As Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) said, “Everything is what it is, and not another thing.” Narcotics trafficking is a serious crime. It is not a terrorist activity. Neither is the self-“poisoning” of Americans who ingest drugs.
So, the administration must improvise post facto rationalizations for the forcible regime change in Venezuela, rationalizations harmonious with the president’s recent pardoning of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president convicted in a U.S. court of shipping here more than 400 tons of cocaine. “The Honduran regime,” McCarthy writes in National Review, “figures prominently in the indictment of Maduro brought by the first Trump administration.” Maduro’s lawyers will have fun with this.
And perhaps with this: When Theodore Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to concoct a legal justification for the unsavory U.S. measures that enabled construction of the Panama Canal, Knox replied, “Oh, Mr. President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”
Also writing about Trump’s seizing of Maduro is Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle. A slice:
It’s hard to imagine a worse leader for Venezuela than Nicolás Maduro, who combined corruption, economic mismanagement and brutal repression in one repulsive package. That doesn’t mean America was right to invade the country and arrest him, which strikes me as both unconstitutional and unwise. And while it’s hard to imagine a worse leader than Maduro, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one out there, waiting in the wings.
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to approve military strikes against foreign countries. Federal laws, like the War Powers Resolution, allow for unilateral executive action only in response to an imminent threat against Americans or U.S. troops. That separation of powers is fundamental to American democracy—not an optional arrangement for presidents to discard when it is politically or logistically inconvenient.
At a press conference on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump termed the attack an “extraordinary military operation,” which he claimed was unlike anything seen since World War II. Therefore, there should be no debate about what this was: a military strike, one that utterly lacked congressional authorization.
Trump also clarified that the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition” to a new leader. “We are going to stay until such time as a proper transition can take place,” he added.
Again, that leaves little room for debate. This was a regime change operation, and one that creates an ongoing responsibility for the American military.
Vice President J.D. Vance tried a different line of argument earlier on Saturday, when he claimed on X that Trump did not need congressional authorization for the attack on Venezuela because “Maduro has multiple indictments in the United States for narcoterrorism. You don’t get to avoid justice for drug trafficking in the United States because you live in a palace in Caracas.”
That argument, however, shreds the concept of separation of powers. The executive branch makes indictments. If it is also allowed to use the existence of those indictments to authorize military strikes in foreign nations, then there is no need for Congress to be involved at all.
Carlos Martinez assesses 67 years of communism in Cuba. A slice:
Even Cuban economists largely agree that the island’s problems stem not from the U.S. embargo but from the regime’s own policies. In addition, recent research by João Pedro Bastos, Jamie Bologna Pavlik, and Vincent Geloso found that the embargo explains only 3–10% of Cuba’s economic decline. The real culprits are nationalizations, the destruction of private property and markets, and their replacement with centralized economic planning. By 1989, even before Soviet support collapsed, these policies had already made Cuba approximately 55% poorer than it would have been otherwise.
“Why haven’t Trump’s tariffs had a bigger impact?” (HT Scott Lincicome) Three slices:
President Trump raised the taxes that the United States charges on imports last year to levels not seen in a century.
Prices of goods have increased as a result, and businesses that depend on imported products and supplies have struggled, with some closing their doors. Still, the effects have not been felt as strongly as some experts predicted after early April when Mr. Trump announced double-digit tariffs on imports from countries worldwide.
A new working paper from economists at Harvard and the University of Chicago helps explain why. It shows that the tariff rate importers have paid is significantly lower than the tariff figures that Mr. Trump announced. The reasons include exemptions for certain countries and industries, rates that were lowered for some goods by the time they arrived in the U.S. and evasion of the rules by some companies.
By analyzing the government’s tariff revenue and the value of imports, the economists concluded that the actual U.S. tariff rate was 14.1 percent at the end of September.
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This phenomenon does not mean that tariffs don’t burden U.S. companies and consumers. The researchers demonstrated that Americans were bearing the cost of Mr. Trump’s tariffs, in contrast to what he and his advisers have claimed.
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U.S. consumers and manufacturers are also paying higher costs. A working paper published in November by economists at Harvard Business School and elsewhere found that tariffs had pushed up the price of imported goods by roughly twice as much as domestic ones.
Ms. Gopinath and Mr. Neiman also traced the effect of tariffs on U.S. manufacturers, which often depend on foreign parts and metals. They found that companies making heavy-duty trucks, construction vehicles, cars and car parts, agricultural implements, and oil and gas machinery were among the most affected by higher tariffs.
“The logic was if foreign firms wished to sell to the mightiest consumer market in the world, they would have to pay a price,” Ms. Gopinath said. “In reality, the price has been borne by U.S. firms, and not by foreign firms.”
The COVID-19 pandemic was a vast economic experiment. The federal government issued a wide array of public health “recommendations” that soon became dogmas. To question the efficacy of masks or social distancing — a policy we learned in 2024 had no basis in science — was to risk being censored or accused of spreading “misinformation.” Scientific debate gave way to official decree, and many who questioned “the plan” or resisted it lost their jobs or were booted from platforms.
None of this would have surprised Hayek, who warned that the plans constructed by central planners must be “sacrosanct and exempt from criticism.”
“If the people are to support the common effort without hesitation, they must be convinced that not only the end aimed at but also the means chosen are the right ones,” he wrote. “Public criticism or even expressions of doubts must be suppressed because they tend to weaken public support.”
Hayek’s chapter is not primarily about censorship. Instead, he argues that the rise of state power will systematically undermine the concept of truth itself and the human pursuit of it.
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The economist Daniel Klein recently called “The End of Truth” the most important chapter in Hayek’s most important work. I couldn’t agree more. The chapter serves as a reminder that the human mind is not something to be controlled but something to be unleashed. If we forget this simple lesson, we risk surrendering the very capacity for independent thought that sustains civilization.
“The tragedy of collectivist thought,” he noted, “is that, while it starts out to make reason supreme, it ends by destroying reason because it misconceives the process on which the growth of reason depends.”
In March, 250 years after the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a new oratorio – to be performed by the New York Philharmonic – will celebrate this magnificent work. (HT Tyler Cowen)
Gustavo Dudamel — the Oscar L. Tang & H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music & Artistic Director Designate — conducts the World Premiere of the wealth of nations, a highly anticipated commission from the Pulitzer Prize–winning composer David Lang. Inspired by economist Adam Smith’s 1776 magnum opus, Lang dramatizes this foundational work about economics as inspired by Handel’s treatment of Biblical texts in Messiah. “I want this work to be enjoyable and thought-provoking,” says Lang, “encouraging audiences to consider what we truly value.”
