Steve Bannon on how war with Iran threatens the MAGA coalition

If you look at the three planks [of MAGA] - stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal alien invaders, and redo the commercial relationships in the world around trade deals and bring high value-added manufacturing jobs back here - they're [the Trump team] trying to shut all three down, but the one that they're obsessed with the most, which I find strange, is the forever wars.  They've got to be in the forever wars and in particular the Middle East.  And I'm a big supporter of Israel and I'm telling people, "hey, if we get sucked into this war which inexorably looks like it's going to happen on the combat side, it's not just going to blow up the coalition, it's also going to thwart what we're doing with the most important thing which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders that are here.  If we don't do that, we don't have a country."  And just see right now that they're doubling and tripling down.

[...]

If we don't lance the bull over this, if you can't turn it around with Trump, the Trump team he has - people like you, myself; they're blessed to have these apparatuses.  If we can't do this now, it's not going to get done.  And so that's why, to me,... of everything we're doing: stopping the forever wars, redoing the commercial relationship with China to bring jobs back and sealing the border and sending home, deporting 10 million, which is going to be massive, almost like a civil war in these big cities, of all of those... to get our sovereignty back, the war we have to have now, the throwdown we have to have now is with the deep state.  We've looked away too often.  We're just kind of kicking the can down the road.  And if we can't do it now with Trump, it's not going to get done.

~ Steve Bannon, "Tucker and Steve Bannon Respond to Israel’s War on Iran and How It Could Destroy MAGA Forever," Tucker Carlson, 0:45 and 6:05 mark, June 16, 2025

Bertrand Russell on war

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

~ Bertrand Russell

Jeffrey Sachs on why the U.S. opposes Russia and China

What do we have against Russia?  The fact of the matter is, Russia is big.  Russia is powerful.  And for that reason and that reason alone, or sufficiently, the U.S. would oppose Russia, just like the U.S. opposes China.  Now of course, maybe people listening to this would say, "That's crazy.  We oppose China because all of the terrible things they do."  Or "We oppose Russia because all of the terrible things they do."  I would take a different view of this which is, we make up stories about why we oppose big powers, but the basic reason we oppose big powers is that they are big.  They are an afront to our desire for what the political scientists in a fancy word call "primacy," or call "hegemony," or call "full spectrum dominance."  In other words, Russia is an afront to our ability to dictate circumstances.  China certainly is an afront to the U.S. ability to dictate circumstances in Asia.  For that reason alone, for the powers that be in Washington, that's completely antithetical to the American strategic purpose, which explicitly, for many, many years has been full spectrum dominance...  In other words, our purpose, as stated by the establishment, by the military industrial complex, is "We must be the unrivaled #1."

Jeffrey Sachs, "Jeffrey Sachs: The Dark Forces Pushing Trump Into War With Iran, & Ukraine/Russia New Escalation," Tucker Carlson, 7:15 mark, June 11, 2025

Promised Land on the first Irgun attacks

In Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001, Benny Morris writes that the Irgun Bombs of 1937 and 1938 “sowed terror in the Arab population and substantially increased its casualties. The bombs do not appear in any way to have curtailed Arab terrorism, but they do appear to have helped persuade moderate Arabs of the need to resist Zionism and to support the rebellion.”

The first Irgun attack occurred on November 11, 1937. Morris writes that the attacks were responsible for “killing two Arabs at a bus depot near Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, and wounding five. Three days later, on November 14, a number of Arabs were killed in simultaneous attacks around the country—a day that the Irgun thereafter commemorated as the ’Day of the Breaking of the Havlaga (restrain).’”

Morris also describes the events on July 6, 1938, when “an Irgun operative dressed as an Arab placed two large milk cans filled with TNT and shrapnel in the Arab market in downtown Haifa. The subsequent explosions killed twenty-one and wounded fifty-two. On July 15 another bomb killed ten Arabs and wounded more than thirty in David Street in Jerusalem’s Old City. A second bomb in the Haifa market—this time disguised as a large can of sour cucumbers—on July 25, 1938 killed at least thirty-nine Arabs and injured at least seventy. On August 26, a bomb in Jaffa’s vegetable market killed twenty-four Arabs and wounded thirty-nine.”

~ "The Beginning of the Israel-Palestine Conflict," Promised Land: The Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience

Wanted by the British government: Menachem Begin

Murray Rothbard on consumers, voters and knowledge

Consumers also take entrepreneurial risks on the market.  Many critics of the market, while willing to concede the expertise of the capitalist-entrepreneurs, bewail the prevailing ignorance of consumers, which prevents them from gaining the utility ex post that they had expected ex ante.  Typically, Wesley C. Mitchell entitled one of his famous essays: ‘The Backward Art of Spending Money.’  Professor Mises has keenly pointed out the paradox of interventionists who insist that consumers are too ignorant or incompetent to buy products intelligently, while at the same time proclaiming the virtues of democracy, where the same people vote for or against politicians whom they do not know and on policies which they scarcely understand.  

To put it another way, the partisans of intervention assume that individuals are not competent to run their own affairs or to hire experts to advise them, but they also assume that these same individuals are competent to vote for these experts at the ballot box.  They are further assuming that the mass of supposedly incompetent consumers are competent to choose not only those who will rule over themselves, but also over the competent individuals in society.  Yet such absurd and contradictory assumptions lie at the root of every program for ‘democratic’ intervention in the affairs of the people. 

In fact, the truth is precisely the reverse of this popular ideology.  Consumers are surely not omniscient, but they have direct tests by which to acquire and check their knowledge.  They buy a certain brand of breakfast food and they do not like it; and so they do not buy it again.  They buy a certain type of automobile and like its performance; they buy another one.  And in both cases, they tell their friends of this newly won knowledge.  Other consumers patronize consumers’ research organizations, which can warn or advise them in advance.  But, in all cases, the consumers have the direct test of results to guide them.  And the firm which satisfied the consumers expands and prospers and thus gains ‘good will,’ while the firm failing to satisfy them goes out of business.  

