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Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGMU Econ alum Matt Mitchell and his co-author Bob Lawson, writing at Barron’s, explain that “tariffs are eroding economic freedom.” Three slices: A large body of research associates more economic freedom in general and trade freedom in particular with better outcomes like higher income, faster growth, less poverty, and greater life satisfaction. The U.S. has long […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is, on this Constitution Day, from John Adams’s April 1776 “Thoughts on Government”: The dignity and stability of government in all its branches, the morals of the people and every blessing of society, depends so much upon an upright and skillful administration of justice, that the judicial power ought to be distinct from both […]
Should We Tariff Used Cars and Other Goods that We Import from the Past? - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn my latest column for AIER I point out that if protectionists are correct that the domestic economy is harmed by the availability of low-priced goods from abroad, then it must be the case that the domestic economic is harmed also by low-priced goods from the past. Two slices: Are President Trump’s tariffs proving that […]
Protectionists Have a Very Low Opinion of Their Fellow Citizens - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a long-time, critical reader of Café Hayek. Mr. P__: Thanks for your email Sounding like Pres. Trump and a distressingly large number of politicians and pundits – left and right – you insist that “foreigners too long got away with abusing us on trade, which our president is finally stopping. That’s […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board warns that Trump’s tariffs will soon make your morning cup of coffee more costly. Two slices: President Trump’s tariffs are coursing through the American (and world) economy, even if their macro effects are taking time to show up in the national statistics. Consider a case study in the daily […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is this Facebook post from earlier this morning by Bob Higgs: As Trump continues to burden and impede Americans’ economic interactions with people in the rest of the world, those people will find a next-best option and move on, and the USA will find itself moving steadily backwards, as its government blocks the vast […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 232 of Gordon Wood’s great 1991 book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution: In the decades following the Revolution, American society was transformed. By every measure there was a sudden bursting forth, an explosion – not only of geographical movement but of entrepreneurial energy, of religious passion, and of pecuniary desires. […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetWriting in the Washington Post, Kevin Williamson explains how Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imported wine will harm not only Americans who drink wine, but also the American vintners who are ostensibly meant to benefit from these tariffs. Two slices: Owning a vineyard in Napa Valley sounds fancy, but the wine business […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetDavid Henderson is correct: “Free markets are monopoly busters.” A slice: Sometimes when I argue that competition, if allowed, will undercut monopoly power, I am accused of having faith in the market. But my retort is that of Thomas Sowell, who, as on many issues, said it so well: “I don’t have faith in the […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 399 of The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011): People who pride themselves on their “complexity” and deride others for being “simplistic” should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complicated is evading the truth. DBx: Indeed. And no attempted evasion of the truth is more complicated than protectionism. […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board, reflecting on the recent ICE raid on a Hyundai factory in Georgia, warns that Americans’ growing hostility to immigrants imperils Americans’ prosperity (not to mention Americans’ liberty). A slice: More than 300 South Korean workers were sent back to South Korea on Thursday after being arrested in an immigration […]
Milton Friedman Did Not Concoct a False Image of Adam Smith - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal. Editor: Glory Liu argues that, in reality, Adam Smith wasn’t as favorably disposed to free markets as Milton Friedman portrayed him as being (“Adam Smith Is Known for His ‘Invisible Hand’ Theory. The Truth Is More Complex.” September 13). Her evidence for this thesis is thin. While, […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 64 of the 2003 3rd edition of Patricia Crone’s 1989 book, Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World: Clearly, pre-industrial governments generated mistrust, first because they were brutal (notably in their treatment of peasants and dissenters), and secondly because they were arbitrary. They were arbitrary because they vested unlimited power in […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal is correct: Our friends on Wall Street and in Washington keep saying that inflation is vanquished as they hope—plead—for lower interest rates. Yet the economic data aren’t bearing out their optimism, as the Labor Department’s consumer price report for August revealed on Thursday. Consumer prices climbed 0.4% […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 7 of Ludwig von Mises’s 1945 paper “Planning for Freedom,” as reprinted in the 2008 Liberty Fund edition of Mises’s 1952 collection, Planning for Freedom: However good intentions may be, they can never render unsuitable means any more suitable. DBx: Indisputably correct. And yet, all around us we find people who […]
Civilization Is Not Built By Violence - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal writes wisely about the murder of Charlie Kirk. A slice: At the same time, the political rhetoric is at a pitch that could hardly be higher. Losing the next election means the end of America, each side says, and the political opposition is often portrayed as not […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGeorge Will eloquently defends economic competition, creative destruction, and free trade. Two slices: Today, the president’s long list of nations being beastly to America includes mighty Switzerland, which he has threatened with stratospheric tariffs. (Because it has pushed upon Americans unconscionable amounts of chocolates and wristwatches?) The “China shock” was larger than the “Swiss shock,” […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 327 of Deirdre McCloskey’s May 20th, 2016, essay – “How the West (and the Rest) Got Rich” – in the Wall Street Journal, as this essay is reprinted in Historical Impromptus, a 2020 collection of some of McCloskey’s work on economic history: While all this deep thinking was roiling the intelligentsia […]
Further Thoughts on the National-Defense Exception to the Case for Free Trade - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn this new guest post at EconLog, I write about the inescapable practical challenges of wisely identifying which industries should, and which shouldn’t, receive protection on grounds of national security. A slice: Because nearly everything in the modern global economy is connected in one way or another to everything else – and because no domestic […]
