Wednesday, 12 February 2025

10 good things from Trump 2.0 ... a work in progress


Robert Nasir writes:

"Just about everyone here knows my stand on the [US] President ... he is a dishonest, power-hungry, narcissistic, crude, lecherous, adulterous, dictator-envious, free-speech-threatening, felonious, insurrectionist bully ... and his election was a bad, bad thing for the country, for many reasons, both concrete and abstract, for our culture and for our philosophic future.
    "But for all of that (and more), folks can read my other posts & comments, and follow me on all the socials.
    "Here, I am working on the rest of the story.
    "Including, among other things, listing some of the reasons why some reasonable people ... people we all know, and respect ... support the President. ...

"I've already published my list of reasons why President Trump is a force for ill [the worst thing is that he has destroyed the Republican Party, turning it into the Party of Trump. For all its faults and flaws, the Republican Party was a credible opposition party.
    "No longer. Trump has crowded out or silenced (i.e. cancelled) all independent, principled voices in the Party.]
    "And this matters, crucially, because The Left DOES need to be fought. For all its faults and flaws, the Republican Party was a credible opposition party...
"But this current list is important (at least, to me) for keeping the full context, and understanding why some very good people continue to support him. ...
[So] I'm putting together my list of good things Donald Trump has done ... a very loose category, but important for acknowledging the full reality of what's going on. ...
  1. "He has condemned, and imposed sanctions on, the International Criminal Court (ICC). (Feb 6 2025)
  2. "He has started the process of withdrawing from The United Nations by withdrawing from, and ending support for, the UNHRC; the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). (Feb 3 2025)
  3. "He has committed to deregulation via a 10-for-1 directive and annual financial review of federal regulatory agencies. While the method is arbitrary, ad hoc, and untargeted, it will have at least some positive impact. (Jan 31 2025)
  4. "He has passed measures to condemn and combat Anti-Semitism in federally supported institutions (including, but not limited to, public universities). (Jan 29 2025)
  5. "He has (once again) withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. (Jan 25 2025)
  6. "He has ended the federal EV mandate (surprisingly, given its favourability to Elon Musk). (Jan 20 2025)
  7. "He has passed an EO to deregulate energy production broadly, across all forms, on federal lands and waters (including, e.g., re-opening offshore drilling the Outer Continental Shelf, expediting the permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska). (Jan 20 2025)
  8. "He ended the affirmative action mandate in federal government hiring. (Jan 20 2025)
  9. "He has initiated the US withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO). (Jan 20 2025)
  10. "His 'Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions' include the repeal of a 78 previous orders, the majority of which were inappropriate, economically harmful, and otherwise detrimental or dangerous."
That said ...
"The last time around [points out Keith Weiner], he claimed to deregulate--but in fact [simply] increased regulations at a slower pace than Obama increased them. Trump also increased the aggressiveness of compliance enforcement of financial regulations to the point where the banks were forced to closed God knows how many accounts, and retrain all employees from tellers to executives in the new Anti-Money Laundering regime."
Not to mention adding so much debt he oversaw the third-biggest deficit increase of any president in history! And, well, it was him who kicked off those trade wars.

So ...
"It’s good to keep records on all this, to be objective [says Amy Nasir]. But yes, the method of the man is that of a rabid squirrel, and if these ten things prove to provide a better future in some ways, they are accidental and most likely short-term gains. In the meantime, it’s almost impossible to list all the cons of the conman."

Tuesday, 11 February 2025

Friedrich Hayek on equal opportunity vs equal outcome


"The classical demand is that the state ought to treat all people equally in spite of the fact that they are very unequal. You can’t deduce from this that because people are unequal you ought to treat them unequally in order to make them equal. And that’s what social justice amounts to. It’s a demand that the state should treat people differently in order to place them in the same position. . . .To make people equal a goal of governmental policy would force government to treat people very unequally indeed. ...
    “In order to make people equal, you have to treat them differently. If you treat people alike, the result is necessarily inequality.
    “You can have either freedom and inequality, or un-freedom and equality.”

~ Friedrich Hayek interviewed by William Buckley & Jeff Greenfield

 

Monday, 10 February 2025

"So let's look at three explanations for NZ's secular stagnation that the big media outlets refuse to blame."


"The country does not appear to [just] be in a cyclical down-turn. ... The evidence ... points more to a long-lasting slow-down ... which has turned [New Zealand's economy] into one of worst performing in the world. ... [The reasons] remain unaccounted for. The 'experts' quoted in the mainstream media, who work for the Big Banks and NZX 50 firms, don't have a clue, though not the modesty to admit it. ...
    "So let's look at three explanations for NZ's secular stagnation that the big media outlets refuse to blame.
    "First, the vast number of New Zealanders who now 'work' from home. ... An article published in the National Bureau of Economic Research is being quoted world-wide which estimates falls in productivity of around 18% once a person works from home. ...This outbreak of collective laziness is more than able to explain why the country has stagnated. ...
     "Second, many of the Board members and CEOs of our largest corporations are nothing short of useless. Many are accountants & lawyers who know little about the core business. ... The higher echelons of NZ corporates have descended into an inbred club of status-seeking social climbers who aren't the real deal. ...
    "Third, our national energy has been increasingly sucked up by [endless] Treaty debates. ... spawning industries of academics, lawyers, politicians and media types who do nothing productive, other than argue with one another. ... It has emerged that property rights, the fundamental driver of economic growth, are thereby insecure in NZ, making it a terrible place to keep your money and invest. ...
    "[I]t is [therefore] entirely plausible that [all of our economic stagnation is due to] the vast numbers of Kiwis who are now pretending to work from home, hiring and promotion policies not based on merit, ... along with endless going-nowhere Treaty debates which have consumed the energy of the country ..."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Should NZ's secular stagnation be due to working-from-home, lack-of-meritocracy & endless Treaty debates, then we can forget economic growth.'


