Data published today by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis show that domestic investment in artificial intelligence is currently acting as a massive tailwind for US economic growth (gross domestic product). The data also show that this American investment boom is being fueled by imports of the servers and other things that datacenters and related AI technologies need.
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Surely, the AI boom isn’t solely due to free trade, and we wouldn’t expect it to cause every other US industry to boom like AI is today. But one still must wonder how many other American industries might similarly benefit from the same “special” treatment that the AI industry enjoys today—i.e., the treatment almost every industry received before the Trump tariff wall was erected last year.
National Review‘s John Puri is correct:
As the leader of a bureaucracy constructed by progressives, President Trump is like a toddler in a toy store. The levers and pulleys of regulatory power all around him present endless opportunities to exert his will. These instruments were designed for supposedly dispassionate experts who falsely believed that they could rationalize society and properly organize the economy. Trump yanks on them to do what he pleases.
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In any case, the past year has demonstrated the danger of vesting merger-review power in one person. When the president exploits the law to bully the market, merger-review power becomes a tool of unilateral governance. An uninhibited executive can hold multibillion-dollar deals hostage until he receives a payoff or is handed effective control of a company. He can jawbone media companies into softening their coverage. He can pick the winners and losers of bidding wars.
Fast forward to this week, and the political left is again heralding the return of Jim Crow after the High Court ruled that carving up districts based on race is illegal (Louisiana v. Callais). Amid the overwrought reaction, let’s see what happened to minority voting and representation in Congress since the Court’s 2013 Shelby County landmark.
Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion this week highlighted America’s racial progress. He quoted Shelby County as saying that since the VRA’s enactment in 1965, “voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers.” He added that “black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate.”
The left ignores all this, but let’s look at the numbers. Barack Obama’s candidacy super-charged black turnout in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections such that it matched that of whites. The share of blacks voting in presidential elections has since fallen somewhat from those record highs, though it has increased in midterm elections.
Some 45.1% of the black voting-age citizen population cast ballots in 2022 and 51.1% did in 2018, according to Census Bureau data. That’s significantly higher than the black turnouts in three midterms prior to Shelby County; 2010 (43.5%), 2006 (41%) and 2002 (42.3%).
Voting among Hispanics and Asians has also increased over the last two decades. About 40% of Asian citizens cast ballots in the 2018 and 2022 midterms, versus 30.8% in 2010. Hispanic turnout rose to 37.9% in 2022 and 40.4% in 2018 from 31.2% in 2010. In 2020 the share of eligible Hispanics (53.7%) and Asian voters (59.7%) who cast ballots hit records.
Also writing sensibly about election laws is Jason Willick. A slice:
Representative democracy isn’t about perfect fairness, which is impossible; it has various permutations, and all have benefits and drawbacks. In the decades leading up to this Supreme Court decision, American democracy was structured to increase the number of majority-minority districts, and therefore the number of racial minority members of the House of Representatives.
One trade-off was that Black politicians were steered toward Black constituencies, changing their political incentives and potentially making it harder to get elected to statewide or national offices requiring a multiracial support base. If Barack Obama had prevailed in his 2000 campaign for Congress in Illinois’ then-majority-Black 1st District, for example, it’s an open question whether he would have ascended to the Senate and the presidency. The Callais decision, by creating the conditions for more racially integrated political competition, could amplify rather than reduce Black political power over the long term.
Bob Graboyes offers further valuable reflections on Virginia’s recent gerrymandering escapade.
Phil Magness and Fabio Rojas discuss postliberalism.
I filed The tariff case together with the conservative @LJCenter. And I’m the kind of liberal who was involved in legal challenges to Obamacare, advocates for vastly expanded protection for constitutional property rights, opposed affirmative action, and would roll back most of the New Deal-era expansion of federal power.