On the other hand, voting for politicians and public policies is a completely different matter.  Here there are no direct tests of success or failure whatever, neither profits and losses nor enjoyable or unsatisfying consumption.  In order to grasp consequences, especially the indirect catallactic consequences of governmental decisions, it is necessary to comprehend complex chains of praxeological reasoning.  Very few voters have the ability or the interest to follow such reasoning, particularly, as Schumpeter points out, in political situations.  For the minute influence that any one person has on the results, as well as the seeming remoteness of the actions, keeps people from gaining interest in political problems or arguments.  Lacking the direct test of success or failure, the voter tends to turn, not to those politicians whose policies have the best chance of success, but to those who can best sell their propaganda ability.  Without grasping logical chains of deduction, the average voter will never be able to discover the errors that his ruler makes.  

George J. Schuller, in attempting to refute this argument, protested that: ‘complex chains of reasoning are required for consumers to select intelligently an automobile or television set.’  But such knowledge is not necessary; for the whole point is that the consumers have always at hand a simple and pragmatic test of success: does the product work and work well?  In public economic affairs, there is no such test, for no one can know whether a particular policy has ‘worked’ or not without knowing the a priori reasoning of economics.

~ Murray Rothbard, Man, Economy, and State (1962)

(As quoted by Lew Rockwell in "The Greatness of Man, Economy, and State," LewRockwell.com, June 4, 2025.  See also here under "E. Utility Ex Post.")

Kevin Duffy on modern warfare

Warfare today is all about pinning the “aggressor” label on the opposing side and claiming victim status.  This allows the self-proclaimed victim to act with impunity – civilians be damned – all in the name of “self-defense.”  Thus modern warfare is filled with an endless litany of false flag operations, baiting the other side into firing the first shot, preemptive strikes and sensationalized propaganda (usually involving “killing babies”) all meant to gain the moral high ground and justify cutting the dogs of war loose.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Gaza: What Would Rothbard Think?," The Libertarian Alliance, June 8, 2025

Fred Hickey on the stock market: "This is about as toxic a brew as I could ever imagine"

The combination of investor complacency in an environment with trade wars, out-of-control U.S. government spending, enormous deficits and debts, funding risks in a period of financial tightening, rising inflation, supply shortages, a likely economic recession, loss of faith in "U.S. exceptionalism," a declining U.S. dollar, risk of monetary debasement and a "massively overvalued stock market" (per investor extraordinaire Paul Singer) is about as toxic a brew as I could ever imagine.

Not only are investors extraordinarily complacent, the bear market rally since April 7 has encouraged them to return to taking enormous risks.  They're piling into the MAG 7 stocks, which have accounted for over half of the S&P 500's total market cap gains since the early April bottom.  Worse yet, they're pouring into all sorts of garbage stocks, grossly overpriced high-fliers and cryptos, including MicroStrategy (MSTR), CoreWeave (CRWV), Tesla (196 times falling earnings and with slumping auto deliveries), Palantir (PLTR - 600 P/E) and many more.  Investors have added a record $437 billion into U.S. ETFs this year, with the largest inflows occurring following market declines.  Believing that they cannot lose in the long run, they buy every dip (thanks Fed!).

~ Fred Hickey, "Toxic Combination," The High-Tech Strategist, p. 2, June 2, 2025

Murray Rothbard on civilians and war

But "aggression" only makes sense on the individual Smith-Jones level, as does the very term "police action."  These terms make no sense whatever on an inter-State level.  First, we have seen that governments entering a war thereby become aggressors themselves against innocent civilians; indeed, become mass murderers.  The correct analogy to individual action would be: Smith beats up Jones, the police rush in to help Jones, and in the course of trying to apprehend Smith, the policy bomb a city block and murder thousands of people, or spray machine-gun fire into an innocent crowd.  This is a far more accurate analogy, for that is what a warring government does, and in the twentieth century it does on a monumental scale.  But any policy agency that behaves this way itself becomes a criminal aggressor, often far more so than the original Smith who began the affair.

~ Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, "War and Foreign Policy," p. 335

Murray Rothbard on how libertarians view war

Libertarians favor liberty as a natural human right, and advocate it not only for Americans but for all peoples.  In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no “foreign policy” because there would be no States, no governments with a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas.  But since we live in a world of nation-states.  And since this system is hardly likely to disappear in the near future, what is the attitude of libertarians toward foreign policy in the current State-ridden world? 

Pending the dissolution of States, libertarians desire to limit, to whittle down, the area of governmental power in all directions and as much as possible… 

Specifically, the entire land area of the world is now parcelled out among various States, and each land area is ruled by a central government with monopoly of violence over that area.  In relations between States, then, the libertarian goal is to keep each of those States from extending their violence to other countries, so that each State’s tyranny is at least confined to its own bailiwick.  For the libertarian is interested in reducing as much as possible the area of State aggression against all private individuals.  The only way to do this, in international affairs, is for the people of each country to pressure their own State to confine its activities to the area it monopolizes and not to attack other States or aggress against their subjects.  In short, the objective of the libertarian is to confine any existing State to as small a degree of invasion of person and property as possible.  And this means the total avoidance of war.  The people under each State should pressure “their respective States not to attack one another, or, if a conflict should break out, to withdraw from it as quickly as physically possible.

~ Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, "War and Foreign Policy," pp. 331-332

1919 (published posthumously)

Murray Rothbard on modern war vs. pre-modern war

It was not always thus.  During the Middle Ages, the scope of wars was far more limited.  Before the rise of modern weapons, armaments were so limited that governments could – and often did – strictly confine their violence to the armies of the rival governments.  It is true that tax coercion increased, but at least there was no mass murder of the innocents.  Not only was firepower low enough to confine violence to the armies of the contending sides, but in the pre-modern era there was no central nation-state that spoke inevitably in the name of all inhabitants of a given land area.  If one set of kings or barons fought another, it was not felt that everyone in the area must be a dedicated partisan.  Moreover, instead of mass conscript armies enslaved to their respective rulers, armies were small bands of hired mercenaries.  Often, a favorite sport for the populace was to observe a battle from the safety of the town ramparts, and war was regarded as something of a sporting match.  But with the rise of the centralizing State and of modern weapons of mass destruction, the slaughter of civilians, as well as conscript armies, have become a vital part of inter-State warfare. 

