News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
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 […]
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% […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.” […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 51 of Norbert Michel’s superb 2025 book, Crushing Capitalism: How Populist Policies are Threatening the American Dream [footnote deleted; link added]: However, if the [balance-of-payments] accounting framework were designed instead to track the quantity of goods, this same situation [that is, a trade deficit] would be referred to as a “goods […]
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 […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 84 of Daniel Oliver’s essay, “Protectionism,” which is Chapter 18 in the 1987 collection Trade Policy and U.S. Competitiveness (edited by Claude E. Barfield and John H. Makin): The United States continues to produce new jobs because our economy is dynamic. A dynamic economy that is allowed to adjust to changes […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetU.C.-Berkeley Law professor John Yoo argues – in this letter in the Wall Street Journal – that a better reason for the courts to declare Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs unlawful is that the trade deficits that Trump points to as the alleged “national emergency” that justifies the tariffs are, in fact, no emergency at all: […]
The Enclosures and the Industrial Revolution - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to someone who (I boast) reports that he’s greatly enjoying reading Phil Gramm’s and my book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom. Mr. M__: Thanks for your email and for your kind words about Phil Gramm’s and my book. They’re much-appreciated. Our book’s chapter on the industrial revolution prompts you, understandably, to write: […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 205 of Amity Shlaes’s superb 2007 book, The Forgotten Man; here, Amity is writing about FDR’s unscrupulous New Dealers: They also found that prosecution became easier if they revised the rules of the game. DBx: Trump is certainly helping to corrode the rule of law, but he didn’t start this abominable […]
Vernon Smith on Donald Trump's Protectionism - Cafe Hayek
TweetMy emeritus Nobel-laureate colleague, Vernon Smith, sent the following email to me in response to this post. I share Vernon’s note with his kind permission. Don, Trump, like all businesspersons turned political, wants government favors, that is Mercantilism which is as bad today as when Adam Smith railed against such cozy relationships. Same for labor […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetNational Review‘s Andrew McCarthy exposes what he rightly calls the “arrant nonsense” of Trump’s exaggerated assertions of the alleged consequences of the courts refusing to uphold the legality of Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. Two slices: After the Federal Circuit affirmed the Court of International Trade’s invalidation of the Trump tariffs on Friday evening (in a decision […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetWriting at The Hill, GMU Econ alums Scott Burns and Caleb Fuller explain that, with his “Liberation Day” tariffs, “Trump has resurrected one of economics’ oldest fallacies.” A slice: Bastiat’s broken window fallacy wasn’t originally about tariffs, but it could have been. The logic is identical: Whether breaking windows or blocking imports, the visible gains […]
Pay Attention to Trump the Businessman, Not Trump the Politician - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a letter to a long-time critical reader of my blog. Mr. P__: Thanks for your email. You’re “unpersuaded” by my pointing out the economic folly of Pres. Trump declaring that so-called U.S. “goods trade deficits” with individual countries are a national emergency. You write: “President Trump is a skillful corporate executive” while I am […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 72 of Anne Krueger’s 2020 book, International Trade: What Everyone Needs to Know: Moreover, it is often economic to source imports in countries different from major export destinations and there is no reason why bilateral current account balances should matter.…. There are three important reasons why President Trump’s approach is mistaken. […]
If ONLY An Earthly Heaven Were On the Horizon - Cafe Hayek
TweetWorrying that AI will cause lasting unemployment is silly. Editor, Wall Street Journal 1211 6th Ave. New York, NY 10036 Editor: Stuart Berr worries that AI will become so productive that there will be too few jobs left to enable people to earn the incomes necessary to purchase all the goods and services that this new […]
Protectionists, Not Free Traders, Are Arrogant - Cafe Hayek
TweetHere’s a follow-up note to Mr. P__. Mr. __: Thanks for your response to my earlier note, which you describe as “feeble.” You go on to assert that, in that note, I “hide [my] arrogance behind academese.” With respect, in re-reading my letter I find no whiff of “academese.” But perhaps I’m too accustomed to […]
Quotation of the Day... - Cafe Hayek
Tweet… is from page 177 of Steven Landsburg’s excellent 2009 book, The Big Questions: An executive’s job is to maximize profit, and usually the best way to do that is to produce goods and services that people value. Unfortunately, some executives seek profits by lobbying for subsidies, tariff protection, and import quotas, all of which […]
Some Links - Cafe Hayek
TweetReason‘s Jeff Luse reports this: “Trump promised to cut energy bills ‘by half.’ His trade war could drive them higher.” A slice: Before last week’s expanded tariff announcement, experts were sounding the alarm on the effect that Trump’s trade war could have on America’s power grid. The new list has industry leaders worried again about […]