Saturday, 8 February 2025

"Trump has the ambitions of a dictator but not the attention span"


"It’s all just for show. Trump’s supporters get to see him being mean to foreigners, and that’s enough for them.
    "In short ... mass deportations ... and the tariffs—again, so far—are following the script I had hoped for [i.e., a phantom menace], while still finding it annoying. Donald Trump likes watching TV and being on TV. He likes attention and an exciting script. But he doesn’t care much about details or substance, so long as he’s at the exact geometric centre of attention and gets supplicating phone calls from foreign leaders, and he can squeeze it all into a narrative that makes him look like a tough guy. And his supporters love this and are very happy with it.
    "This fits a general pattern you might remember from his first administration. Trump has the ambitions of a dictator but not the attention span, the focus, or the attention to detail necessary to impose it.
    "Alas, not everyone around him suffers from this disability."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'A Coup Within a Coup'

Friday, 7 February 2025

Perhaps if MPs did have an actual argument, they would use it?


"When did it become permissible for Members of Parliament to treat select committee submitters with condescension, disdain or thinly disguised contempt? ... for men and women with impeccable professional reputations and years of service to the New Zealand community to expect their appearance before a parliamentary select committee to serve as an excuse for MPs to hector and insult them, and to ignore completely the content of their submissions?
    "Sadly, the answer to those questions would appear to be ‘right here, right now’. ...
    "All the evidence required to construct the case is readily accessible in the official video recordings of the Justice Select Committee’s hearings on the Treaty Principles Bill, particularly in the reception given to retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, by MPs representing Labour and Te Pāti Māori. ...
    "Why submit oneself, or one’s ideas, to such dismissive treatment? ...
    "Some have written-off [a 2021] incident [involving Deborah Russell] as just one more example of covid-induced madness.
    "But, if that is the explanation, then how is the extraordinary rudeness towards David Harvey and other submitters in support of David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill to be accounted for?
    "Why would Labour’s Willie Jackson feel free to chide a former District Court judge, whose career is as distinguished as it is free of professional and/or personal blemish, as if he were some errant legal backwoodsman, unaware of the intellectual powerhouses ranged against his unsophisticated opinions?
    "Why would Te Pāti Māori’s Rawiri Waititi imply that the submissions of a judicial officer backing Seymour’s bill largely explain the ongoing legal oppression of his people?
    "Why would the Labour MP for Christchurch Central, Duncan Webb, a former law professor, show no interest in addressing the legal arguments contained in Harvey’s submission? ...
    "The kindest construction one could put upon the conduct of the three MPs in question is that they are unshakeably convinced that the “European colonialist” ideology contained in the Treaty Principles Bill poses such an existential threat to the future of Māori in Aotearoa that any serious consideration of arguments submitted in support of it cannot be countenanced. Those offering such support do not deserve to be taken seriously and should not expect to be. ...
    "To rule out even the possibility of compromise can only hasten the transformation of select committee hearings into the 21st century equivalent of Soviet-era show trials, the sole purpose of which would be to demonstrate publicly the adverse consequences of wrong-think."


Wednesday, 5 February 2025

For MAGAts, it's Schrodinger's tariff threats all the way down

 

Yeah, I know, talking about tariffs, tariff threats and tariff retaliation can get tedious. 

But the threats are real. And the US president doesn't care about the destruction of world trade (google "Smoot Hawley Great Depression" if you want a clue) — and the MAGAts don't care about anything much beyond "owning the libs" and all the 4d chess their hero is allegedly playing.

Except it's neither chess nor 4d. MAGAts are now touting the "concrete behavioural changes" the tariff threats allegedly caused in Canada and Mexico. Except, as Phil Magness patiently explains, much of what was "achieved" was either already in motion or could easily have been accomplished through less aggressive means.

  • Trump boasts his tariff threat brought 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the border. Yet in 2023  he claims that his threat of a wall brought 23,000 soldiers to the border (since dispersed). So "Trump got a significantly worse deal today than he claims he got 5 years ago without any tariffs. Does that mean he got stomped?" 
  • And Canada had already announced in December last year its plans to "strengthen border security* and [its] immigration system." "So Trump's big negotiating 'win'... ...is to get Canada to do what it already announced it was doing back in December. And his 'win' with Mexico is to get them to commit 1/3rd of the troops he previously got them to commit with no tariffs in 2019. 4D chess, everybody!"

As one person wryly commented, "It's the art of claiming credit for the deal."

So how d'ya reckon MAGAts will cope with the revelation of the Great Tariff Negotiator getting played by Justin Trudeau, no less — convincing Justin to "concede" to a plan he'd already announced last year? Magness looks ahead:
Prediction: most of the Tariff Fundamentalists who are touting tariffs as a "negotiating tactic" today will resume their calls for tariffs as an economic protection strategy a few days from now. A few days later they will call it a revenue source. Then a negotiating tactic again.

As another commenter observed, for MAGAts it's Schrodinger's tariff threats all the way down. 

Oh, by the way. Whoever disagrees with Trump and the MAGAts on any of this is "an anti-American conspirator" and also "controlled by China."

If words like "imbecile" and "unhinged" occur to you about now, you're not alone.

* * * * 

* NB: Note that the border security is ostensibly to arrest to the terrible threat of fentanyl pouring across the Canadian border. Yet: 

The amount of fentanyl that comes across the border from Canada is negligible. In 2024, DEA stats that just 43lbs were intercepted at the entire northern border, which is just 0.2% of total fentanyl seizures entering the US in that period.
    So even if you think fentanyl is a problem justifying some sort of policy response, it's a complete waste of resources to focus them on the US-Canada border. It's also likely that the increased border enforcement there will create other bureaucratic hassles and inconveniences for routine border crossings, as most police-heavy drug enforcement efforts do.

Like almost everything with Trump, he just makes stuff up. Except "instead of the Big Lie, it is the Little Lie. Thousands upon thousands of them. They keep everyone off kilter trying to rebut them."


