Tariffs, not markets, are the tool.
David R. Henderson
Hoover Institution
Stanford, Calif.Mr. Hennessey offers a salient observation: Markets aren’t tools to be exploited or managed by politicians any more than democracy is such a tool. Markets are arguably more democratic than Washington. While lawmakers debate growth policies, markets quietly coordinate trillions of dollars in daily transactions. Millions of Americans choose which products succeed, which companies thrive and which innovations gain traction. These decisions happen in real time, not after years of congressional gridlock.
Such politicians as Mr. Vance believe technocratic planning can improve spontaneous economic coordination. But while executive-branch priorities whipsaw with each election cycle, creating regulatory uncertainty that stifles investment, markets provide the continuous feedback mechanisms that allocate resources efficiently. This decentralized system has generated unprecedented prosperity because it operates beyond political control.
Rather than treat markets as obstacles to overcome, policymakers should recognize them as democracy in action, where consumer sovereignty, not political planning, determines winners and losers.
Eric Fruits
Intl. Center for Law & Economics
Scott Sumner makes an excellent point about excuses given for protectionism. A slice:
In the US, national security has been cited by proponents of protectionism for a wide variety of products, ranging from computer chips to automobiles to ship building. But when it comes to foreign countries, our protectionists often have a blind spot. They cannot even imagine that any other country might also have valid national security concerns.
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby is correct: NPR should indeed pay its own way. Two slices:
The president is also right when he describes NPR and PBS as “biased” and says they fall short of “fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage.” To be sure, conservatives have complained about the leftist slant in public broadcasting for decades. But even NPR loyalists and insiders have acknowledged the problem. In a much-discussed essay last year, former senior editor Uri Berliner, a 25-year NPR veteran, recounted how the organization shifted from reflecting a “liberal bent” to relentlessly promoting a rigidly progressive worldview on everything from race to climate to the Middle East; especially pronounced, he wrote, were NPR’s “efforts to damage or topple Trump’s presidency.”
Yet for all that, public broadcasting’s leftward tilt is not a good reason to pull the plug on its government funding, which in fiscal year 2025 will total $535 million in direct and indirect payments. There is nothing surprising or outrageous about the fact that NPR’s programming reflects a distinct political outlook. Virtually all news media have an ideological leaning. The Globe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vox, and CNN are generally liberal, while Fox News, National Review, the New York Post, Daily Wire, and The Wall Street Journal opinion pages are generally conservative.
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I oppose any government funding of radio or TV on First Amendment grounds: To my mind, neither Congress nor any state has a legitimate reason to control, influence, or sponsor domestic media. (I distinguish broadcast services like Voice of America and Radio Liberty, which are tools of foreign policy.) Public broadcasting would be healthier and happier if it overcame its craving for taxpayer dollars once and for all.
Trump’s executive order can’t overturn NPR’s subsidy, because the funds were appropriated by Congress. But a bill working its way through Capitol Hill would end the funding of public broadcasting, and it ought to be passed.
This has nothing to do with NPR’s lefty tilt, grating though it can be. Some of my best friends, to coin a phrase, work in public broadcasting, and much of what they produce is first-rate. NPR and its affiliates have broken no end of significant news stories and generated countless hours of intelligent, absorbing, informative content. The same is true of innumerable other media outlets, including the one you’re reading now. Those outlets function every day of the year.
Government critics and independent analysts warned that the sweeping overhaul of the judiciary through popular elections would politicize the courts, putting them under the thumb of the Morena Party’s corporatist populism. They aren’t wrong. It’s the goal of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who pushed through the constitutional change as he was leaving office last year. This way when the state wants to discriminate against private investors in favor of its own interests, property rights and contracts won’t get in the way.
AMLO, as the former president is known, wants Mexico to look more like it did in the 1970s. This is a leap in that direction.
