Regarding Matthew Hennessey’s op-ed “JD Vance Defies the Market’s Gravity” (June 3): I always find it amusing when people assert that economics isn’t a science. Such statements suggest that they don’t know what scientists do.
Here’s a reminder: Scientists observe the world. They develop theories that aim to explain what they see. They collect data to test their theories and reject those that don’t conform to the data. They try their best to put aside ideological preferences and preconceived notions. Most important, they always remain open to changing their minds when presented with better theories or new data. This approach can be applied whether one is studying apples falling from a tree or gross domestic product fluctuating over time. As Albert Einstein put it: “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
Prof. N. Gregory Mankiw
Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass.Does it matter whether economics is a “science”? Paul Krugman seems to think it is, but then those seeking political power often cloak their analyses in that word.
Science or not, it would be helpful if our leaders at least understood some axioms about economics. For instance, both good and evil men are self-interested in their own way and will engage in production and exchange, the subjects of economics, to the extent of their self-interest, much as they will engage in family formation, listening to music, stamp collecting or anything else. Government exists to set simple rules and exercise the least possible police power so that all can pursue their self-interest in all things—the pursuit of happiness—without force or fraud on others.
Does that rely on wielding the intellectual club of saying economics is a science? No. Does that worship the market with or without a capital M? No. It’s simply to say that government interference with citizens’ pursuit of happiness is likely to lead to less production and exchange—and, most important, to less liberty.
Donald L. Luskin
TrendMacro
Damon Root makes clear that “overruling Trump’s tariffs should be an easy decision for SCOTUS.” A slice:
Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs on much of the world. Yet the president has no such authority under Article II of the Constitution, which enumerates the limited powers of the executive branch. Instead, the authority “to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” as well as the authority “to regulate Commerce with Foreign nations,” resides exclusively in Article I, which is where the limited powers of the legislative branch are detailed.
So, Trump’s trade war violates the constitutional separation of powers because Trump has unlawfully exercised power that the Constitution placed in the hands of Congress, not in the hands of the president.
If that sounds familiar, it is probably because the Supreme Court said much the same in 2023 when it declared former President Joe Biden’s unilateral student debt cancellation plan to be unlawful because it was an example of “the Executive seizing the power of the Legislature.”
But let’s say that a majority of the Supreme Court is not fully persuaded by the separation of powers case against Trump’s tariffs. Are there other grounds on which Trump’s tariffs might be struck down?Why yes, there are.
Under a legal principle known as the “major questions doctrine,” when the executive branch seeks to wield significant regulatory power, it must first point to an unambiguous delegation of such power by Congress to the executive.
My GMU Econ colleague Garett Jones remembers the late economist Stanley Fischer. A slice:
How does all of this fit with my claim that Fischer was an heir to Milton Friedman, the great monetarist who taught us that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” and who argued for much of his career that banks should strictly follow a 3 percent growth rate for the nation’s money supply?
For one thing, Fischer’s influential early paper from 1977 really did treat the money supply — not the more Keynesian interest rate — as the tool that the central bank used to control inflation. Second, in the spirit of Friedman, he argued that offering credible, stable central bank policy — not swaying with political winds — was the best policy for any central bank.
Walker Wright celebrates “the spontaneous order of American life.”