"The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade ... "


"The essence of capitalism's foreign policy is free trade — i.e., the abolition of trade barriers, of protective tariffs, of special privileges — the opening of the world's trade routes to free international exchange and competition among the private citizens of all countries dealing directly with one another.
    "During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world, undercutting and wrecking the remnants of feudalism and the statist tyranny of absolute monarchies."

~ Ayn Rand, from her 1966 article 'The Roots of War'


Tuesday, 4 February 2025

"Economic wars often turn into military wars."



"President Trump made it clear during his presidential campaign that tariffs will be a part of his policy-making. He has followed through on that. But tariffs are very risky business. Yes, you can get lucky with them being a political tool at times. 
    "But tariffs can also turn very bad, especially when egos get revved up. American history is littered with the use of tariffs going very badly. 
    "President Trump, and the American people, should always keep that in mind. 
    "Economic wars often turn into military wars. 
    "Given the bankrupt state of our nation, any type of war should be the furthest thing from our minds. It could end up being the last nail in the coffin. 
    "Best to focus intensely on cleaning our own house."
~ Ron Paul

 

"A writer who disdains the semicolon is a fool."


"A writer who disdains the semicolon is a fool. In fact, hostility to this most delicate and lyrical of punctuation marks is a sure sign of a deformed soul and a savage sensibility. 
    "Conscious life is not a brute concatenation of discrete units of experience; it is often fluid, resistant to strict divisions and impermeable partitions, punctuated by moments of transition that are neither exactly terminal nor exactly continuous in character. Meaning, moreover, is often held together by elusive connections, ambiguous shifts of reference, mysterious coherences. And art should use whatever instruments it has at its disposal to express these ambiguous eventualities and perplexing alternations. 
    "To master the semicolon is to master prose. To master the semicolon is to master language's miraculous capacity for capturing the shape of reality."
~ David Bentley Hart from his post 'On Writing, Part Two' [hat tip @NickFreiling]

 

Monday, 3 February 2025

Tariffs, Trump & the Chicken Wars


News this morning that that the dumbest US president in some time has started the dumbest trade war in history’ — that evaluation, by the way, is by the Wall Street Journal— that's 25% tariffs slapped on Canada and Mexico, and 10% tariffs on China, with tit-for-tat retaliation already promised in return.  (Or as James Valliant & Daniel Kraus explain things more accurately: 'Trump Puts a New Tax on Americans–Canada Shoots Itself in Return.')

Here's a bit of an explainer about tariffs for you to help you get your head around it all, along with an 'amusing' story about the Chicken Wars   ...




PS: The US Tax Foundation estimates Trump's 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on China will:  
  • Increase taxes by $1.2T (2025-2034)  
  • Reduce GDP by 0.4%  Reduce employment by 344k jobs  
  • Result in an average tax increase of $830 per US household (2025)
And the Wall Street Journal estimates that Trump's tariffs of 25% on imported steel and 10% on aluminium.
will punish American workers, invite retaliation that will harm U.S. exports, divide his political coalition at home, anger allies abroad, and undermine his tax and regulatory reforms. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.7% on the news, as investors absorbed the self-inflicted folly.
So: Make America Poor Again? Just wilful economic destruction simply in order to ... what? Feed one ignorant ego?

UPDATE:
Cartoonist Bruce McKinnon has an even simpler explainer ...




Friday, 31 January 2025

"When politicians start talking about competition, economists ought to get a little bit nervous."


"It’s fair to say that economists like competition.
    "It’s also fair to say that when politicians start talking about competition, economists ought to get a little bit nervous.
    "People can have very different understandings of the same word. ... At the heart of the difference – while trying to avoid the boring bits – is how we understand the term competition. Is a competitive market one where there is some ‘right’ number of companies, of the ‘right’ sizes relative to each other? Or is a competitive market [an open market —] one in which no special permissions are needed to set up shop and every firm always needs to be looking over its shoulder?
    "Sometimes, the two amount to the same thing. ... But not all competitive markets, by the one definition, are open by the other. And not all open markets are ‘competitive,’ if we measure things by counting companies. Openness matters more – both when thinking about customers’ experiences, and about government policy. ...
    "When markets are open, underperformance by existing competitors ... is potential profit for new entrants – and better service for customers. ...
    "And that gets us back to my worries when politicians start talking about enforcing more competition. ... If the Government wants to focus on openness [on reducing barriers to entry], it could do much good. ...  There are no shortage of places to shine a flashlight. ...
  •     "Successive Commerce Commission market studies identified regulatory and policy-based barriers that make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for new firms to compete with incumbents.
  •     "The market study into building materials noted the lack of land zoned for new big-box retail suppliers ...
  •     "The commission’s final report into grocery retail found a similar problem. ...
  •     "Similarly, the commission warned that regulatory barriers hinder competition in banking. ...
  •     "Opening a new pharmacy is tied up in weird regulations about who is allowed to own pharmacies. ...
  •     "Many occupational licensing regimes look an awful lot like cartels organised to protect incumbents. ... I wonder [for example] why anyone should need special permission to be a real estate agent. ... Are we quite sure that regime is still needed?
    "It is a target-rich environment, if we are thinking about openness. ....

"The Government could help to bring down prices and improve the products on offer for consumers if it focused on ensuring market openness. Political campaigns against existing businesses may be more tempting, but they will do less good."
~ Eric Crampton from his article 'When politicians campaign on competition, be very worried'

Thursday, 30 January 2025

The Flattery Towards Trump Reveals Fear



Tech billionaires aren't crawling to Trump because they're powerful, argues Johan Norberg in this guest post. It's because they're weak...

The Flattery Towards Trump Reveals Fear

by Johan Norberg

TECH MOGULS AREN'T FLATTERING TRUMP because they're drunk on power, but because they're afraid. The political arbitrariness that began with Biden risks becoming even worse with Trump.


Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk were among the guests at Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

At Trump's inauguration, the new president was surrounded by a grinning, applauding Forbes list. Among them were the world’s three richest men, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, as well as relatively less wealthy figures like the CEOs of Apple and Google. Sitting in more prominent seats than the incoming cabinet members, it certainly looked like the happy plutocrats had bought themselves a president.

