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Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 3 of Richard Baldwin’s new book, The Great Trade Hack: How Trump’s Trade War Fails and the World Moves on: Trump’s trade war is grievance in action – victimhood weaponised and unleashed as tariffs. It’s not economic strategy; it’s MAGA-fied trade policy, where protectionism becomes a form of emotional retribution without […]
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TweetWall Street Journal columnist Matthew Hennessey summons more people to the cause of basic economic enlightenment. A slice: Yet each generation somehow produces naïfs who are certain that collectivism is the true longing of the human heart. They know they can make it work this time. The young voters who supported Mr. Mamdani were primed […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 31 of the late Fred McChesney’s 1995 essay “In Search of the Public-Interest Model of Antitrust,” which serves as the Introduction to Part One of the 1995 collection edited by Fred S. McChesney and William F. Shughart II, The Causes and Consequences of Antitrust (footnotes deleted): In the long run, expected […]
"America Firsters," Of All People, Should Welcome Subsidized Imports - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s the next part of my exchange with a new correspondent. Mr. D__: Thanks for your reply to my email of yesterday. In your reply you write that “it is majorly unfair that foreign countries subsize exports sold here at below cost prices.” I agree. But the unfairness isn’t to Americans; it’s to those foreigners […]
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TweetJim Dorn exposes the immorality of protectionism. A slice: But beyond making everyone worse off in material terms, tariffs and protectionism also violate the principles of freedom and justice that are the hallmark of a free society, or what Adam Smith called a “great society.” Limiting the range of choices open to people via protectionist […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 45 of Milton & Rose Friedman’s great 1980 book, Free To Choose: Another source of “unfair competition” is said to be subsidies by foreign governments to their producers that enable them to sell in the United States below cost. Suppose a foreign government gives such subsidies, as no doubt some do. […]
Fair Trade Is Unfree - and Unfair - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent. Mr. D__: Thanks for sending along Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX)’s tweet that “Free trade must ALWAYS mean fair trade.” Endorsing this tweet, you say that “fairness in trade should always be our guide.” I respectfully disagree. My disagreement comes from no opposition to fairness; be assured that […]
Full Text of Gramm’s and Boudreaux’s “Tariffs Mean Electoral Defeat for the GOP” - Cafe Hayek
TweetBecause more than 30 days have passed since the Wall Street Journal published Phil Gramm’s and my May 22nd, 2025, piece, “Tariffs Mean Electoral Defeat for the GOP,” I share the full text of this piece here, without charge, beneath the fold (link added). Tariffs Mean Electoral Defeat for the GOP The debacle of 1932 […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 126 of Thomas Sowell’s 2023 book, Social Justice Fallacies: Many social policies help some groups while harming other groups. Affirmative action in academia manages to inflict harm on both the students who were not granted admissions, despite their qualifications, and also many of those students who were admitted to institutions where […]
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TweetGMU Econ alum Matt Mitchell, writing at The Hill, explains that “America’s leaders confuse economic coercion for good exchange.” A slice: The power to tax is widely accepted but fundamentally coercive. And the higher the taxes, the greater the coercion. Outlawing mutually agreed upon prices between sellers and buyers — as both President Trump and former […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from David Hart’s marvelous 2019 translation – still only on-line, but forthcoming in print – of Frédéric Bastiat’s 1850 Economic Harmonies; specifically, it’s from Chapter XI, titled “Producer and Consumer” [original emphases]: I would very much like the language of economics to supply me with two words other than “production” and “consumption” to […]
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TweetDavid Henderson makes the case for libertarian wariness of war. A slice: Similarly, in foreign policy, governments do things that have unintended consequences. Take the Middle East. The takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by a number of Iranians in November 1979 came as a total surprise to most Americans, including me. But that’s […]
Bonus Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from Michael Strain’s June 10th, 2024, essay, “The Economic World We’ve Lost”: It is no surprise that the rise of populism and economic nationalism has coincided with growing skepticism toward liberal democracy and growing comfort with political violence. The erosion of economic liberalism – free people, free markets, limited government, openness, global commerce […]
Deficit Financing By Government Is Unethical and A Source of Excessive Government Growth - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a new correspondent. Mr. P__: Thanks for your e-mail. You wonder why I keep favorably posting items from Veronique de Rugy, George Will, and others who warn of the dangers of the U.S. government’s exploding indebtedness. “If,” you ask, “Milton Friedman was right that the actual cost of government is what […]