Suppose that despite possible libertarian opposition, war has broken out.  Clearly, the libertarian position should be that, so long as the war continues, the scope of assault upon innocent civilians must be diminished as much as possible.  Old-fashioned international law had two excellent devices to accomplish this goal: the “laws of war,” and the “laws of neutrality” or “neutral’s rights”…  In short, the libertarian tries to induce the warring States to observe fully the rights of neutral citizens.  The “laws of war,” for their part, were designed to limit as much as possible the invasion by warring States of the rights of civilians in their respective countries.  As the British jurist F.J.P. Veale put it: 

The fundamental principle of this code was that hostilities between civilized peoples must be limited to the armed forces…  It drew a distinction between combatants and non-combatants by laying down that the sole business of the combatants is to fight each other and, consequently, that non-combatants must be excluded from the scope of military operations.

In the modified form of prohibiting the bombardment of all cities not in the front line, this rule held in Western European wars in recent centuries until Britain launched the strategic bombing of civilians in World War II. Now, of course, the entire concept is scarcely remembered, since the very nature of modern nuclear warfare rests upon the annihilation of civilians.

~ Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, "War and Foreign Policy," pp. 332-334

1973

Murray Rothbard on the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971

Of all the recent wars, none has come closer – though not completely so – to satisfying these three criteria for a “just war” than the Indian war of late 1971 for the liberation of Bangla Desh.  The government of Pakistan had been created as a last terrible legacy of Imperial Britain to the Indian subcontinent.  In particular, the nation of Pakistan consisted of imperial rule by the Punjabis of West Pakistan over the more numerous and productive Bengalis of East Pakistan (and also over the Pathans of the North-West Frontier).  The Bengalis had long been yearning for independence from their imperial oppressors; in early 1971, parliament was suspended as a result of Bengali victory in the elections; from then on, Punjabi troops systematically slaughtered the civilian Bengal population.  Indian entry in the conflict aided the popular Bengali resistance forces of the Mukhti Bahini.  While taxes and conscription were, of course, involved, the Indian armies did not use their weapons against Bengali civilians; on the contrary, here was a genuine revolutionary war on the Bengali public against the Punjabi occupying state.  Only Punjabi soldiers were on the receiving end of Indian bullets.

~ Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, "War and Foreign Policy," p. 336

Patrick Barron on Trump's protectionist promises

 Within a week’s time, protectionists claim that tariffs will generate more tax revenue (including the absurd claim that the tax revenue will be paid by foreign exporters), protect and/or repatriate manufacturing jobs to American shores, punish trading partners who don’t “play by the rules”, make America more self-sufficient in key industries, and not cause prices to rise.  Whew!  That’s quite a lot of promises, and they conflict with one another.  For example, will tariffs generate tax revenue or cause production to be repatriated to America?  You can’t have it both ways. 

Probably the most galling claim is that the protectionists want to force the rest of the population to buy only American products in order to benefit stockholders and workers in key industries.  There is no recognition that this claim cannot be fulfilled unless whatever benefit accrues to key industries must come at the expense of everyone else.  In other words, protectionists tout the concentration of benefits and keep quiet about the diffusion of cost.  But the costs are there, even if widely diffused.  Protectionism really isn’t a theory of betterment for all but a claim that certain people in certain occupations are special.  They must be paid more handsomely than the market, meaning you and me, wishes to pay.

~ Patrick Barron, "The Protectionists Have No Theory," Going Postal, June 5, 2025

Elon Musk on the Big Beautiful Bill

I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore.  

This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. 

Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.  You know it.

~ Elon Musk, tweet, June 3, 2025

(Reported in "Elon Musk slams Trump's spending bill: Here's what to know," CNBC, June 3, 2025)

Tom Woods on the U.S. government debt crisis

By now you probably know my opinion on all this: the debt problem is not going to be solved.  Almost nobody cares about it, and even people who profess to care are not nearly prepared to take the kinds of steps that need to be taken. 

It will eventually resolve itself in the form of a severe crisis.  Until then, nothing is going to be done. 

I am not normally a pessimist, as I think is obvious enough from my tone on the Tom Woods Show, but on this I know I'm right.

That doesn't make politics entirely useless: there are issues other than debt, and there's been positive movement on a handful of those.  But the spending problem will not be brought under control before the crisis.  That should be obvious.

~ Tom Woods, June 3, 2025

Mike Whitney on Trump's trade war with China

One of the oddities of the tariffs dust-up, was the fact that the Trump team never anticipated China’s retaliatory response.  It’s actually amazing.  The administration lives in such an information bubble that they thought China would cave in after their comical “Liberation Day” announcement.  What were they thinking? 

We know what Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent was thinking because he made a number of public statements that the US had an edge on China because ‘we were the deficit country.’  Here’s what he said in an interview on CNBC: 

“We are the deficit country.  They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them.  So, the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs.  They’re unsustainable for them.”  He cited estimates that China could lose 5-10 million jobs if tariffs persist, highlighting China’s economic vulnerability. 

This is idiocy.  This is like saying that the ragamuffin panhandler on the street-corner has the advantage over the flush businessman with millions in the bank.  The US is $36 trillion in debt while China has a $3 trillion surplus!  How does ‘being broke’ give us ‘the advantage’.  We’re lucky that China still accepts our currency at all, and yet, our Treasury Secretary thinks that being destitute gives us the “upper hand”.  A man like this should not be Treasury Secretary.

~ Mike Whitney, "Re-thinking U.S.-China Relations After the Tariffs Shipwreck," The Unz Review, May 20, 2025

Peter Schiff on the Big Beautiful Bill

When Trump was first elected, there was an expectation that @elonmusk and @DOGE would help lead the nation off the unsustainable fiscal path our nation has been traversing for decades. But the Big, Beautiful Bill not only fails to change course but amounts to stepping on the gas.