They all donated to the inauguration fund and have, in other ways, signalled an approach. Bezos blocked the Washington Post’s official endorsement of Kamala Harris, and Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook became too woke and now needs to be more Texas.

Is the U.S. on its way to becoming a tech oligarchy? Biden’s speechwriters are among those warning of a tech-industrial complex with so much power that they threaten to disable democracy.

As a liberal, I’m conflicted. The only thing worse than a Trump administration run by big corporations is a Trump administration not run by big corporations. Since their position isn’t built on charming inflamed MAGA fans, but on solving technical and business problems in a global economy, they will exert a moderating influence. When Trump wants to imprison opponents, stop global trade, deport all migrants, or invade Greenland, they will try to get him to count to ten (though I no longer dare rule out anything regarding Musk).

Tesla’s 15% stock increase after Trump’s victory shows that someone's proximity to power is disturbingly valuable.

On the other hand, it’s impossible not to feel deep concern when the most powerful state and the largest capital are in the same boat. Tesla’s 15% stock increase after Trump’s victory shows that someone's proximity to power is disturbingly valuable. When I recently interviewed Musk, he said the state should act as a referee but not interfere in the game, which was wise. But it doesn't get better when a player wants to play referee.

Money doesn't buy elections—after all, Harris had more than the eventual victor—but it can buy influence with its recipients. Especially with someone as notoriously "transactional" (we used to say unprincipled) as Donald Trump. Just a year ago, Trump wanted electric car supporters to "rot in hell." Today, he is pro-electric cars, “I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”

But unsuitability is not the same as oligarchy. In fact, tech companies haven't assumed this role because they're so strong, but because they're so weak.

THIS IS MISSED IF YOU simply follow stock prices, but the big change in recent years is that Big Tech has gone from being everyone’s hero to everyone’s villain. After Trump’s 2016 victory, previously friendly Democrats started seeing social media as sewers of disinformation and demanded strict content control. The Biden administration also launched potentially devastating antitrust proceedings.

And no matter what they do, someone takes a swipe at them. When platforms became cosily progressive and moderated more content (even stories that turned out to be true), the right started seeing them as leftist censorship machines. Republicans like J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley demanded regulation and breakups. Trump threatened fines and monopoly laws to crush Amazon and Google. With few watertight principles for such power exercises, there are real risks of political arbitrariness. During the election campaign, Trump threatened to imprison Zuckerberg for life.

Tech giants suddenly realised they had lost all political allies.

This is especially dire as they simultaneously face existential risks in key foreign markets. Regulation-happy EU threatens their business models. Many were also shocked last year when Brazil's Supreme Court responded to Musk's refusal to block a series of X accounts by shutting down the entire platform and freezing Starlink’s assets—a completely different company with other stakeholders.

If Big Tech wants a chance in international battles over antitrust, censorship, and taxation, they need the U.S. on their side. Zuckerberg explicitly stated this in his recent repentance speech. The world wants to censor us, and “the only way we can counteract this global trend is with support from the American government.”

This isn't about people who love Trump. Except for Musk, none of the major players supported him before his victory. On the contrary, they’ve long fought against him but lost and are now pleading for mercy—and protection. Musk’s new role made it even more important to be there as a counterbalance to him since he's a tenacious critic who, among other things, has said that Amazon is a monopoly that needs to be broken up. Contrary to the notion of a homogeneous flock of bros, these men are jealous rivals vying for each other’s market shares. And suddenly a new Chinese AI model comes along that threatens all their inflated valuations.

So, the tech moguls aren't flattering Trump because they’re power-drunk, but because they’re scared. Bezos doesn’t humiliate himself with an ingratiating Amazon Prime documentary about Melania Trump because he can do whatever he wants, but because he can't.

The sad spectacle of the past few weeks has many calling for a mightier state to put the plutocrats in their place. On the contrary, I feel an urgent need for a few more independent billionaires who aren’t subject to such political arbitrariness that they constantly anxiously follow political trends.

* * * * 

Johan Norberg is a Swedish author and historian of ideas, devoted to promoting human progress, economic globalisation and classical liberal ideas.

This post is translated from Blacksmith, where it first appeared.

Patriotism ...


"Alchemy is not chemistry.
"Altruism is not caring.
"Socialism is not sharing.
"Astrology is not astronomy.
"H2SO4 is not water.
"Nationalism is not patriotism."

Wednesday, 29 January 2025

"The Treaty Principles Bill ... provides a coherent and succinct statement capturing what liberal democracy is"


"Consider the two words 'liberal', 'democracy' and their connection. Both give us something that none of our ancestors living in kinship groups had. 'Democracy' gives us a system of parliamentary sovereignty, of law, of regulation. It recognises that our common humanity justifies equal rights. Those rights belong to the individual citizen, not to the group.
    "The word 'liberal' gives us the freedom to be different – as individuals and in voluntary associations based on a range of shared interests –culture, heritage, language, sport, music, religion, politics, and so on.
    "This is what makes liberal democracy remarkable. As citizens we have the same political and legal rights. As members of civil society we are free to be different. This is an enormously important point. It is the combination of rights, responsibilities and freedom within democracy's governance and laws that makes the modern world vibrant and prosperous.
    "That's why I support the Treaty Principles Bill – because it provides a coherent and succinct statement capturing what liberal democracy is – something we should all know, especially ... Members of Parliament ...
    "The Bill is the symbolic link to the hope found in both the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and in the 1852 Constitution Act. Nineteenth century New Zealanders, especially those who had been slaves, decimated by war, of low genealogical birth status, or from impoverished backgrounds – they put their faith in a peaceful and prosperous future for their descendants. In the 21st century we can strengthen that faith for our descendants by agreeing to the principles in this Bill.
    "New Zealand's future may be that of a prosperous first-world liberal democratic nation or a third-world, retribalised state. A first world tribal nation is a contradiction in terms. It is not possible. There can be no prosperity without individual equality and freedom. There can be no social equality without prosperity. ...
    "[A]s early as the 1870s there's the commitment to a united people who belong to, and benefit from, the nation 'New Zealand.' Nearly 150 years later that commitment is under serious threat from those who would replace liberal democracy with tribal sovereignty and, by doing so, create a racialised society – apartheid." 

