Gov. [Gretchen] Whitmer has authorized nearly $7 billion in business subsidies during her two terms, says the report by James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Mr. Hohman focuses on eight of the biggest projects, which put $2.7 billion of taxpayer money on the line. Some $1.8 billion has been paid out, and “none of these deals have delivered what was originally announced,” he writes.
Of 20,595 jobs promised from these deals, only 602 have been created—a mere 3%, estimates Mr. Hohman. The under-deliveries include $109 million in 2019 for Fiat Chrysler to upgrade plants and create 6,433 jobs in Warren and Detroit. Fiat Chrysler has added some jobs, says Mr. Hohman, but his evaluation of state reports suggests that’s no thanks to the state incentives, which were canceled.
Another dud: $125 million authorized in 2022 for Gotion to build an electric-vehicle battery plant employing 2,350 people that was never built. A $200 million deal in 2023 to upgrade a paper mill in Billerud was canceled. In 2024 the state touted a $250 million deal to bring semiconductor manufacturer Sandisk to Flint and create 7,400 jobs, but the company pulled out. “The result is a big empty field,” says the report.
Two projects are still alive, but they’ve already reduced their job promises. That includes a Ford EV plant in Marshall offered nearly $1 billion in subsidies since 2023. Ford said recently that 500 jobs had been created at the plant.
Was James Madison the Zohran Mamdani of his time? Gavin Newsom seems to think so. In joining the growing number of Democratic leaders supporting a wealth tax, the California governor claimed that the U.S. Constitution and our Founders were all about wealth distribution: “The system America’s founders built,” he said, “was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades.”
But Madisonian democracy is designed to avoid the concentration of political power, not the concentration of wealth. The Founders were great believers in capitalism and the free market. This isn’t the 250th anniversary only of the Declaration of Independence but also of the publication of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” which the Founders embraced. Many of the Founders were themselves quite wealthy, including banker Robert Morris Jr., who was known as the “Financier of the Revolution” and would be a billionaire today.
Our revolution was the first true Enlightenment revolution, heavily influenced by writers such as John Locke, who believed in a natural right to property. That right came not from the government but from God, and “excludes the common right of other Men.”
That Lockean principle was manifest in George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was a basis for the Declaration of Independence. It extolled “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Madison drafted protections from government seizure of property, including the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which requires compensation for any property taken by the government. The Constitution was later amended to allow for income taxes rather than wealth taxes. Far from supporting a wealth tax, the constitutional system referenced by Mr. Newsom makes a federal wealth tax unconstitutional.
As acting secretary, he has overseen the release of rules that would protect franchise businesses and require greater transparency from the country’s largest unions.
“Trump’s fertilizer tariff retreat is another admission that tariffs raise prices” – so explains Reason‘s Eric Boehm. Two slices:
With fertilizer prices spiking due to the Iran War and contributing to rising food prices, the White House on Monday quietly dropped tariffs on fertilizer imports from Morocco.
Officially, that maneuver is meant to “ensure in the interim that United States farmers have access to a sufficient and timely supply of phosphate fertilizers during the planting and growing season, to ensure a stable domestic crop supply, and to meet our food production needs.”
In reality, this is yet another admission by the Trump administration that tariffs raise prices—otherwise, how could cutting tariffs bring prices down? It is exactly like when the White House rolled back tariffs on coffee, beef, and other imported food last year. Or when the White House rolled back tariffs on farm equipment earlier this month.
Over and over again, the Trump administration is making fools out of allies who insisted that tariffs would not raise prices.
…..
When you put it all together, Trump’s decision to walk back those tariffs is a damning admission of failure on multiple levels. It exposes how unprepared the administration was for the economic fallout of the war. It reveals, once more, how tariffs have raised prices and harmed crucial American supply chains. It illustrates how Trump’s tariffs have backfired on a specific industry—in this case, farmers — despite their political support for his election. And, thanks to [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson] Greer’s role in all of this, it shows how lobbyists with protectionist agendas have infiltrated the Trump administration.