~ Peter Schiff, tweet, May 25, 2025

Shaun Rein on bringing back manufacturing to America

If Trump, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent want to bring low end manufacturing back to America to create low paying jobs for Americans, we should make a rule that their kids & grandkids should work in the factories first. 

 

Instead of designing dresses & shoes, Ivanka should sew clothes & cobble shoes together for her brand. 

Instead of Kai hitting golf balls, she should work in a factory making golf balls or the clothes for Tiger Woods, her mother's boyfriend.

Donny Jr could work as a foreman in a rare earth mine or gas field - he's full of enough hot air.

No, I want my kid and future grandkids innovating the next iPhone or drone company, not making them on the factory floor.

I want my descendants staying healthy by running in Nike or Hoka shoes, not making them. 

Yes, China benefits from trade with America.  But we benefit from trade with China too.  Our prosperity over the last 25 years is largely based on the backs of Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian workers.

We should be thanking them for making our lives better, not pillorying them. 

We should have a rule - any Congressmen or Cabinet member that supports war or reshoring low end manufacturing should be forced to have their progeny go to battle or work in factories first. 

I'd bet the warmongering and voodoo economic theory would stop immediately.

~ Shaun Rein, LinkedIn post, May 20, 2025

Sheldon Richman on Trump's "America First" agenda

America is an abstraction, which means different things to different people. In one sense, it's a country but not a single organism.  It's an association of individuals who have different interests built on their fundamental interest in peace and freedom.  Government tampering with freedom always favors some over others.  One person's subsidy is another person's burden.  Which one represents the real America?  Steel tariffs help steel producers (in the short term) but harm steel users, who far outnumber the producers.  This is an old story.  Does it have to be pointed out?

So, what is America First?  It's putty in the hands of a demagogue.

"American interests" are interests as seen by the people who run the government, that is, America's rulers.  They are a filter, an interpretation by interested parties.  This affords abundant opportunities to pursue narrow and even personal agendas. Rulers need not have any common interest with regular people.  They need votes, however, so rulers will strike the required poses, especially in election season. 

America First is about power and devotion to the ruler, without whom we cannot prosper.  You know the song and dance.

~ Sheldon Richman, "TGIF: Individuals, Not America First," Free Association, May 16, 2025

Derek Au on TSMC's Arizona semiconductor factories

Despite significant delays and cost overruns at TSMC’s Arizona plants, the company invested $65 billion during the Biden years and pledged another $100 billion after Trump took office. Derek Au, keen technology observer and investor, writes: 

Were it not for the punitive actions of the US [threat of tariffs], there is simply no advantage for the TSMC to build in the US.  The CHIPS Act subsidy is just a mild sweetener.  If you listen carefully to the announcement at the White House, Trump doesn’t even try to hide it.  He says he strong armed the Chairman [C.C. Wei].  If we believe in comparative advantage there are none for building advanced fabs in the US.  The operating costs are much higher, salaries are higher and there is no domestic talent.  There is also no local supplier chain. Everything has to be imported.  In Arizona they are saying the area around the fab is becoming Little Taipei.  Ethnic restaurants and grocery stores are springing up to cater to the new workers from abroad.  I’ve read that operating US chip plants would lower operating margins for the entire TSMC.  But they have no choice, because Trump is going after not only TSMC but its customers to force a realignment of the supply chain.

Derek recently visited a TSMC factory in northern Phoenix:

The place is pretty massive.  I drove around the front of the fab and all of the people in the employee lots walking towards the building were Asians.  The non-Asians that I saw had construction vests and looked like contractors, construction workers… 

~ Derek Au, as quoted in "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Murray Rothbard on the protectionist scheme

As we unravel the tangled web of protectionist argument, we should keep our eye on two essential points: (1) protectionism means force in restraint of trade; and (2) the key is what happens to the consumer.  Invariably, we will find that the protectionists are out to cripple, exploit, and impose severe losses not only on foreign consumers but especially Americans.  And since each and every one of us is a consumer, this means that protectionism is out to mulct all of us for the benefit of a specially privileged, subsidized few – and an inefficient few at that: people who cannot make it in a free and unhampered market. 

~ Murray Rothbard, “Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity,” 1986

Barbara Kolm and Miguel Del Valle on China's rise from poverty

In the 70s, China was among the poorest nations in the world.  Civil war and mismanagement by central authorities had torn the country apart.  Mao Zedong’s vision of self-reliance destroyed agriculture, devastated the economy ‘and led to mass starvation as people’s communes were established and resources were forcibly shifted from farming to heavy industry.’ (Dorn 2023)  The death of Mao and subsequent rise of Deng Xiaoping enabled a series of reforms that would turn the country away from central planning and toward a market-oriented economy. 

~ Barbara Kolm and Miguel Del Valle, "Free Trade Under Siege: Analyzing Contemporary Trade Policies," Free Trade in the Twenty-First Century (p. 237)

Wayne Winegarden and Rowena Itchon on creative destruction

International trade, like all productive contributions to economic growth, is a creatively destructive process that improves our lives by disrupting the old way of doing things.  While necessary to generate broad-based prosperity, these disruptions are not without a cost.  The growth in internet retailers, for instance, has brought a wider array of more affordable goods and services directly to people’s doorsteps around the world.  Between 2007 and 2017, it also created nearly a half million new jobs in fulfillment centers and e-commerce companies in the U.S. alone that paid nearly a third more than brick-and-mortar retail jobs on average.  While the job gains in the new economy also caused job losses and business closings for brick-and-mortar retailers, on net, e-commerce has vastly improved our quality of life.