 

Tuesday, 28 January 2025

The difference between an insult & Ad Hominem

 

Yes folks, there is a difference ...


Trump's tariffs have had a chance, and already failed


You don't need to wait to see what will happen. Trump's tariffs have already had a chance, and they've failed, explains Timothy Taylor.
President Trump set off a wave of protectionist trade policies about seven years ago, back in 2018, and those policies were mostly extended and followed during President Biden’s term of office as well.
So we can already measure the results from Trump 1.0. And, who would have thought ...
[U]nsurprisingly to most economists, trade restrictions have done a poor job of producing the desired results. ..
"The desired results" being those desired by Trump 1.0 and his protectionist advisors.

Apart from making tariff threats for geopolitical ends ("Give us Greenland or feel our trade wrath") America First's protectionists claimed there to be three specific economic benefits from their economic protectionism:
  1. more US jobs in manufacturing;
  2. reducing US economic ties with China; and
  3. reducing the trade deficit.
Studying the results since Trump 1.0, it's clear that all three are dead on arrival.

Taking them one at a time.
1. American manufacturing employment has been declining ever since WWII. If anything however, it accelerated under Trump's tariffs. Why?
As [one economist] points out, there are several effects of trade barriers on US manufacturing jobs: a certain domestic industry is protected against competition, but higher prices in that industry can lead to problems for other domestic industries, and foreign countries may retaliate by shutting out US-produced exports. Put these together, and [this] suggests that the Trump tariffs of 2018 may even have led to a reduction in US manufacturing jobs.

2.  Even while Americans were taxed to trade with China (which is what a tariff does) US trade with China has remained steady for more than a decade. "[S]even years of protectionism has not led to any meaningful drop in China’s value-added share." But it has led to Americans paying more for their goods.

3. The 'current account deficit' is the broadest measure of the trade deficit, explains Taylor. And was thus reduced by Trump's tariffs? Answer:

This measure also doesn’t change much in the years after the Great Recession, and then gets much worse during the pandemic. In short, seven years of protectionism hasn’t “fixed” the trade deficit, either.

Oops! 

[T]he main point is simply that judged in terms of its own main justifications, the surge of protectionism since 2018 has not been achieving its goals.
    One can of course offer reasons for this failure. A common pattern in politics–and not just in trade issues–is that the failure of past policies to achieve their stated goals then becomes a new justification for more of the same. In this case, the failures of past protectionism become a reason for additional protectionism.
    As one example. after Trump renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) back in 2018, transforming it into US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), he said in his press conference: “Once approved by Congress, this new deal will be the most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of our country, with the most advanced protections for workers ever developed.” Seven years later, Trump now apparently views the agreement that he renegotiated and lauded as a failure, and promises to dial up tariffs against Mexico and Canada–along with the rest of the world–to new heights.

Who would have thought it. Trump's not playing 4-d chess. He's playing 2-d Go-Fish. And losing.

Monday, 27 January 2025

What does free speech mean in the university context?


"[T]he University of Chicago is founded on, has operated through, and continues to extend a tradition of free inquiry and expression.” 
    "... President William Rainey Harper’s speech in 1902 ... said that the principle of complete freedom of speech on all subjects has been from the beginning regarded as fundamental in the University of Chicago. ... What does that actually mean in the university context?]
    "We use the term free speech, and it has a very strong cultural resonance in the United States of America, but it typically means the absence of constraint. I can say whatever I want, but the government can’t punish me. And obviously, that meaning doesn’t make much sense in a university context, for the reasons you articulated.
    "What we really mean, or what we really need to maximise, is people’s willingness and ability to challenge each other on their ideas, so that those ideas are sharpened and improved through open debate. And there’s so many forces that sort of work against that – cultural, institutional, sometimes legal – that that’s really the kind of speech we’re talking about, from my point of view.... I think what’s fundamental is that we prize intellectual challenge.
    "And you have to have free expression in order to have that challenge manifest. And that means that we’re in a climate, we seek to cultivate an environment in which assumptions that all of us have are open to inquiry and challenge, and we’re therefore able to develop better ideas. ... we should strive to be a place where we’re in conversation with each other towards improving knowledge and towards teaching young people how to inquire. I think that’s really the core of it, and what a community of scholars means to me."

~ Nico Perrino and Tony Badout in the 'So to Speak' podcast on: 'The Chicago Canon' [transcript here]

 

Sunday, 26 January 2025

SUNDAY READ: There Is No Good Reason to Revoke Birthright Citizenship





A US president may only issue an executive order in accordance with current law and his powers under the Constitution. A Reagan-appointed judge just issued a Temporary Restraining Order halting Trump's Executive Order outlawing birthright citizenship as outside the law. “I can’t remember another case whether the question presented was as clear,” he said.

Perfect time to read today's guest post by Alex Nowrasteh on why birthright citizenship is lawful, why it's good, and why there's no benefit to ending it.

There Is No Good Reason to Revoke Birthright Citizenship

by Alex Nowrasteh
Shortly after being inaugurated, President Trump issued an executive order that purports to restrict birthright citizenship. The only authority he invoked for redefining some features of birthright citizenship was “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.”