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TweetGeorge Will is correct: “Exploding U.S. indebtedness makes a fiscal crisis almost inevitable.” A slice: [Kenneth] Rogoff warns that many believers in “lower forever” interest rates express the human propensity to believe in a “supercheap” way to expand “the footprint of government.” The nation is, however, “running deficits at such a prolific rate that it […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 328-329 of the 1982 Liberty Fund version of the 1978 Oxford University Press edition of Adam Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence: Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it . . . It is far more reducible to self-interest, that general principle which regulates the actions of […]
Super-markets - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to National Review. Editor: Jim Geraghty rightly ridicules NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to open government-run grocery stores (“A Few Problems with City-Owned Grocery Stores,” June 26). The irony of this self-described “democratic socialist’s” scheme is rich: There is no greater testament to the productive and economic-democratization powers of capitalism than […]
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TweetReason‘s Eric Boehm is correct: “Trump’s controlling stake in U.S. Steel is indefensible socialist nonsense.” A slice: U.S. Steel isn’t just getting nationalized. It’s getting … personalized? President Donald Trump will personally control the so-called “golden share” that his administration has forced U.S. Steel to accept as part of the terms of a deal that […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 8 of Norbert Michel’s 2025 book, Crushing Capitalism: How Populist Policies are Threatening the American Dream (original emphasis): [T]he share of U.S. households earning more than $100,000 (adjusted for inflation) tripled over the past five decades, and the share earning less than $35,000 fell by 25 percent. Share Tweet Share Email […]
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TweetMy intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, continues to talk sense to those pundits and politicians – left, right, and center – who ignore the dangers of ballooning government indebtedness. A slice: Republicans once were interested in the proper way to raise revenue. They once discussed pro-growth tax reform, base broadening, lowering marginal rates, […]
Mark Meadows Complains That Canadians Put America First - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to The Hill. Editor: Mark Meadows’s stab at justifying Pres. Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum reads like a term paper composed by a clever sophomore (“Trump’s 50 percent aluminum, steel tariffs will create new American manufacturing jobs,” June 23). He stuffs his text with lots of numbers, such as […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 261 of the 1992 collection of some of William Graham Sumner’s best essays, On Liberty, Society, and Politics (Roger C. Bannister, ed.); specifically, this quotation is from Sumner’s insightful 1894 essay “The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over”: [I]t is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable, […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is a rare repeat. This quotation first (and last) appeared in this spot on December 4th, 2013; it’s from the Preface to Thomas Hardy’s marvelous 1886 novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge and refers to the time before the repeal, in Britain, of the infamous corn laws, which were import restrictions on grain; on this […]
Trump's Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum Will Cause Economic Harm to America - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn the print edition of tomorrow’s (Thursday’s) Wall Street Journal, Phil Gramm and I explain that Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum – that is, Trump’s punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of steel and aluminum – will harm the American economy. A slice: While total imports compose less than 14% of the U.S. economy, steel […]
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TweetThe U.S. Secretary of Commerce – who, like the man who appointed him, presumes to know better than do individual Americans how individual Americans should spend their money – doesn’t even know what’s going on in the agency over which he has been given responsibility. Here’s Ramesh Ponnuru: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined the administration […]
The Real Emergency Is the Abuse of Delegated Powers to Address Emergencies - Cafe Hayek
TweetIn my latest column for AIER – after having read the “Liberation Day” Executive Order that Trump used to claim the authority to exercise powers conditionally delegated by Congress to the president – I explore the details of this alleged “emergency.” A slice: I’m incompetent to discuss whether or not this statute, despite making no […]
Has Free(r) Trade "Hollowed Out" America's Industrial Economy and Her Middle Class? - Cafe Hayek
TweetLast week, I was honored to deliver the final talk of the academic year to Stanford University’s Classical Liberalism Initiative. In this talk I did my best to bust several of the most prominent myths that fuel the tolerance of today’s protectionism. Share Tweet Share Email Print