~ Wayne Winegarden and Rowena Itchon, “Free Trade Myths and Realities” Free Trade in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 643-644

Kevin Duffy on Walter Williams

As a younger man, I had the privilege of hearing the late free market economist, Walter Williams, speak.  “People are worried about saving jobs, but as an economist, I get excited when jobs are destroyed,” he told the audience.  “Should we bemoan the invention of the dishwashing machine because it puts dish washers out of work?  There are an infinite number of jobs. Just come to my house this weekend and I’ll prove it to you.”

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Kevin Duffy on the benefit to American consumers from trade with China

American consumers were standout winners in the pre-Trump 2.0 U.S.-China trade relationship.  Last year, the U.S. got 78% of its imported smartphones from China, 65% of its TVs and 76% of its toys.  As the chart below shows, these categories experienced massive deflation since 2000 at the same time the Consumer Price Index rose 81%. (Unfortunately, we can’t yet import pre-fab homes from China!)  More money in consumers’ pockets translates to more consumption, more investment and more jobs.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Caitlin Johnstone on the Israel lobby

It’s so gross that western society tolerates the existence of an Israel lobby.  Like “Oh so you’re here to convince my government to stomp out my free speech rights and use my tax dollars for wars and genocide to advance the interests of an apartheid state?  Yeah cool, I guess that’s fine.”

The existence of the Israel lobby should be treated the same as a Nazi lobby or a pedophilia lobby.  Taking donations from pro-Israel groups should be as stigmatized as taking donations from the KKK or NAMBLA.

It’s not okay that each western nation has its own high-powered lobby group whose whole entire job is to insert itself into key points of influence and persuade our governments to destroy our civil rights and commit genocide.  Nobody should tolerate the existence of these groups. 

~ Caitlin Johnstone, "Israel Admits It Bombed A Hospital To Kill A Journalist For Doing Journalism," Caitlin Johnstone, May 14, 2025

Kevin Duffy on fixing America's economic problems and maintaining an empire

While America’s economic problems are fixable, American hegemony is ephemeral.  The U.S. can have guns or butter, but not both. 

President Trump is writing checks he cannot cash.  He can’t maintain an empire and reduce the size of government.  He can’t limit cheap imports and keep a lid on inflation.  He can’t manage trade from the top down and cultivate a free market from the bottom up.  He can’t bully the world and enjoy the privilege of printing the world’s reserve currency.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Bill Ackman on the damage done by Trump's trade war

Unless it is clear that a company can continue to source from China on economically viable terms, it must leave the country.  There is not a board of directors or management team who will ever again feel comfortable relying on China for a major portion of their supply chain.  The damage has been done.

~ Bill Ackman

Gene Seroka on import volume drying up at Port of Los Angeles

About a third of the import volume, which means give or take about 50,000 20 foot equivalents gone off the arrivals next week...  The other thing is that retailers are saying "We've got about 5 to 7 weeks of normal inventory in the country right now, then we start to see spot shortages if it goes on much beyond this.

~ Gene Seroka, Port of Los Angeles executive director, tweet of interview, May 3, 2025

Paramore on the denial phase of an unwinding bubble

I don't mind lettin' you down easy, but just give it time

If it don't hurt now, a-just wait, just wait a while

You're not the big fish in the pond no more

You are what they're feedin' on

Where you're from, you might be the one who's running things

Well, you could ring anybody's bell and get what you want

See, it's easy to ignore trouble

When you're living in a bubble

So what are you gonna do

When the world don't orbit around you?

So what are you gonna do

When nobody wants to fool with you?

Ain't it fun

Livin' in the real world?

Ain't it good

Bein' all alone?

~ Paramore, "Ain't It Fun" (2014)

Jeffrey Sachs on the end of American exceptionalism and rise of Asia

Most of the world population lives in Asia, about 60%.  For most of history, that means that roughly 60% of the world economy, world output, was produced in Asia, as best as one can tell when historians look back and try to recreate economic estimates.  In recent centuries, that changed decisively with the rise of Europe and of the north Atlantic because in the 19th and 20th centuries, of course, the United States rose to become the largest economy in the world.  Asia was eclipsed in this.  Not only eclipsed, of course, it was dominated by European imperial powers.

If you look around 1820 or so, Asia was still more than half of the world economy, but by 1950, after 150 years of the industrial age, dominated by Europe and the United States, the whole Asian economy had declined to around 20% of world output from what had been roughly 60%.  This meant China completely being eclipsed and of course in fact attacked and losing many wars, first to the West in the first and second Opium Wars to chaos during the so-called Taiping Rebellion in the middle of the 19th century to the extraterritorial privileges or rights or dominance of European powers in China at the end of the 19th century and then to Japanese invasion in several episodes, starting with the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95 and then several Japanese invasions, in fact, in the 20th century and the massive invasions of the 1930s.  Civil war in China in the 1940s.  And this meant that by the time of the establishment of the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949, China had gone through about 110 years of devastating defeats of what China calls the "century of humiliation."  China's share of the world economy was estimated to be maybe 2% of world output and roughly 20% world population as of the 1950s.  In other words, China was completely eclipsed from its long historical role in the world for at least a millennium, by the way, from 500 to 1500 AD.  Before the beginning of the European ascendancy, China clearly dominated the world across many technologies: gunpowder, steam engine, paper currency, the compass, large scale ocean navigation, and one could go on and on, in fact.

So, the story that we see today, taken from a very, very long-term perspective in history is the return of China to the front ranks of power in the world and economic productivity and technology.  In a sense, China has returned to its more traditional role in the world, which one could see for much of the last 2,000 years, in fact.  The rise of China, in this sense, should be understood as a rebalancing of what was absolutely unbalanced, and that is a European-dominated world.

Of course, it's very hard for Europeans and Americans to understand that the idea of European dominance in the world had become an absolute natural standby, and that's been true for several hundred years actually where as Europe rose in power, as European empires dominated the other parts of the world, full ideologies, belief systems, rewriting of history, a lot of racism one can add, even by the leading thinkers of world history in the West, came to say, "Well, Europe's dominance is natural.  European cultural superiority, maybe racial superiority," but whatever the argument was, "European superiority is natural."