Birthright citizenship has been the norm in the United States since before the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and even before the American Revolution, going back to Calvin’s Case in 1608 that established jus soli in all areas ruled by the English Crown. In 1869, the British jurist Lord Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn summed up English common law as:
By the common law of England, every person born within the dominions of the Crown, no matter whether of English or of foreign parents, and, in the latter case, whether the parents were settled or merely temporarily sojourning, in the country, was an English subject, save only the children of foreign ambassadors (who were excepted because their fathers carried their own nationality with them), or a child born to a foreigner during the hostile occupation of any part of the territories of England. No effect appears to have been given to descent as a source of nationality.
American courts affirmed jus soli before the Civil War, as attorney Alexandra M. Wyatt wrote for the Congressional Research Service in 2015. She mentions several cases, such as the 1824 Supreme Court case of M’Creery’s Lessee v. Somerville, where the court proceeded on the assumption that three girls born in the United States were citizens even though their father was an Irish citizen who never naturalised. In the 1844 case of Lynch v. Clarke, a New York court held that Julia Lynch, who was born to Irish nonimmigrant sojourners in New York, was a US citizen. The most relevant quote from Lynch v. Clarke was this:
I can entertain no doubt, but that by the law of the United States, every person born within the dominions and allegiance of the United States, whatever were the situation of his parents, is a natural born citizen.
That standard was then codified in the first sentence of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, also known as the citizenship clause, which reads:
All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The only exceptions are those who are not under the jurisdiction of the US government, such as the children of diplomats, who are not under the direct power of the American government. Many online commentators point to a quotation by Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the Fourteenth Amendment and defended it, to argue that the amendment wasn’t intended to create birthright citizenship. During one debate, Howard said:
This amendment which I have offered, is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.
Howard’s first sentence is just an affirmation of the old English common law rule of jus soli that the United States inherited from Great Britain and that was earlier enforced by US courts, except for slaves and American Indians. But the second sentence is being misread online by people who support revoking birthright citizenship. The phrase, “This [the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment] will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers,” is being interpreted by some to mean that the three groups—foreigners, aliens, and those who belong to the families of ambassadors—are not children.

Wait a second, did you notice the difference between my summary and the original quotation? I inserted the word “and,” while Howard did not. That’s because Howard was describing the families of ambassadors as being foreigners and aliens. Howard did not list three distinct groups of people who were not under the jurisdiction of the US government; he described one group: ambassadors and their US-born children.

The 1898 Supreme Court decision of United States v. Wong Kim Ark established that the US-born children of immigrants were and remained citizens even if there were changes in law that would not have allowed them or their parents to legally immigrate here or naturalise. The Court held that a person born in the United States to Chinese parents who had travelled to China in his early 20s was a citizen of the United States and could not be denied reentry to the United States by the Chinese Exclusion Act. Combined with the earlier English common law, its application to the United States before the Civil War, and its codification in the Fourteenth Amendment to correct the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision that repudiated centuries of English and American law, it’s clear that the children born on US soil to nonimmigrants on worker or student visas, illegal immigrants, or mere travellers are US citizens.

Many lawyers, attorneys, and scholars will recount the above legal debate far better than I have. There are other issues that should be addressed if birthright citizenship is to no longer be the law of the land. 

The practical problem

To start, there are practical problems. There is no central registry of American citizens; native-born Americans show their birth certificates as evidence of citizenship. Everybody born here who registers their birth is granted a certificate in our decentralised system. Naturalised immigrants simply show their naturalisation documents. When either receives a passport, they use it to show citizenship. Trump’s order is prospective for those born to some non-citizen migrants, but if the courts uphold it, then he will issue future executive orders to broaden its scope—possibly to people who are already adults. At a minimum, any broadening will cause mass administrative chaos and uncertainty. Even if the executive order is not broadened, the chaos will still spread with births. If birth certificates are not good enough anymore, then we’d have to rely on proving that our parents were citizens or had another immigration status that allows their US-born children to be citizens. Can you do that?

There’s already an American law for inheriting citizenship referred to as jus sanguinis [meaning "right of blood"]. It is intended for children born to US-citizen parents overseas, but it can be quite cumbersome. It’s certainly more complicated than showing a birth certificate that says you were born in the United States. The elimination of birthright citizenship could eventually place every single person in America in the precarious position of having to prove American citizenship via descent to justify their own citizenship, or that of their children.

Creating a national registry of citizens would avoid some of the confusion described above. Of course, that would add another layer of complex determinations of citizenship at birth at potentially many thousands of locations by either immigration law experts or bureaucrats. This would be a managerial nightmare and not quite the destruction of the administrative state that we were all promised by the Trump administration. Then what happens to the share of children born here who are stateless, the people born in the United States who are ineligible for American citizenship and don’t have it from their parents’ home countries?

The practical administrative effects are bad, but the broader impact of revoking or constraining birthright citizenship on assimilation is worse. At a minimum, about 7 percent or so of those born on US soil each year would not be US citizens if birthright citizenship were revoked along the lines of the Trump executive order. That condition would worsen the assimilation of the children of immigrants and their descendants in the United States. After all, the children born here who aren’t citizens wouldn’t pass citizenship on to their US-born children if they married other noncitizens. It’s easy to see how that would produce worse outcomes—just look at Europe.

How to create resentment

The German Citizenship and Nationality Law of 1913 only granted citizenship to those with at least one parent who was a German citizen at the time of the child’s birth, a fairly extreme version of jus sanguinis. Those citizenship laws created an assimilation crisis after World War II when post-war guest worker programs admitted many Turks, Tunisians, and Portuguese to work in the booming economy. Many of these workers stayed and had children who weren’t automatically citizens.

Among other causes, a lack of citizenship led to resentment among generations with only partial allegiance to the country of their birth. German-born non-citizens formed “parallel societies” and were more prone to crime and political radicalism than German-born German citizens. Germany provides the best opportunity to study the effects of birthright citizenship on assimilation. In 1999, the German parliament amended that law to create a birthright citizenship component for children born on or after January 1, 2000, if at least one parent had been ordinarily residing in the country for at least eight years. The law also created a transition period for many children born from 1990 through 2000 to be naturalized if they met the requirements of the new law.

