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