MAGA Orwellianism - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to the New York Post. Editor: Among the most dishonest practices of woke progressives is their Orwellian distortion of language. It’s dismaying that an icon of the right, Larry Kudlow, has adopted this socially corrosive tactic by describing Donald Trump as a free trader (“‘Trump is a free trader,’ prez’s former economic […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 219 of Matthew Hennessey’s excellent 2022 book, Visible Hand: Economics is not something to be afraid of. It’s not some greedy, nefarious, invisible hand that secretly rules the world by pushing people around the mall or pressing on the heads of the poor until they cry “Uncle!” It’s natural and benign, […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetWall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins writes insightfully about the government raid on the Hyundai factory in Georgia. Two slices: Incoherence, thy name is government. Example: The Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act produced insurance policies so unaffordable nobody will buy them without a large government subsidy to defray most of the cost. Or take Joe […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 82 of Anne Krueger’s 2020 book, International Trade: What Everyone Needs to Know: When tariffs are imposed on goods that are used in the production of both domestic final goods and exportable items, the tariff can improve the foreign producers’ position relative to their US competitors because the foreign producers pay […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetIlya Somin, a GMU colleague from over in the Scalia School of Law, explores the Trump administration’s petition to have the U.S. Supreme Court quickly consider the appellate court’s ruling that the tariffs that Trump imposed under IEEPA are unlawful. Two slices: Earlier this week, the Trump administration filed a petition for certiorari urging the […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGeorge Will strongly, and rightly, criticizes today’s lapdog GOP Congress. Two slices: The Democrats’ House and Senate minorities have no power — the ability to achieve intended effects. The Republican majorities have no power because they are not permitted intention independent of this president’s preferences. He refuses to enforce the law that strictly required the […]
Your Imagination Is No Good Guide to Policy - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a long-time reader of my blog who is unhappy with what he describes as my “knee jerk opposition to America First policy.” Mr. M__: Thanks for your email. You’re unhappy with my pointing out that protectionism is the bizarro theory that says that people gain greater access to goods and services […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 113 of Historical Impromptus, a 2020 collection of some of Deirdre McCloskey’s work on economic history; this quotation, specifically, is from McCloskey’s Spring 2001 review, in The American Scholar, of Niall Ferguson’s The Cash Nexus: Britain, the first industrial nation and the champion of free trade, went from $1,800 in per […]
An Open Letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent - Cafe Hayek
TweetSeptember 7, 2025 Mr. Scott Bessent Secretary, U.S. Treasury Washington, DC Mr. Bessent: This morning on “Meet the Press” you confidently claimed that Pres. Trump’s tariffs are sparking a manufacturing revival in the U.S. Minutes later, and with equal confidence, you claimed that these tariffs are not causing, and will not cause, Americans to pay […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 96 of the late Christopher Hitchens’s October 9, 2008, Vanity Fair essay titled “America the Banana Republic,” as this essay is reprinted in Arguably, the 2011 collection of several of Hitchens’s essays: How very agreeable it must be to sit at a table in a casino where nobody seems to lose, […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetSen. Rand Paul (R-KY) rightly calls out J.D. Vance for glorifying government slaughter of people not convicted of any crime: (HT Phil Magness) Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military.” Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird? Did he ever wonder what might […]
On the Ethics and Economics of Retaliatory Tariffs - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a follow-up note to a correspondent who describes himself as a “recovering free trader.” Mr. H__: Thanks for your reply to my last note. You write: “When other countries reduce their imports from us it injures our economy and President Trump is fully justified in trying to stop them from injuring us like this.” […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetPhil Magness reminds us that among the most rabid of the covidians were many of today’s leading MAGA-ites. Three slices: Resistance to the COVID-era lockdowns occupies a central place in the political identity of the New Right—the eclectic group of national conservatives, postliberals, populists, and neoreactionaries at the ideological core of the MAGA coalition. Ironically, […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 57 of Norbert Michel’s brilliant 2025 book, Crushing Capitalism: How Populist Policies are Threatening the American Dream [footnotes deleted; links added]: Several researchers have studied the “China Shock,” a reduction in US manufacturing employment after 2000 that was supposedly caused by increased trade with China. One problem with this story is […]
Adam Smith Would Be Appalled by Donald Trump - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent. Mr. H__: Last week you wrote to criticize me for allegedly “being unaware of the case for retaliatory tariffs made by Adam Smith.” (I responded that I’m not unaware of Smith’s case.) Today you write to praise what you describe as Pres. Trump’s “efficacious use of tariffs to […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetThe folks at Unleash Prosperity share a chart that shows that Japanese industrial policy – which we Americans a few decades ago were warned by oh so very many pundits, professors, and politicians left, right, and center would propel Japan’s economy to great heights and leave America’s in the dust – was a curse to […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 40 of the 1st edition (1995) of Russell Roberts’s remarkable book on trade, The Choice; here, Russ has the ghost of David Ricardo responding to someone who insists that “it’s better to make computer chips than potato chips” [link added]: It depends. Some workers in the potato chip business make a […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 403 of The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011): A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half. DBx: Indeed so. And now that the political right has largely adopted the same agenda (although wrapped in different packaging) as has […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetGMU Econ alum Dominic Pino reflects on last Friday’s ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that the tariffs Trump imposed under IEEPA are unlawful. A slice: The government tried to defend the tariffs as a national security measure, and the court didn’t buy it. “While the President of course has […]