This change in German citizenship law prompted a flood of research on how the new law affected immigrant assimilation in Germany, as I have written about. Economists Ciro Avitabile, Irma Clots-Figuera, and Paolo Masella looked at how the new German law affected parental integration in a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious Journal of Law and Economics. Their paper uses responses from the German Socio-Economic Panel survey to see how immigrants whose children were affected by the new citizenship law changed their behavior relative to those unaffected. The paper focuses on measurements of these immigrants interacting with Germans (visiting or being visited by a German in a social situation), speaking German, and reading German newspapers. On all three metrics, the immigrant parents of children who could be naturalised became more integrated.

The effects were small but noticeable. The percentage of immigrant parents who had interactions with Germans rose from 71 percent before the reform to 77 percent afterward; the ability to speak German rose from 65 percent before the reform to 69 percent afterward; and reading of German newspapers increased from 2.6 to 2.9 on a five-point scale (1 is home country papers only, and 5 is German papers only). Importantly, the measure of speaking German doesn’t control for fluency. They also found that the outcomes are larger for immigrants who came from a country that speaks an Indo-European language. Importantly, Turkish is not an Indo-European language. For those from a non-Indo-European language group, the reform had no effect on language acquisition, but it increased their interactions with Germans to the same degree as those of Indo-European language speakers.

Taking a wider view of the impact of this law in Germany, Avitabile, Clots-Figuera, and Masella, the same economists mentioned above, published a peer-reviewed paper in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that looks at how child citizenship laws affected fertility decisions among immigrants. Fertility is partly (but not entirely) influenced by culture, so many social scientists and economists think it is an important indicator of immigrant assimilation. Consistent with Gary Becker’s quality-quantity model of fertility, they found that birthright citizenship reduced immigrant fertility and improved their health by cutting obesity and improving the social-emotional outcomes of the affected children. Again, the effects are small, but the citizenship reform moved immigrants closer to German fertility and health norms.

Researchers Nicolas Keller, Christina Gathmann, and Ole Monscheuer also examined how fertility and family structure change under the altered citizenship laws. They found that within 7.2 years of eligibility for citizenship, the immigrant-native fertility gap fell by 20 percent by raising the age of first births to immigrant mothers and reducing the likelihood of them having children. The citizenship reform also narrowed the marriage gap between German and immigrant women by 45 percent and German and immigrant men by 50 percent. Immigrant women were also more likely to marry men who were not from their own country of origin after the reform, but the effect was small.

Christina Felfe, Helmut Rainer, and Judith Saurer found that immigrant parents enrolled their children in preschool at a higher rate after the citizenship reform, closing the gap with native Germans. They also enrolled them earlier in primary school and pushed their children into the university track at higher relative rates. Furthermore, reported “attention deficits” and “emotional problems” for the children of immigrants also decreased in schools relative to natives, while there was no effect on reported “social problems,” “German language proficiency,” or “school readiness.” Another paper by Felfe, Rainer, Saurer, and Martin Kocher found that the educational achievement gap between young immigrant men and their native male peers nearly closed due to the reform and that immigrant boys became more trusting. The latter effect virtually eliminated in-group favoritism for immigrant boys. The granting of citizenship to immigrant children also reduced return migration and increased the rate at which mothers who stay at home with their children were counted among the parents whose children were affected.

Conclusion

The revocation of birthright citizenship not only goes against almost 420 years of legal precedent but also will raise practical difficulties for native-born Americans regardless of their parentage. Furthermore, revoking birthright citizenship will likely worsen assimilation outcomes for the children of immigrants who aren’t born citizens. Perhaps those added problems are worth it in exchange for large benefits, but proponents of revoking birthright citizenship can’t point to any of those. With the law, tradition, common sense, reason, and empirical evidence on the side of maintaining birthright citizenship, we can only hope that the courts maintain our exceptional system in its current form.

* * * * 

Alex Nowrasteh is is an American analyst of immigration policy currently working at the Cato Institute. His popular publications have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Post, and most other major publications in the United States. Nowrasteh regularly appears on Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, NPR, and numerous television and radio stations.

Saturday, 25 January 2025

Tidal Wrapped

 

I'm still hearing folk talking about what their "Spotify Wrapped" told them in December about their favourites. Interesting.

I don't use Spotify.  When I'm at the office I use Tidal. Tidal has higher-quality streaming, pays musicians more, and takes more care about crediting the artists. Tidal doesn't have a "Wrapped" thing showing you your favourite artists just once a year — Tidal does it all the time ...



How would your Top 49 look?


Friday, 24 January 2025

... the *state* of this nation! [updated]

"Brief thoughts on [the PMs'] 'State of the Nation' [speech]: Focus on economy is good. Saying 'economic growth' a lot & renaming the Economic Development portfolio doesn't do much.  [I'm] confused as to what the role of Invest NZ is compared with NZ Trade & Enterprise (NZTE). 
    "The idea of less saying 'no' is great but it is not a policy or a roadmap. 
    "There was a whole lot of nothing in that speech. Aspiration, ideas, hopes. We need some steel spines & brass balls when it comes to the economy. Nicola & Luxon need to stand up & unapologetically declare that they are going to be brave, bold, ruthless. Spending has to come down. Growth doesn't matter if spending outstrips it. 
    "I am underwhelmed and anxious. I'm a swing voter; past two elections I've voted centre-right. That State of the Nation speech has given me anxiety. With scores of advisors, comms people, ministers etc that was what they came up with? I WANT THE GOVT TO SUCCEED!! Because I want to live in NZ. 
    "That was depressing."
          ~ Ani O'Brien

"Luxon’s ‘going for growth’ just grows the government bureaucracy. ...
    "Christopher Luxon’s State of the Nation speech on the economy strikes, but misses the mark, with no announcements that will increase New Zealand’s productivity, or unshackle the private sector that drives growth. 
    "[T]he speech was more about 'feels' and repeating old announcements than concrete policy changes to improve New Zealand’s prosperity.
    "The only exception is, bizarrely, another government agency, apparently to attract foreign investors.”   
    “The speech represents shifting deck chairs, not the sort of economic reform the times call for.” 
    “People don’t invest in a country because a government agency tells them to. Claims that this model is seen in Ireland or Singapore are fantasy. Investors in those countries don’t have among the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Today’s speech would have meant something had it tackled our tax settings or securities law which make investing here so unattractive.”
    “New Zealand’s lack of foreign investment isn’t because of a lack of bureaucrats. It’s because we don’t offer competitive investments. Today’s speech lacks the seriousness or urgency in ‘going for growth’.”
          ~ Jordan Williams

[Hat tip cartoon Dr Stephen Clarke]

UPDATE:

Eric Crampton tries for more optimism. Like Denis De Nuto, it's all about "the vibe," he reckons

A shift in vibe has to be backed by more than speeches. The culture in our bureaus and agencies needs to change, along with the regulatory regimes. That will take real work.
    But the shift in vibe is welcome. It’s time to build.

