Category: free trade & free markets

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies regulation

Egg Prices Crisis

eggs, inflation, bird flu

“Get used to high egg prices,” The Atlantic blurbed Annie Lowry’s February 27 article, “it was a miracle they were low in the first place.” 

Titled “It’s Weird That Eggs Were Ever Cheap,” it appears to have an agenda: prepare us for yet higher prices, or worse: no eggs.

“Consumers are furious,” explains Ms. Lowry, emphasizing that eggs are a very, very popular food. “Or at least they were, until a highly pathogenic form of bird flu spread to American flocks in 2022. Today, the Department of Agriculture is tracking 36 separate outbreaks across nine states. The disease has led to the death or culling of 27 million laying hens — nearly 10 percent of the nation’s commercial flock — in the past eight weeks alone.”

The culling of flocks — and which birds are selected — could potentially be the most controversial element of the story. Donald Trump, on the campaign trail last year, complained about the cull orders and promised to bring down egg prices fast. 

But his administration’s new five point plan is no quick fix:

  • subsidize on-​farm biosecurity upgrades
  • compensation to farmers forced to cull their flocks
  • investing in bird-​flu vaccines and therapeutics
  • nixing some regulations
  • increasing foreign imports. 

That comes to $1.5 billion spending increases to lower egg prices!

But it was a jokey comment by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins that sent Trump critics into paroxysms. “I think the silver lining in all of this is, how do we solve for something like this?” said the Department of Agriculture head. “And people are sort of looking around, thinking, ‘Maybe I could get a chicken in my backyard,’ and it’s awesome.”

Ha ha. 

But taking the joke as a serious proposal? The yolk’s on them. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets international affairs tax policy U.S. Constitution

Legal Trade War

Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s imposition and changing of tariffs, all by his lonesome — without Congress — vexes more than a few critics.

His authority to do this, however, derives directly from laws passed by Congress.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” under Article I, Section 8, which includes tariffs, since they are taxes on imported goods. But Congress has legislated hand-​offs to presidents, allowing significant flexibility on tariffs.

The idea seems to be that, as Commander-​in-​Chief, the president should handle trade because … like war, it has to do with foreign countries.

Laws allowing presidential discretion include Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. 

The first says that the president has broad discretion to define as threats to national security all sorts of things and then impose tariffs and other trade restrictions in response.

The 1974 legislation authorizes further along Trump’s favored line, the power to retaliate against “unfair” foreign trade practices.

The IEEPA grants sweeping powers in a declared national emergency.

So if free traders and others are alarmed at Trump’s seemingly dictatorial powers regarding tariffs, it isn’t new. It has been built into the Imperial Presidency. While Congress could take its constitutional authority back, there is certainly no groundswell to do so.

Also not new?

What setting up high tariffs have historically done: elicit similar tariffs in retaliation. 

Yikes: the kind of trade war that made the Great Depression “great.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Real Free Trade Problem?

tariffs, international, trade, economics, TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome

Trump Derangement Syndrome is not a mysterious disease. He triggers people for reasons. Still, there is no excuse for smart folks to fool themselves into misunderstanding his sometimes genius.

Take the subject of yesterday’s Common Sense, trade protectionism. Trump is plain speaking on this issue, and it is all-​too-​obvious that Trump harbors old autarkist notions of trade: it’s as if he resents having to pay foreigners for anything. 

His apparent resentment of benefiting others — alien others — is what’s so ultra-​right-​wingéd about him, and why leftists instinctively hate him.

And it’s why many free trade economists regard him as a complete and utter moron. His basic attitude appears to be that trade that benefits The Other must hurt us, and that’s just plain wrong.

But sometimes traders do aim to harm us.

This is where Trump’s attacks on trade with China make more sense. For when we deal with China, we don’t just make Chinese workers and businesspeople stronger, we make the Chinese State stronger — most particularly, the Chinese Communist Party. And that organization has set itself as the enemy not only of the United States but also of all competing states … and the very idea of individual freedom.

Free trade is great, because voluntary trades make both sides better off, and all sides are positively advantaged even when many participants are out-​competed and required to re-​tool, re-​group, and re-invent.