Of course, now we're at the end of that phase of history.  And one should understand, it's not only the return of China.  It's also the rapid development of India, it's the rapid development of southeast Asia, the so-called ASEAN countries, it's the rapid development of parts of west Asia in the Gulf countries, for example.  All of this is rather fundamentally ending the Euro-centric view of the world or what in the late 19th century to the early 21st century became the north Atlantic, NATO-centered vision of the world, and by the end of the 20th century became the American-centered vision of the world.

And when you have these temporary imbalances of economy and power...  The tendency is to put a bulwark under them in ideological or religious or some other philosophical sense to say, "That imbalance is natural."  In the United States, the idea of American exceptionalism is very deep.  The idea that, "Yes, of course, America rules the world" is a deep part of the belief system, not a superficial item.  

So the rise of China is viewed with alarm, it's viewed with disdain, it's viewed with fear.  It's not viewed with equanimity.  I don't know any American leaders that say, "Well, of course China's a big power that's had a long history of civilizational greatness so it's natural that China's doing well."  What you hear is, "China's the great threat to the world.  China's rise must be stopped.  We must contain China.  We must prepare for war.  China cheated and stole its way to economic recovery...  It's artificial; China will collapse."  In other words, many erroneous, superficial, biased, sometimes blatantly racist views to undergird this sense of superiority in the U.S. that built up over two centuries.

~ Jeffrey Sach, "Jeffrey Sachs: Chinese Statecraft and a New World Order," Glenn Diesen, 1:10 mark, May 2, 2025

Dani Rodrik on the CHIPS Act

A skeptic might object that Biden’s policies have not fully borne fruit and are not yet captured in official statistics.  But the fact is that hugely capital-intensive semiconductor plants generate few jobs, relative to the physical investment they require.  TSMC’s three fab investments in Arizona are expected to employ a mere 6,000 workers – which works out to more than $10 million per job.  Even if the projected tens of thousands of additional jobs in supplier industries materialize, that is a paltry return for employment.

~ Dani Rodrik, "America's manufacturing renaissance will create few good jobs," Project Syndicate, April 22, 2024

TSMC fab under construction in North Phoenix

Dani Rodrik on manufacturing productivity

Labor productivity in US manufacturing has grown nearly sixfold since 1950, compared to a mere doubling in the rest of the economy. The result has been a striking increase in the manufacturing sector’s ability to produce goods, but also an equally dramatic decline in its capacity to generate jobs. While value added in manufacturing (at constant prices) has broadly kept pace with the rest of the US economy, six million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 1980, while 73 million non-farm jobs have been created elsewhere (mainly in services).

When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, the share of US manufacturing in non-farm employment was 8.6%. When he left office, that figure had fallen to 8.4%, despite his attempt to shore up employment through import tariffs. And despite Biden’s significantly more ambitious efforts, manufacturing employment has dropped further, to 8.2%. The decline in manufacturing employment as a share of total employment (even if not in absolute terms) seems to be an irreversible trend. 

~ Dani Rodrik, "America's manufacturing renaissance will create few good jobs," Project Syndicate, April 22, 2024

Barron's on gold's limited value in a portfolio

Our top tip on how gold behaves is this: It doesn't.  People do the behaving, and they are appallingly unreliable.  Use bonds as a stock market hedge.  If they don't work, fall back to patience.  For inflation protection, think of assets that are a better match than gold for the goods and services that you buy every week.  A diversified commodities fund has precious metals but also industrial ones, along with energy and grains.  Treasury-inflation-protected securities are explicitly linked to the consumer price index, which measures inflation for a theoretical individual whose buying patterns differ from your own, but are close enough.  Own a house.

~ Jack Hough, "Stash Some Gold in Your Portfolio - But Not Too Much," Barron's, April 26, 2025

Rick Santelli on globalization

I think it is pretty simple: globalization was deflationary.  Reversing it is the opposite.

~ Rick Santelli, CNBC, April 3, 2025

Kenneth Pringle on President McKinley's China agenda

China was also on McKinley’s agenda. 

The Middle Kingdom had been divided into “spheres of influence” by the European powers.  American business feared missing out on this huge untapped market. 

On Sept. 6, 1899, McKinley issued the Open Door Note, demanding the Europeans allow China to become “an open market for the commerce of the world.”  This wasn’t free trade in the modern sense, simply a right for all to share in the pillaging of China’s dying Qing dynasty. 

Today, the Chinese consider this era part of its “Century of Humiliation.”  It drives leader Xi Jinping in his dealings with the West.

~ Kenneth G. Pringle, "McKinley Is a Conservative Darling. Why Trump Admires the 25th President," Barron's, February 2, 2025

Kenneth Pringle on President Biden's mercantilism

In slapping tariffs of 100% on Chinese electric vehicles, and 25% to 50% on products from semiconductors to surgical masks, Biden expands a trade war started by predecessor and self-proclaimed "Tariff Man" Donald Trump.  The U.S. wants Europe to join, and China is threatening retaliation.

Biden is actually following a much older trading strategy, one favored by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Herbert Hoover - and Queen Elizabeth.

From the 16th to 19th centuries, trade was a national competition to protect industry, improve world standing, and pursue politics by other means.  A zero-sum game, with winners and losers.

War, colonialism, great wealth, and poverty were the consequences.  Adam Smith dubbed it the mercantile system, or mercantilism.

Now Biden, who once championed China's entry into the World Trade Organization, is using punitive tariffs against China to "make sure American workers and American business and corporations can compete and win in the industries of the future."

Welcome to Mercantilism 2.0.

~ Kenneth G. Pringle, "Biden's Tariffs Are Nothing New for U.S.," Barron's, June 17, 2024

Shaun Rein: "Hi Scotty Bessent, it's been 12 years since we last met to talk about investing in China"

Hi Scotty Bessent, it's been 12 years since we last met to talk about investing in China when you were still CIO over at Soros (btw, amazing how you moved from Soros' right hand to Trump's side despite MAGA hating Soros).

