Writing earlier this month in The Atlantic, Scott Lincicome warns of “America’s Perón.” A slice:
When the populist strongman Juan Perón ran Argentina’s economy from his presidential palace in the mid-20th century—personally deciding which companies received favors, which industries got nationalized or protected, and which businessmen profited from state largesse—economists warned that the experiment would end badly. They were right. Over decades of rule by Perón and his successors, a country that had once been among the world’s wealthiest nations devolved into a global laughingstock, with uncontrollable inflation, routine fiscal crises, rampant corruption, and crippling poverty. Peronism became a cautionary tale of how not to manage an economy.
President Donald Trump seems to have misunderstood the lesson. His second term has begun to follow the Peronist playbook of import substitution, emergency declarations, personal dealmaking, fiscal and monetary recklessness, and unprecedented government control over private enterprise. And, as with Argentina’s Peronism, much of U.S. economic policy making runs directly through the president himself.
Trump’s tendency toward Peronist policy is strongest on trade. Central to Perón’s economic vision was an “import substitution industrialization” strategy, or ISI, that used tariffs, quotas, subsidies, localization mandates, and similar policies to push Argentines to produce domestically what they’d previously imported more cheaply from abroad. The approach was intended to fuel domestic growth, but it instead created insular and uncompetitive manufacturing industries saddled with high production costs, bloated finances, and rampant cronyism. Perversely, it also crushed Argentina’s globally competitive agricultural sector by diverting resources away from it and toward protected industries. Argentinian consumers suffered from higher prices, unavailable products, and lower overall living standards.
One of the most notorious examples of ISI’s failure was when the government of the Peronist President Cristina Kirchner attempted to incubate a local electronics industry through steep restrictions on imported televisions and smartphones. The result was disastrous: Modest increases in low-value domestic-assembly operations were more than offset by a market that featured substandard products priced at double what consumers were paying in neighboring Chile. Popular items such as iPhones were simply unavailable, forcing Argentines into local black markets or shopping trips abroad.
Trump’s second term is following the ISI playbook in several respects, in some cases even more so than Argentina did. According to the World Bank, for example, Argentina’s average tariff rate has hovered between 10 and 16 percent since 1992, while the Yale Budget Lab estimates that the United States’ now exceeds 18 percent and could go higher in the months ahead. “National security” tariffs for Trump’s preferred industries—including steel, aluminum, copper, and automotive goods—top out at 50 percent, well above the 35 percent duty that Argentina once applied to smartphones. And with U.S.-imposed tariffs varying by product, country, and content, what was once a relatively simple tariff system has been replaced by a labyrinth of overlapping requirements that even large and sophisticated American importers struggle to navigate.
GMU Econ alum Meg Tuszynski writes wisely about overblown fears of AI. Here’s her naturally intelligent conclusion:
In 1897, Mark Twain heard a rumor that he’d died. He sent a letter to the New York Journal to clear up the matter, stating that “the report of my death was an exaggeration.” Not only are the reports of AI’s employment “death toll” an exaggeration, but they’re missing information about the critical second act of the play. After the destruction comes the creativity, and the story of the internet can give us clues about the future of work in this technological episode as well.
Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker is correct:
Of the countless words expressed by friends and foes since the shocking killing of conservative provocateur Charlie Kirk, the young husband and father who dared express opinions in the crowded public square, only two matter: free speech.
Too many Americans who’ve been expressing their opinions after Kirk was killed seem not to understand what the words truly mean. This group includes Attorney General Pam Bondi, who, before she backpedaled, said the Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
This would certainly keep her busy, though maybe not as busy as her subsequent attempts to clarify what she meant. Even some of her MAGA supporters challenged her “thinking” on the matter, mentioning that hate speech, despicable though it might be, is allowed in the U.S. of A. We might not like it, but we sure don’t want the government defining what it is. Thus, Bondi says she meant people who encourage violence would be in her sights.
Fair enough. But when a reporter asked President Donald Trump, who filed a meritless $15 billion defamation suit against the New York Times on Monday, what he thought of Bondi’s clarification, he responded snidely: “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. … Maybe they’ll have to go after you.”
It’s easy to see where Bondi gets it. The administration to which she belongs fantasizes about, and sometimes succeeds in, shutting down its critics, one way or another. This should lead civic-minded Americans to wonder whether Bondi or any others seated around the Cabinet table understand how fundamental free speech is to all other freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
The leaps of law and logic being taken by the administration and its supporters are breathtaking.
…..
To summarize, then, the president has three times in the past three weeks ordered the use of lethal military force, and so far reportedly killed 17 people. These attacks are based on the theory that Venezuelans he has designated as terrorists are attacking the United States with shipments of illegal drugs. But (a) the terrorist designation appears to be based on drug trafficking, which is not terrorist activity under U.S. law; (b) even if drug trafficking qualified as terrorism, an executive branch designation of an entity as an FTO does not authorize the use of military force; (c) absent a true threat to the United States that requires an emergency military response, the president needs authorization from Congress to employ lethal military force; (d) Congress has made drug importation a crime for court prosecution, not the occasion for military force; (e) the first Trump administration indicted Maduro and other Venezuelans for drug importations but did not seek an authorization of military force; (f) the president has not established — he has merely asserted — that the ships he has bombed were Venezuelan vessels operated by entities he has designated (however dubiously) as FTOs operating under Maduro’s direction; and (g) with respect to the most recent strike, the president has not even claimed the vessel allegedly ferrying illegal narcotics was from Venezuela — i.e., he appears to be claiming a power to use lethal force whenever he suspects a boat on the high seas is carrying drugs, which he further suspects are destined for the United States.
Yep: “Americans like drugs. Killing drug traffickers won’t change that.”
Steven Greenhut makes a compelling case that Trump is not a man of peace. A slice:
Whether or not you agree with these policies, they don’t adhere to any principled non-interventionist philosophy. And that takes us back to Russia and Ukraine. The problem with appeasement is that it emboldens the aggressor rather than secures lasting and just peace. No serious person is calling for American troops in Ukraine, but Trump’s insistence on blaming Ukraine and not pushing Russia for serious concessions has escalated the conflict.
