President Trump’s tariffs are coursing through the American (and world) economy, even if their macro effects are taking time to show up in the national statistics. Consider a case study in the daily institution of millions that is morning coffee.
This summer Mr. Trump hit Brazil with a 50% tariff because he said the country is prosecuting his friend, Jair Bolsonaro. One problem for Americans is that Brazil is the world’s biggest coffee producer, and its beans are in more than one of every three cups of joe brewed in the U.S. Every American coffee drinker either is paying more or soon will as a result.
The price of a pound of unroasted Brazilian beans has jumped to more than $6 from $4.50, says Dan Hunnewell, the owner of Coffee Bros., a specialty supplier in New York. He’s trying to keep his own prices steady “as long as possible,” he adds. “I will even eat some of the difference.” But if the 50% tariffs on Brazil continue, he expects to raise prices “pretty significantly” or buy beans from elsewhere, even if it changes the taste profile.
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The coffee tale shows that tariffs at their essence are an income transfer from millions of individuals and businesses to the U.S. government. Like all taxes, they’re a windfall for politicians. In the case of coffee, tariffs don’t even protect a domestic constituency. They are a tax on American consumption pure and simple—a tax on Maga’s forgotten man.
“Some Americans abroad can’t send mail to U.S. because of tariffs.” (HT Scott Lincicome)
Samuel Gregg sounds the alarm against “postliberals’ economic dreaming.” Two slices:
Across the Western world, right-leaning postliberal groups are proliferating. Postliberals do not agree about everything, and their criticisms of what they call liberalism vary. But if there is anything they share, it is deep skepticism about free markets.
Throughout their writings, postliberals insist that the state needs to orient the economy towards the realization of specific goals. The ends that they have in mind range from the broad and vague (“more localism,” “greater community,” etc.) to specific objectives like forcing a sectoral adjustment away from services and towards manufacturing. Depending on which postliberal you talk to, the means might include increased welfare spending, bigger unions, higher tariffs, more regulation and industrial policy, subsidies to incentivize demographic growth, and the government taking stakes in publicly traded companies, to name just a few.
Unfortunately for postliberals, all these measures come with well-established problems. Tariffs, for instance, undermine the competitiveness of businesses and economies and raise prices for everyone. Industrial policy breeds cronyism and assumes knowledge about the future that humans do not possess. Big welfare states produce dependency and enormous public debt. Big unions severely compromise labor market flexibility.
Whenever these points are made, few postliberals express much willingness to rethink their position. For postliberalism is characterized by a disinterest in understanding economic truths and, to that extent, is marked by a freely chosen economic obliviousness.
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Not everyone needs to be an economist, and the economist F. A. Hayek’s admonition that “an economist who is nothing but an economist cannot be a good economist” cannot be repeated enough. But anyone, postliberal or otherwise, who disdains the realities to which economics insistently directs us should refrain from commenting on topics like interest rates, trade policy, or finance. Our knowledge may be limited, but ignorance is not always bliss. And economic ignorance is downright destructive.
In fact, many of Kirk’s most ardent fans are now engaged in one of the largest mass cancellation efforts of all time: Some Republican legislators, MAGA activists, and conservative media figures are assembling watchlists with the explicit aim of silencing, firing, expelling, and perhaps even criminalizing any and all anti-Kirk sentiment. Rep. Clay Higgins (R–La.) wants to use explicit government pressure to crush anyone who “ran their mouth” and belittled the gravity of Kirk’s death; top Trump advisor Stephen Miller is vowing some kind of unspecified crackdown on the right’s political enemies; and conservative influencers are writing down the names and professions of Kirk besmirchers and calling their employers. Vice President J.D. Vance, filling in as a guest host on Kirk’s show, instructed viewers to engage in unrestricted cancelling.
Then of course there are the helpfully tendentious political interpretations of Kirk’s murder, neatly unfolded for us in the universe of X and its imitators. The stomach-churning celebrations from one side by human degenerates insisting he somehow deserved it. The subtler, nuanced “commentary” that carefully clears its throat with a ritual condemnation of violence but quickly expatiates at length on Kirk’s allegedly wicked contributions to political debate.
From the other side, the eager attribution of this and other acts of political violence to a vast dark army of forces committed to the erasure of all those who oppose their ideology. The unarticulated but clearly identified “they” who are out to kill “you” or “us.”
We could have a proper debate about the extent to which there has been a dangerous escalation of rhetoric—and sporadic acts of violence—against those of us who seek to roll back the progressive tide. Or we could ascribe all murders like that of Kirk to the amorphous nearly-half-the-country conspiracy of Democrats, mainstream media, left-wing academics and transgender militants roaming the country picking off their critics.
What hurts especially hard in the wake of such a terrible event is the grifting quality to all this: the rapacious, unending hunt for clicks and likes and donations and descriptions kicks into a frenzy as a young man lies dying.
This reflects a paradox of our newly democratized digital media. The overwhelming majority of Americans are decent people, appalled by violence, eager to respond with a constructive determination to do what we can to root it out. But the discourse is led by a small minority of opportunistic ghouls (not to mention, I suspect, a significant number of foreign enemies, successfully promoting bitter division among Americans).
It has not been a good 24 hours for Pam Bondi, the attorney general of the United States. Yesterday, on the Katie Miller Podcast, Bondi said:
We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.
Actually, she won’t. She won’t “target” or “go after” anyone for “hate speech,” because, legally, there is no such thing as “hate speech” in the United States, and because, as a government employee, she is bound by the First Amendment. And if she tries it anyway? The Supreme Court will side against her, 9-0.
Bondi continued:
There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. And there’s no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie.
No, no, no. This distinction is false, incorrect, imaginary. It does not exist. It is a fiction. Under every relevant Supreme Court precedent, speech is speech is speech. There are other categories of speech: libel, incitement, threats, and so on. But speech that is supposedly “hateful” — including about Charlie Kirk’s murder — is undoubtedly protected by the Constitution. Kirk himself was clear about this.
Erec Smith: “Mutual persuasion, not violence, is the path to follow.”
