GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino busts the myth that failure to allow SALT deductions is double taxation. A slice:
It is a bedrock principle of American government that the states are not mere administrative divisions of the country. Federalism means states have their own tax and spending powers that exist independent of the federal government. As a result, each American lives in more than one tax jurisdiction. It is not double taxation for each of them to tax you separately.
State and local governments do not provide the same services as the federal government. The federal government provides military protection, Social Security, Medicare, diplomacy, veterans’ benefits, national parks, and many other services that state and local governments do not. State and local governments provide education, transportation, law enforcement, child protective services, record-keeping, state and local parks, and many other services that the federal government does not.
When you pay state and local taxes, you are paying for different things than when you pay federal taxes. That’s not double taxation.
Calling it double taxation is akin to accusing your car insurance company of double-charging you because you also had to pay your home insurance company, as they both provide you with insurance. That’s true, they are both providing insurance, but it’s insurance for different things, so it’s perfectly reasonable to pay for it separately.
In 2023, he was arrested, handcuffed, his Denver townhouse was searched and he spent a night in jail. A judge had issued a warrant against him because one police officer told a detective that a man with whom Mendenhall had argued called 911 to accuse Mendenhall of menacing him with a baseball bat.
The accuser did not testify before the judge who issued the warrant. The officer who wrote the affidavit did not speak with the accuser. And no one honored the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, as it was for 169 years, from the 1791 adoption of the Bill of Rights until 1960.
It protects Americans’ right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. It stipulates that no warrant shall be issued unless supported by “oath or affirmation.” As Jacob Sullum of Reason writes, those three words were generally understood to mean warrants could be issued only based on the government agent seeking the warrant having “firsthand knowledge of the relevant facts,” rather than based on “the unsworn claims of another person who was never subjected to judicial scrutiny.”
President Donald Trump has been celebrating in recent weeks as his administration strikes bilateral trade deals following “Liberation Day.” Some products, however, will soon be subject to increased duties, not lower ones. Starting June 30, imports derived from aluminum and steel will be subject to a 50 percent ad valorem tariff. These duties will hit imports of common household appliances like refrigerators and dishwashers and increase the cost of living for everyday Americans.
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The first submission period for product inclusions began on May 1 and ends on Monday. At press time, 17 public comments have been made. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick or a designee “will sign a positive or negative determination” about each of these requests for inclusion to be followed by “a determination memorandum in regulations.gov … within 60 days,” per the interim final rule.
Increasing the price of kitchen and home appliances doesn’t protect Americans; it just makes them poorer. And with Lutnick set to approve requests submitted to BIS between now and mid-August, Americans should brace for even more aluminum- and steel-derived imports to be hit with these 50 percent tariffs.
Politicians who support tariffs and other forms of government intervention in the economy frequently emphasize reshoring, trade deficits, cheap imports, and national security, but they rarely talk about consumers. That’s no accident. In a market economy, it is consumers, through their choices, who determine what goods and services are produced and at what price. They—not federal planners—are the true engine of capitalism and freedom.
Jon Miltimore warns against the economic amnesia that causes nostalgianomics. Two slices:
A decade ago, the late economist Steve Horwitz quipped that left-wing politicians had been bewitched by “nostalgia for the economy of the 1950s.” But he added that a Republican upstart appeared intent on stealing from the Democrats’ populist playbook.
“It is more than a little ironic,” Horwitz wrote, “that modern progressives are nostalgic for the very economy that GOP front-runner Donald Trump would appear to want to create.”
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To continue prospering, Americans must confront some uncomfortable truths — starting with the notion that assembling widgets on a factory line isn’t inherently more meaningful than making lattes in a café, writing code, or designing marketing campaigns.
They must also recognize certain truths about manufacturing. Despite the narrative US manufacturing has been “hollowed out” by trade agreements, capacity has increased more than 50 percent since NAFTA was signed and remains at near-historic highs.
While it’s true that manufacturing jobs as a percentage of nonfarm employment have declined substantially, the rate of the decline has slowed significantly since China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001. Moreover, the decline in manufacturing jobs has far less to do with trade than with technological advancements that have automated production and increased output with fewer workers — much as they did with farming, which once employed a third of the workforce but now requires less than 2 percent to feed the nation.
Whether Americans are willing to accept these realities is unclear. A recent Cato poll found that 80 percent of Americans say the country “would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing.” Yet the same poll found that just 25 percent of Americans say they themselves would be better off working in a factory job.
The Federal Open Market Committee offered no policy surprises Wednesday, but it did offer a new note of caution in its economic forecasts: President Trump’s tariffs are producing a mild stagflation.
The policy decisions were to leave the target Fed funds rate unchanged at 4.25-4.5% and maintain the current pace of quantitative tightening. But all eyes were on the latest batch of quarterly economic projections—the famous dot plots—to see where policy makers think the economy may be headed. In short, they think growth will be slower and inflation higher.
Scott Lincicome decries the Trump admnistration’s nationalization of U.S. Steel. A slice:
As we’ve already discussed (twice), there is no reason for the U.S. government to be involved in what is inarguably a small transaction involving two publicly traded companies that are both eager to seal the deal on mutually acceptable terms. The “national security” arguments for blocking or amending those terms are bogus: As I explained in December, “the U.S. military needs a tiny amount of domestic steel output and gets none of it from U.S. Steel,” and security experts across the political spectrum—including officials in both the Trump 1.0 and Biden administrations—saw no serious concerns. The government’s involvement was and remains about politics, and the whole drama serves as a serious black mark on U.S. international economic policy (and Biden’s time in office).
The terms released by Lutnick, however, make the matter much worse. They show that the new U.S. Steel will be controlled in large part by the U.S. government, and this arrangement will raise long-term questions and problems that just simply banning the sale—a clearly bad move, too—wouldn’t raise.
One might argue that this isn’t really “nationalization” because the U.S. government isn’t a majority shareholder in the company or involved in its day-to-day operations, but will instead dictate just a few actions that the business might take. But this view, which I’ve now seen a few times online, would be wrong for several reasons.
For starters, the golden share would govern a wide range of U.S. business activities, including investment levels and locations, firm management, workforce and salaries, plant operations, sourcing, pricing, and (apparently) trade litigation. As a result, U.S. Steel will have to obtain Uncle Sam’s permission to do a lot of stuff. Depending on the details, in fact, the arrangement really could give Washington a say on U.S. Steel’s routine operational decisions—if the government wanted one. (No terrible political incentives there!)
Just as importantly, the government’s formal control over these decisions will inevitably give it potential influence over other firm decisions that aren’t covered by the golden share. If, for example, the U.S. government objected to Nippon Steel’s decision to partner with a Chinese steel company in Asia, Washington could try to stop the deal by threatening to invoke its golden share powers in an unrelated U.S. transaction. And these implicit powers are obviously amplified by the fact that the one holding the golden share isn’t a private individual but the United States’ government, with all the additional benefits—legal, practical, etc.—such status confers.
Given this “extraordinary” U.S. government involvement, the Atlantic Council’s Sarah Bauerle Danzman concludes, “US Steel may not be state-owned, but it is certainly now controlled by the US government.”
Kristian Niemietz defends the correct use of the noble word “liberal.”