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TweetNational Review‘s Andrew Stuttaford warns that we Americans will pay higher prices for food because of Trump’s tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports and of import-competing products – punitive taxes imposed by an administration that Stuttaford accurately describes as “saturated in zombie McKinleyism.” A slice: Perhaps the food and beverage industry can adjust […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from the late founder of Federal Express, Fred W. Smith, as he is quoted in yesterday’s remembrance of him by the Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board: People talk about capitalism and socialism and communism. There’s only two kinds of economic systems: the market-driven and the government-directed. That’s it! The more you move toward […]
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TweetThe Wall Street Journal reports on a small American manufacturing company that Trump’s protectionism is driving to the verge of ruin. A slice: For weeks, Woldenberg and his roughly 500 employees—most at a suburban Chicago headquarters—have hastened to halt shipments, reroute cargo, raise prices and freeze expansion plans. The companies sued President Trump and other […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from the economist Jason Furman in his recent interview with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie: Basically, every step of Trump’s mentality on trade is wrong. First of all, imports are good. We like to import coffee. We like to import cars. We like to import the inputs we need for American manufacturing. Second, trade deficits […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from pages 223-224 of Johan Norberg’s marvelous 2023 book, The Capitalist Manifesto: The more economic power the [Chinese] Communist Party takes, the more knowledge and outside initiative is lost. The difference between the popular image of China and what research actually shows about it could hardly be greater. Our politicians and media paint […]
Are Protectionists Really This Historically Uninformed? - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to Vox. Editor: Much should be carefully said about your discussion with Oren Cass of the alleged depredations of the straw man “market fundamentalism” – a phantom beast forever stalking the imaginations both of progressives and ‘nationalist conservatives’ (“The economic theory behind Trumpism,” June 22). But one point screams out for an […]
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TweetDavid Henderson reviews Norbert Michel’s splendid new book, Crushing Capitalism: How Populist Policies Are Threatening the American Dream – a book that empirically disproves nearly all of the claims that MAGA types assert about the American economy to justify their economically destructive tariffs. A slice: We often hear that there has been almost no growth […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from historian Marc-William Palen’s January 10, 2018, interview with the Toynbee Prize Foundation: When I initially started doing research and tracing the origins of this debate after I found FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull being referred to as the ‘Tennessee Cobden.’ I was quite surprised and wondered when these references about British […]
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TweetBad news for the economy (and not so great either, it seems to me, for the rule of law): “Supreme Court Passes on Immediately Deciding Trump’s Tariff Powers.” A slice: To recap: Trump justified his authority to impose three categories of tariffs without congressional approval on the basis of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act […]
On Tariffs, Trump Outsmarted No One - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to The Daily Spark. Editor: Torsten Sløk proposes that Trump has “outsmarted everyone on tariffs” (“Has Trump Outsmarted Everyone On Tariffs?” June 21). Mr. Sløk’s evidence for this conclusion is weak, to put it mildly. First, Mr. Sløk’s conclusion depends on Trump delaying by one year the imposition of the “Liberation Day” […]
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TweetGeorge Will makes clear that no ideology has done as much to create in the U.S. an imperial presidency – now, alas, in the hands of Trump – as has ‘progressivism.’ A slice: Last weekend, many Americans — mostly progressives, surely — staged “No Kings” protests against what progressivism has done much to produce: today’s […]
No Logic to the "Liberation Day" Tariffs - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to The Epoch Times. Editor: Attempting to find economic coherence in President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, Christopher Balding argues that the foundational justification for these tariffs is the president’s alleged wish to decouple the U.S economy from China’s economy and his desire to secure this decoupling by preventing China from transshipping goods […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 220 of Thomas Sowell’s 2008 volume, Economic Facts and Fallacies: Among the many preconceptions that cannot be subjected to any empirical tests, because they are so subjective, is the notion that third-party observers know better what is good for people than those people know themselves. Share Tweet Share Email Print