President Trump’s sweeping tariffs, announced on April 2, 2025—Liberation Day—have ignited market turmoil. Stock markets are plummeting, investors are scrambling for clarity, and many well-regarded conservatives are struggling to rationalize a confounding policy supporting tariffs. Three common fallacies are emerging…
Whenever the subject of trade comes up, many right-leaning free traders and left-leaning neoliberals alike trot out the same talking point: “The economists all agree tariffs are terrible!” And perhaps they do — or at least most of them do….
Tariffs are bad for business. They harm the international division of labor and drive up consumer prices. Their comeback shows that we are living in an era dominated by politics. A new age of power politics has begun. Donald Trump…
There’s so much I could say about the imposition of President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs on countries across the globe that these would not be quick things unless I do my best to make them so. So I’m going to…
Texaco. ITT Industries. Union Carbide. International Business Machines. Beatrice. Fifty years ago, in April 1975, these were among the largest companies in the United States by revenue, forming the upper crust of that year’s Fortune 500 list and familiar to every…
You can be for or against the tariff war. I suppose every conflict has its good and bad sides. Each side usually has a solid reason. But in the past, we at least had the Geneva Convention. Responding to what…
In the grand theater of 2025, where America’s economic stage is lit by the flickering glow of a manufacturing revival, tariffs have emerged as the unsung hero — or the villain du jour, depending on who’s clutching the pearls. President…
If you put 50 randomly selected American academic economists in a room and ask them what they thought of raising tariffs as a way of increasing economic growth, I bet at least 48 of them would say that is a…
One of the better podcasts out there is Patrick Bet David’s Valuetainment show, which I pick up on YouTube a good bit. And, in a segment on Tuesday, Bet David and his guests spent some time talking about the “trade…