At the time, it was clear to me you underestimated China's economic rise & support for the CPC among everyday Chinese.  You were uber bearish on China because it adopted a communist political system, and you didn't think the growth rates were sustainable. You took an ideological rather than a data based view at analyzing China.  There was also a whiff of American superiority (let's be real and call it bigotry) in your analysis.

Boy, you were wrong obviously.  You should have listened to me then.  China became the world's largest retail market, powering the profits of American firms from Boeing to Nike, Apple, Estee Lauder, Buick, KFC.  It now rivals us in technology from DeepSeek to Huawei to BYD.

[...]

Now you're US Treasury Secretary. Congrats!  Again, you'll have to tell us how you switched from Soros to MAGA.

But now your underestimation of China is dangerous - it doesn't just hurt your returns for your LPs, now you're hurting the economic well being of me and my fellow Americans for being so arrogant and blind about China.

China has the resolve to push back hard against Trump's tariffs even though you think China doesn't have the cards.  Xi Jinping won't yield.  China views this as a once in a century opportunity to change the world order forever, at our disadvantage.  And the CPC's legitimacy doesn't come from a Democratic vote, it comes from making China strong again after a century of humiliation from American and European imperial powers.  In other words, the CPC has been preparing for a showdown like this since it's very existence.

China has derisked from America since 2017.  They are selling well into ASEAN and Africa.  Your America First strategy has alienated Europe and Canada so they are pivoting back to China.  We are isolated and friendless, just like you, JD Vance and Trump intended.

Xi Jinping, Wang Yi and He Lifeng won't take your call, but I will.  Maybe you'll listen to me to figure out how to extricate America from the economic and geopolitical mess you've gotten us in. 

Shipping volumes are down to covid era levels, farmers are demanding subsidies and Walmart and Apple's CEOs are telling you there will be shortages come the summer.  Our stock markets are like a casino, waiting for word from you or Trump that your tariff stupidity won't go on forever.

America and China both benefit from cooperation and mutual respect.  Let's get back to Bush era respect.  I'll even take the Obama era.

You ignored my advice once 12 years ago, don't ignore it again. 

~ Shaun Rein, Twitter/X post, April 23, 2025

Eric Schliesser on the likely cronyism from Trump's tariffs

From my own, more (skeptical) liberal perspective tariffs are an expression of mistrust against individuals’ judgments; they limit and even deny us our ability to shape our lives with our meaningful associates as we see fit.  And tariffs do so, in part, by changing the pattern of costs on us, and, in part, by altering the political landscape in favor of the well-connected few.  

Of course, in practice, tariffs are always hugely regressive by raising costs on consumer products.  This is, in fact, a familiar effect of mercantilism and has been a rallying cry for liberals since Adam Smith and the Corn league.  That is, some of the most insidious and dangerous effects of tariffs are evidently political in character.  They create monopoly profits for the connected few, who can, thereby, entrench themselves against competitors, regulators, and consumers.  It is well known that once a tariff is entrenched it is incredibly difficult to remove.  They create permanent temptations to bribe the executive and those with access to him.  

Watch for stories about import-quotas, tariff holidays, and ad hoc tariff exemptions to appear in the press and subsequent policy.  Political and economic uncertainty is generally a self-reinforcing process.  To undo it more and more actions by the executive are demanded by a scared public manipulated by profit-seeking adventurers.  It’s entirely predictable we’ll see the rise of a system of selective subsidies and cartels as Trump Tariffs are entrenched. 

~ Eric Schliesser, professor of political science at the University of Amsterdam

(Quoted by Lew Rockwell in "Trump's Insane Tariff Policy," April 17, 2025

Shaun Rein on Scott Bessent's view of China

It's not going to be an easy win for Trump's tariffs and trade war.  Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury Secretary, says that China isn't holding the cards and is going to fold quickly.  Now on a slight personal anecdote, I've actually advised Scott in the past when he was still at Soros Investment Management and he was investing in China.  He has been bearish and negative on China for 12-13 years, ever since I met him.  Basically, his view of analyzing the Chinese equity markets was "It's a communist country.  Thus, from an ideological standpoint, China will fail."  Well obviously in the last dozen years since I advised Scott, China's economy and political system has grown.  So Scott was not looking at data, was not looking at facts about China's strength then and he's not looking at facts and strengths now.

~ Shaun Rein, "'Made in USA:' A Wishful Scheme Dressed Up As Policy," 4:00 mark, Thinkers Forum, April 23, 2025

Shaun Rein: manufacturing is not coming back to the U.S.

Don't get me wrong, this is definitely going to bring pain to the Chinese economically.  You're already seeing scores of cheap manufacturing already closing shop and relocating to Vietnam and Cambodia. Let me also be clear, they're moving to cheaper destinations.  They're not going to bring jobs or manufacturing back to the United States.  It's just not going to happen.  American doesn't have the manufacturing ecosystem: workers, land, laws that help promote strong manufacturing.  

You're already seeing TSMC, Taiwan's big semiconductor company, has spent billions of dollars trying to build semiconductor factories in Arizona and they've had huge problems, from a human resource standpoint, from a quality control standpoint and from a regulatory standpoint.  This was supposed to be Joe Biden's baby.  So it's a pipe dream, to use a word that Janet Yellen, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, said.  It's a pipe dream to bring all this manufacturing back to the United States.

It's much better for China to make what it's good at and the United States to make what they're good at.

~ Shaun Rein, "'Made in USA:' A Wishful Scheme Dressed Up As Policy," 9:55 mark, Thinkers Forum, April 23, 2025

Shaun Rein on China's resolve in the trade war with the U.S.

In the United States, a lot of people think that China's nervous about the trade war and is going to kneel down and fold and give in to all of Trump's demands.  That's just not going to happen.  I want to remind my fellow Americans of one word, and that's the R-word: "resolve."  Right now Xi Jinping and the Chinese people are coalescing together.  They're not scared about the United States.  They're going to push back really hard.