"Disruption isn’t good or bad on its own. It depends on how and why it happens."


"A comment published in my local alt-weekly newspaper raised a provocative question:
'Funny, isn’t it, how when some tech billionaire 'disrupts' an industry, bankrupting businesses and putting people out of work, it’s presented as a good thing, yet when the state 'disrupts' an industry to cut back on fossil fuels pollution and other environmental damage, the disruption is presented as a problem. ...'
    "Since the comment was meant to provoke a response, let’s respond.      
    "Put simply, these market and government disruptions aren’t the same. Very different forces drive them, and they lead to very different outcomes.
    "When a firm—even a firm led by a tech billionaire—'disrupts' an established industry, it isn’t as if it happens because they waved a magic wand and changed the rules overnight. Indeed, they may not change the rules at all. ...
    "Apple didn’t need a government mandate to displace Blackberrys and flip phones. Instead, consumers willingly adopted the new technology. ... This kind of disruption is a natural part of how markets work. New ideas replace old ones when they do a better job of satisfying consumer demand. ...
    "When governments decide to 'disrupt an industry [however], it’s usually through mandates, bans, quotas, or rate regulation—rules that everyone has to follow, whether they like it or not. These disruptions aren’t about offering people better choices, but enforcing certain outcomes. ...
    "This isn’t to say that all government intervention is necessarily harmful. ... The key difference is this: market disruptions arise because they offer something better. Government disruptions often happen because someone in power thinks they know more and better than the people and firms affected by the regulations. That’s a big distinction, and it’s why we should be careful about conflating market disruptions with government disruptions. ...
    "Think of it this way: if someone invents a faster, cheaper, and cleaner way to ship goods, businesses will jump at the chance to use it. If, however, the government tells firms to switch to a more expensive and less reliable method, the reaction will be very different. One is a choice; the other is a mandate. And that’s why people view them differently.
    "Disruption isn’t good or bad on its own. It depends on how and why it happens."

~ Eric Fruits from his post 'The Disruption Double Standard'

Thursday, 23 January 2025

Every single bureaucrat costs you $16.5 million


"An Auburn University study says every single regulator destroys fully 138 private sector jobs every year you keep him on the job. ...
    "GDP-adjusted to today, that translates to $16.5 million of economic output. For a hundred-thousand dollar bureaucrat.
    "This lost output is made of jobs and businesses that were never started. Or were stunted by strangling regulations — which are generally bought by big corporations specifically to strangle small competitors.
    "Along with mums and dads chased into bankruptcy as collateral damage to new regulations — say, a cafe forced to spend $30,000 on a low-energy exhaust fan.
    "So it’s not the bureaucrat’s hundred thousand salary that matters. It’s the 138 jobs he takes out. Every single year you keep him around.
    "In fact, you could fire him, keep paying him for life, and still put a hundred families in the middle class.
    "In recent videos I’ve mentioned research saying one dollar in taxes destroys 3 dollars in GDP. A regulator blows that out of the water — each dollar in regulator salary destroys 112 dollars in output."
~ Peter St Onge from his post 'Every Bureaucrat Destroys 138 Jobs'

Wednesday, 22 January 2025

"It just seems like failure."



"I have reasons to talk about why I actually think this is good for Israel, and I’m proud that we’re doing this deal. But putting those aside, I have such disappointment—overarching, overwhelming disappointment—that after 470-plus days, where we’ve landed is on this deal. Yes, we’re celebrating the three who came out yesterday. Yes, we’re going to continue to advocate for the 94 over the coming months as the deal is currently structured. But I’m just disappointed that this is the best that all of us can do after all of the fighting, all of the sadness, all of the tragedy. That the best we’ve landed on is this complex, tenuous deal that gets out roughly three people a week over 42 days, then leaves two-thirds of the people to be renegotiated later while there’s suffering on all sides. It just seems like failure."
~ Jon Goldberg-Poli, father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin who was killed in Hamas captivity, in the interview with Matti Friedman: 'Hamas Murdered Their Son. What Do They Think of the Ceasefire?'

"Disaster Day?"


 
"[Yesterday was] Donald day, or will it be ultimately recorded as disaster day?
    "The world will watch on nervously, fingers crossed that Trump’s minders can restrain his simplistic declarations and pray they don’t impact their nations. ...
    "His ignorance is spectacular and if I could trust an honest test, I’d happily bet a million dollars that he couldn’t point to, say, Belgium on a map.
    "He was substantially restrained in his first term, thanks largely to the limitations forced on him by the Covid epidemic. However, no-one knew him better than his senior colleagues from that term, namely his vice-President, senior office-holders and others, who to a man have all subsequently came out strongly against him. ...
    "Trump is not only driven by ego but arguably more by an obsessive money passion. It’s no surprise that in league with Musk, they’ve created their own crypto currency as an escape route from their financial problems. ...
    "On the positive side the next four years will provide wonderful entertainment as we watch the diverse madness of Trump’s constant whims unfold.
    "We can (hopefully) in New Zealand, remain immune from any damage that will arise, albeit not so America which will ultimately bear the brunt, should for example Trump’s preposterous import taxes come into play."
~ Bob Jones from his post 'D Day'