Bob Higgs remembers his former student, Charlotte Twight. A slice:
Charlotte’s work was marked by careful attention to detail and documentation of evidence. Here her legal training continued to serve her well, even though she was not a practicing lawyer. Her prose was clear and careful. Her conclusions were advanced confidently, as well they should have been in light of the strong arguments and evidence she adduced.
DBx: Charlotte Twight will indeed be missed. I did not know her well; I met her on only two or three occasions. One of these stands out in my memory with special vividness. It was an event – exactly where and when I’ve now forgotten (likely an APEE meeting sometime in the mid or late 1990s) – at which Charlotte enticed Gordon Tullock onto a dance floor. She commenced to dance with a man who likely had never before ever done such a thing. My memory is that Gordon seemed to have appreciated, and perhaps even enjoyed, the experience – and the onlookers, including me, marveled at Charlotte’s charming gambol with Gordon.
The trade deficit doesn’t matter, but even if it did, tariffs aren’t an effective way to reduce it.
In July, the monthly trade deficit in goods hit its highest level since March 2025, the Commerce Department revealed on Thursday. That was the month before President Donald Trump’s announcement last year of massive tariffs on products from nearly every country in the world.
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Intuition suggests tariffs could bring down the trade deficit. Tariffs are a tax on imported goods, and taxing something more means people will buy less of it. Fewer imports with the same amount of exports would therefore lower the trade deficit.
Absurdly, the Trump administration simultaneously claims that tariffs aren’t taxes and don’t raise prices.
The problem for the Trump team is that imports and exports often move together. In other words, reducing imports also reduces exports, so the difference between them — the trade deficit — hardly changes.
Wall Street Journal columnist Mary Anastasia O’Grady calls Canada “Trump’s Great White Whale.” Two slices:
Mr. Trump has done serious damage to U.S. credibility by picking a senseless fight with a neighbor, ally and important trade partner. For decades Washington has used trade agreements to help American farmers and manufacturers gain access to foreign markets, to develop international supply chains that boost competitiveness, and to enhance consumer choice and affordability. If those agreements can be abrogated unilaterally by the commander in chief, who’s going to trust Uncle Sam?
Mr. Trump didn’t like the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. In 2020 he replaced it with his own U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Now he doesn’t like that. He’s desperate to blow it up but needs someone to blame.
The U.S. president says Canada is the worst country on earth when it comes to negotiating trade. Translation: It’s a little democracy that won’t knuckle under to his second-term tariff hikes. This is hurtful to a frail ego. It can’t go unanswered.
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It’s left to the American business community to explain to Mr. Trump the harm he’s doing and that his obsession with the trade deficit with Canada, caused by energy imports, is misplaced. If that message gets across, there’s hope. Until then, Mr. Carney might want to thank Mr. Trump for the political assist.
“Canada trade war a fig leaf for Trump’s absurd trade policy.” (HT Scott Lincicome)
Official details of the agreement are scarce, but the facts reported by the Journal over the weekend aren’t cause for enthusiasm. The U.S. will take a 35% stake in a private company run by Alejandro Betancourt, a Venezuelan businessman close to Ms. [Delcy] Rodríguez. The Betancourt firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, will be able to develop those 65 billion in reserves, and the U.S. will have preferential rights to 20% of what the firm produces at the cost of production.
The U.S. investor here will be the Pentagon, of all agencies, which will structure the investment through penny warrants that will gain the equity stake without taxpayer cash. The legal authority for this is far from clear, since the Defense Department is investing in a foreign entity. Can the Pentagon Office of Strategic Capital take such equity stakes?
Why is the Pentagon even playing in global oil markets when it has enough to do buying new weapons in short supply and reforming its broken procurement process? The global oil market is under stress from the Iran war, but by and large it does a good job of matching supply and demand.
Venezuela produces only about 1.1 million barrels of oil a day now, and deep wells in Guyana and new investment in Argentine shale (including by U.S. entrepreneur Harold Hamm) are coming in the Americas. Venezuelan production will take years to ramp up.
Who will finance this oil production and which companies will invest to extract it? Mr. Trump has been pleading with U.S. oil firms to invest on their own in Venezuela since he snatched President Nicolás Maduro in January. But most say the government hasn’t provided the right legal or contractual protections. Chevron is a long-time player in the country.
The politics of all this are even more complicated, to put it mildly. The U.S. government is essentially getting in bed with a foreign dictator and her favored capitalist. Any foreign firm that invests will have all three as de facto partners, but Mr. Trump will be out of office in 2029 and the heavy-handed U.S. role might not play well over time in Caracas.
When will Californians tire of their officious, harmful government?