You have to remember two points.  First is China underwent a century of humiliation at the American and European colonial powers when they forced China to open up their borders to sell opium and to pay huge taxes to the Western colonial powers.  Because of this, China suffered for a hundred years before the rise of the CPC in 1949.  So Xi Jinping and the Chinese people are resolved not to give in a second time to imperial powers.  They're going to push back a lot harder than most Americans think.

The second this is the Chinese can eat bitter a lot more than Americans.  You have to think, even Xi Jinping himself lived in a cave for many, many years during the Cultural Revolution.  He knows what it's like to endure hardship.

[...]

What Trump is doing now, threatening our allies, threatening our adversaries, is just doing damage to the United States.  For instance, China is no longer buying American beef; they're buying beef from Australian.  China is no longer buying oil from the United States; they're now buying oil from Canada.  China is no longer buying American soybeans; they're now buying soybeans from Brazil.  China is no longer buying Boeing airplanes.  Xiamen Airlines refused to accept a Boeing airplane that had just arrived in China.  They're now buying Airbuses from France or they're expanding COMAC [Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China], the Chinese indigenous homegrown domestic airplane brand which they just signed a deal to sell several COMACs to Malaysia.

So what's happening is the entire world's [trading] system is shifting.  China can basically buy everything that America sells, except for semiconductors, from other countries.  The United States can only buy antibiotics, refined rare earth, iPhones, computers from China.  And that's why China right now has the upper hand in the trade war.

~ Shaun Rein, "'Made in USA:' A Wishful Scheme Dressed Up As Policy," 0:55 and 8:40 mark, Thinkers Forum, April 23, 2025

Augusta Saraiva on the likely decline of international tourists visiting the U.S.

International travelers spent a record $254 billion in the US last year, according to ITA figures. Coming into 2025, the outlook was positive: The ITA projected in early March that the US would welcome 77 million visitors this year, just shy of the 2019 record, before pushing to a new high in 2026.

But those estimates came out just before stories of harsh detentions at US airports, ensnaring travelers from countries like France and Germany, started making headlines. Canadians, meanwhile – the largest group of foreign tourists in the US – are choosing to stay put as Trump ramps up attacks on the country’s economy and sovereignty.

Almost $20 billion in retail spending from international tourists in the US may be at risk, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis.

~ Augusta Saraiva, "US economy is set to lose billions as foreign tourists stay away," The Economic Times, April 14, 2025

Vitaliy Katsenelson on Tesla: 80% of Tesla's value is based on Elon Musk's dreams

Tesla has a market capitalization as of this writing of $780 billion.  It made around $14 billion of profit in 2023 and $7 billion in 2024.  A good chunk of profit comes not from selling cars but from regulatory credits.  It sold fewer cars in 2024 than in 2023. Unless we see a significant shift change in battery capacity, speed of charging, and improved quality and availability of charging infrastructure, we have reached peak EV penetration (I wrote about this earlier). 

However, today Tesla is not trading based on car sales but on future dreams of self-driving robo-taxis, robots, semis, and whatever else Elon dreams up.  The car company may be worth $100–180 billion; the rest is what investors are willing to pay for Elon’s dreams.

[...]

China looked like a great opportunity for Tesla, but may turn into a liability if the trade war intensifies. Finally, though at times he seems superhuman, Musk is constrained by the number of hours in the day.  As of today he is running Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter (x.com), xAI (the maker of Grok – a ChatGPT competitor), The Boring Company, Neuralink, and oh, yes, DOGE.  The EV market is getting more, not less, competitive.  Tesla needs an undistracted Musk. 

~ Vitaliy Katsenelson, "Current thoughts on Tesla," The Intellectual Investor, April 23, 2025

Ludwig von Mises on Milton Friedman

Friedman is not an economist.  He’s a statistician.

~ Ludwig von Mises

WSJ editors on Trump's bullying tactics

Mr. Trump thinks he can bully everyone into submission, but he can’t bully Adam Smith, who deals in reality.  Markets know tariffs are taxes, and taxes are anti-growth.  The Trump tariffs are the biggest economic policy mistake in decades, and extending the 2017 tax reform and deregulation may not compensate for all the damage. 

There are also fears that if tariffs fail to reorder the global trading system, Mr. Trump might impose a fee on Treasury debt as chief White House economist Stephen Miran has proposed.  This would amount to a partial U.S. default since it would cut the rate of return.  Think Treasury yields are rising now?  Watch what happens if a Miran fee is imposed. 

All of this is tempting economic fate and contributing to a global “sell America” narrative in financial markets.  That’s why the dollar is under pressure.  Smart Presidents pay attention to market signals and adapt.  The adaptation now would be to negotiate a quick end to the tariff barrage.  Claim some trade-deal victories, and call it a day. 

But markets are spooked because they don’t know if Mr. Trump listens to anyone but his own impulses. 

~ The Editorial Board, "The Fire Jerome Powell Market Rout: Investors render a verdict on tariffs and politicizing the Fed.," The Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2025

President Trump meeting in the Oval Office with Japanese Minister of
State for Economic and Fiscal Policy Ryosei Akazawa on April 16, 2025

Patrick Barron on U.S. competitiveness and need to return to the gold standard

As long as America can print fiat money to pay for imports it will print fiat money.  But under the discipline of the gold standard, Americans will have to produce good quality products at world market prices in order to earn the foreign exchange (gold) needed to settle international trade.  It’s the only way. Erecting tariffs, as desired by President Trump, solves nothing and merely exacerbates the situation.  America must learn to compete in the world on equal terms; i.e., it cannot simply print fiat dollars.  It must produce goods that foreigners wish to buy at prices that foreigners are willing to pay.  Becoming an autarkic nation, a la North Korea, will condemn Americans to poverty.  America needs to become an honest, commercially oriented nation.  If not, the world will pass it by just as has happened to other great nations in the past. 

~ Patrick Barron, "David Hume’s Insight Explains America’s Economic Decline," Going Postal, April 16, 2025