GMU Econ alum Dan Mitchell explores the political economy of protectionism.
Instead, manufacturing interests elected to seek “protection” by lobbying for high tariff rates against foreign competitors in their industries. If, as the national conservatives argue, such protection benefits the general welfare, then the evidence should demonstrate higher productivity combined with lowering prices, but that isn’t what happened. As Douglas Irwin demonstrates in Clashing over Commerce : A History of US Trade Policy, productivity growth was no more rapid in the US over this period than it was in Great Britain, which had fewer natural resources, and whose population – and thus domestic consumer markets – grew at a decidedly slower pace. In fact, productivity increased for sectors not affected by trade, such as transportation, utilities, and services, while seeing a decline in agriculture and manufacturing.
Ernie Tedeschi tweets about prices: (HT Scott Lincicome)
Yes, the effect on tariff-sensitive consumer categories is likely already there, particularly when you consider that these categories had a pre-tariff downward trend.
Vincent Scardina is a Trump voter in Key West, Fla., who owns a roofing company. Six of his workers, originally from Nicaragua, were en route to a job late last month when they were detained, according to a report by a local NBC affiliate. Their attorney says five of those men have valid work permits, pending asylum cases, and no criminal records. We haven’t been able to verify that, but if it’s correct, jailing them is a strange enforcement priority.
“It’s going to be really hard to replace those guys,” Mr. Scardina said. “We’re not able, in Key West, to just replace people as easily as, say, a big city.” He also got emotional. “You get to know these guys. You become their friends,” he said. “You see what happens to their family.” Mr. Scardina’s message to the President that he helped to elect: “What happened here? This situation is just totally, just blatantly, not at all what they said it was.”
Four hours after that post about farms and hotels, Mr. Trump was back on Truth Social. President Biden let in “21 Million Unvetted, Illegal Aliens,” who have “stolen American Jobs,” he said. “I campaigned on, and received a Historic Mandate for, the largest Mass Deportation Program in American History.” For the record, the Census Bureau says the U.S. population is about 342 million, so he’s talking about maybe deporting 1 person in every 20.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s deportation maestro, Stephen Miller, wants the immigration cops to arrest 3,000 migrants a day. That means raiding businesses across the country. Mr. Trump prefers to talk about “CRIMINALS” because he knows that’s where he has broad public support.
But his federal agents are out raiding job sites full of non-criminal, hard-working people who are contributing to the American economy. The real policy isn’t what Mr. Trump says, but what his agents do on the ground.
Jeffrey Miron asks: “Should government fund public broadcasting?” A slice:
[P]ublic funding is not a convincing response to any externality or public goods problem. This is separate from whether PBS programming is “good.” Let’s stipulate that it is. But so is any product that survives in the market. The question for government funding is whether the market will fail to provide a particular type of programming that is valuable.
No convincing argument exists for this view. A wide variety of news and media platforms cater to a diverse set of demands and viewpoints: Disney and Adult Swim for different age groups; The Atlantic and Fox News for different political demographics. So, assuming done in a constitutionally valid way, eliminating CPB funding is the right policy.
While Kudlow believes that the CBO shouldn’t be trusted to measure revenue from the OBBBA, he trusts their tariff-revenue projections of $2.8 trillion. Tariffs suppress real GDP growth and are likely to generate lower income and payroll tax receipts, which will partially offset the tariff revenue—dynamic effects not fully captured in headline figures. In addition, it is interesting to see a supply-sider like Kudlow highlight the revenue from tariffs as a positive thing. They are a tax increase on the American people.
George Will continues his noble campaign against government-imposed restrictions on campaign financing. Three slices:
Developments in recent decades reflect diminished respect for the First Amendment. These include campus speech codes, political pressure for censorship on social media platforms, and a society-wide “cancel culture” that inspires self-censorship lest “harmful” speech “trigger” offended hearers.
The most serious speech-regulation began half a century ago, under the antiseptic rubric of “campaign finance reform.” On Wednesday, the Supreme Court can begin removing another shackle reformers have clamped on political speech. The court will consider taking a case about whether the First Amendment is violated by limits on what political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates’ campaigns.
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All laws regulating political competition involve government stipulating the permissible quantity of speech about the government’s composition. All campaign finance laws are written by members of the political class — by incumbent legislators. Such laws require a skeptical squint: look for evidence of class interest.
It is easy to see: Incumbency confers enormous communication advantages; challengers must spend a lot to match this. So, limits on political giving and spending protect incumbents.
For modern mugwumps bent on removing the politics from politics, the maddening “problem” is that people affected by government keep trying to affect the government’s composition. The reformers — including exhorting and a self-interested media — fret about the “problem” of “too much money” in politics. The complaint necessarily is that there is too much political speech, because all campaign spending is to fund, directly or indirectly, the dissemination of political advocacy to large constituencies.
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Campaign “reforms” threaten the core speech protected by the First Amendment: political discourse. Today, many progressive intellectuals have decided the First Amendment is a “loophole” that endangers their agenda of regulating everything, speech emphatically included. Public support for free speech might be weaker now than at any time since the First Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1791.
