Walker Wright makes clear that “free trade is fairer than you think.” Here’s his conclusion:
Unfairness is one of the most common criticisms leveled against commercial society, often accompanied by claims that it undermines democracy and fosters partiality. The evidence presented here suggests the opposite. Engaging in trade and market exchange teaches us to treat others more generously and impartially. The natural outcome of these values is the institutional protection of certain rights. Fair treatment for all becomes the name of the game. We begin to trust one another’s choices and to believe in our shared ability to build society together.
Norbert Michel debunks Trump’s assertion that globalization has “failed” Americans.
Just once I’d like protectionists to be asked to reconcile their (contradictory) claims that protectionism DOESN’T raise costs/prices but DOES incentivize domestic investment/production.
It’s magic, apparently.
For some years now, conservatives who believe in free markets and limited government have been labeled RINOs—”Republicans in name only”—as GOP liberals or moderates have historically been known. The MAGA movement flings this term as an insult and a signal that respecting the realities of supply and demand instead of endorsing price controls is a character flaw.
But after watching the last few weeks unfold, it’s hard not to ask this: If believing in markets makes you a RINO, what exactly do we call Republicans who now openly embrace ideas lifted from the playbooks of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.)?
How about “Depublicans”?
The gradual transformation has been taking place since around the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term and is now unmistakable. With a few notable exceptions like taxes, deregulations, and the occasional bombing, those in power seem to behave like Democrats in Republican clothing. They have adopted many of their counterparts’ instincts, rhetoric, and policy tools, including industrial policy, trade protectionism, corporate scapegoating, price controls, ownership restrictions, and discretionary federal intervention.
In just the past few weeks, Trump has floated—and senior members of his administration have defended—four policy proposals that would have been loudly denounced as socialist overreach had they come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And for good reason. Progressives champion similar big-government policies.
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What makes this moment so revealing is that these ideas are not musings or trial balloons. They’re echoed and defended by the administration, promoted in the Senate by the vice president, touted by legislators like Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and increasingly normalized across the populist right.
Don’t be fooled by the replacement of progressive jargon with nationalist rhetoric. This economic crusade will harm the workers and non-rich it is supposed to help. It will raise prices by restricting supply, reduce market access by imposing controls, and replace opportunity with favoritism and discretion. Worse, it will erode the institutional foundations, capital markets, investment incentives, and predictable rules that enable long-run prosperity.
If believing in free markets makes you a RINO, fine. But let’s at least be honest: The GOP is not becoming more conservative. It’s becoming more comfortable with Democrats’ positions such as bans, controls, and government direction of private economic life. Republicans are becoming Depublicans.
If credit card interest rates were capped, this would harm the very people such a policy aims to help. Not only would it fail to help borrowers, it would paradoxically make things less affordable. Lenders would only issue new credit cards to people with stellar credit. Those with fair credit would likely see their credit limits fall. And those at the bottom of the credit ladder? Shut out completely or pushed toward payday loans or black-market lending.
If the president were truly serious about helping consumers with affordability, he would do well to eliminate the tariffs he’s imposed his first year in office, which have served to increase the price of goods and services and led to a sluggish economy. The current proposal tries to fix the problems created by the previous policy by doubling down on bad economics.
Incredibly, only about 26% of some $1.7 trillion in student debt is being repaid. Nearly 20% is delinquent. Most of the rest is in forbearance or deferment. If the Federal Student Aid office were a bank, it would have failed long ago.
Yet when the Trump team reiterated last month that it would begin collecting on defaulted loans, progressive groups said it would harm struggling middle-class Americans. This is what they always say when a government subsidy lapses.
But the endless reprieves have discouraged student borrowers from repaying debt. Now they’re getting another break. The Administration says it is pausing collection to give borrowers more time to rehabilitate defaulted loans while it sets up a new income-based repayment option authorized by the GOP tax bill.
The more honest explanation is that the White House is worried that garnishing wages and tax refunds will hurt Republicans in the midterm elections as the GOP House majority hangs on a thread. But waving away student debt didn’t help Democrats in 2024.
Many Americans who repaid their loans or didn’t go to college will resent serving as collateral for deadbeat borrowers and subsidized colleges—especially when Mr. Trump promised the opposite.
Mamdani is behaving more like an activist at Bowdoin College or an organizer for the Democratic Socialists of America than the leader of a city of more than 8.5 million. Success in this job depends on improving people’s lives. As mayor, it’s Mamdani’s job to help deescalate tensions between businesses and workers and find pathways to compromise. Yet he remains in campaign mode, putting out videos to advertise summer internships and going on ABC’s “The View” to express support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Performative acts of “solidarity” may feel good, but they don’t solve problems.
But despite her focus on affordability, [Gov. Abigail] Spanberger’s plan amounts to a series of expensive mandates that will drive costs higher. Spanberger has provided a disquieting preview of progressives’ affordability agendas elsewhere.
Most of Spanberger’s proposals would drive up expenses for one group of consumers in order to benefit another group deemed more deserving—what economists call “cross-subsidization.” For example, Spanberger supports a bill that will ban health insurers from charging higher premiums to smokers. This will almost certainly raise costs for nonsmokers—as outgoing governor Glenn Youngkin noted in vetoing the bill last year.
Spanberger also wants to limit health insurers’ ability to require prior authorizations for medicines or treatments for people with long-term conditions. Complaints about health insurers are often justified, but these authorizations are one of the few ways they have of limiting expenses. The result of Spanberger’s plan would be to increase health-care spending and thus premiums for others with the same insurance.
Even more surprising for an affordability agenda: Spanberger’s first proposal on the website spelling out her plan includes ensuring that “independent and community pharmacies are fairly reimbursed.” This means requiring that insurers and patients pay more for their medicine to make sure that certain pharmacies get sufficient profit. Whatever the reason for such a proposal, it can’t be affordability.
On energy, Spanberger tries to align progressives’ climate obsessions with the concerns of electricity-cost-burdened households. But one of the main causes of higher electricity prices in Virginia is the state’s Clean Economy Act, passed in 2020. The law requires the states’ utilities to be carbon-free within two decades. Dominion Power last year said that it would need to charge ratepayers $220 billion—about $25,000 for every man, woman, and child in the state—to pay for the long-term costs of renewable energy “certificates” to meet the mandates.
Nonetheless, Spanberger wants to go deeper with expensive climate demands. She supports a bill that would require more battery storage to backstop unreliable renewable power sources. Ratepayers will ultimately have to pay these storage costs. Spanberger also wants to require electric utilities to make low-income houses more energy-efficient. But such energy-efficiency programs bring minimal energy savings and, again, it’s other ratepayers who will have to pay for them.