Yet, free trade with those who seek to destroy you is quite problematic. And this is not often figured into the elaborate reasoning offered by free-​market advocates.

Trump instinctively knows this, looking warily at those who would use the strength they gain from their people’s trades to transform market power into military power. There exist free traders who think this cannot happen. They are wrong. 

The point is to recognize threats and defend ourselves while also embracing the mutual benefits of trade whenever possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The 51st State?!?!

Canada, United States, border, trade, economics

“What I’d like to see?” confessed the president. “Canada become our 51st state.”

Why?

“We give them military protection,” he offered. 

Then things got weird.

“We don’t need them to build our cars,” Donald Trump added. “We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need them for anything.”

Shocking? Yes. But not just for the disrespect shown to our northern neighbors. 

What’s most shocking is our president’s ignorance of economics. While we don’t “need” Canada for any of the things Trump mentioned, we’re better off trading with Canada than not. The sending of “billions of dollars” up north is neither charity nor waste; the gains both sides make are apparent in the voluntary trades themselves. 

It’s as if he thinks if “we” must pay anyone, it should be to ourselves, that is, to our fellow countrymen.

Behind this is that old crank notion, protectionism: “we have big deficits with Canada, like we have with all countries.”

Now, it’s true that Canadians send more raw materials to the U.S. than we send to them, and that we send them more dollars than they send us theirs: that’s what “trade deficit” means. 

But how is this bad for us? 

Trump doesn’t explain. “I look at some of the deals made and I say, ‘Who the hell made these deals?’ They’re so bad.”

Mr. Trump identifies no specific trade rules or agreement; he doesn’t say which are unfair, or why; nor does he say who made them. But the trades that pile up to that overall deficit, each was made by Americans and Canadians who thought the deal best for them.

Trump’s seemingly goofy idea of adding Canadian provinces to the U.S. as new states would have one great benefit: more trades with these good people than ever. This belies Trump’s far, far more troublesome notion that we need nothing from Canada. We need everything. As Canadians do.

That is, freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets regulation too much government

Unplugging the EV Mandate

gas engine, electric cars, global warming, climate, government, regulations

Under the Biden administration, gas-​powered vehicles were on a government-​impelled road to decline.

In March 2024, the EPA finalized Biden’s “crackdown on gas cars” by issuing absurdly stringent emission standards. The idea was to advance the administration’s “climate agenda” by sending gas-​powered modes of transportation to the junkyard.

Leaders of the petroleum industry were among those who saw that the scheme would “make new gas-​powered vehicles unavailable or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.” The policy would “feel and function like a ban.”

This was just one of many examples of Biden-​oppression pushing American voters who value at least their own freedom into the Trump camp.

Electric vehicles have pluses and minuses. In past columns, I’ve expressed much enthusiasm for the technology, but recognized that it must develop naturally, in a free market, rather than unnaturally, out of ideological hope and fear-​ridden “need,” forced by government regulation and subsidy.

As James Roth has noted over at StoptheCCP​.org, we’ve had a century and a half to fine-​tune gas-​powered vehicles, a mature technology that is “beloved by the public.” Why not let electric and gas cars compete fair and square in the market? And why give an artificial boost to totalitarian China’s heavily subsidized and promoted EV industry by crippling the gas-​car industry here at home?

President Trump has heard the cry of those who prefer to step on the gas.

Section 2(e) of his sweeping executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” states that it is the policy of the United States to “eliminate the electric vehicle mandate … by removing regulatory barriers to motor vehicle access” and other thumb-​on-​scale interventions in the market.

Is the future of gas cars going to be great again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Politically Exposed Persecution

fascism, freedom, business, censorship

National socialism, as operated by the actual Nazis, did not seize all the major industries and run them as collectives or state-​owned businesses. The Nazis applied party control directly to big business, as a political-​regulatory matter. 

How different is what woke Democrats have been doing to business today, here in America, using multiple agencies of the United States federal government’s regulatory apparatus?

Marc Andreessen, investor, innovator, business genius, and early Internet pioneer, explained how in a discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, last month.

Start with debanking, which the regulators can tell banks to do to “politically exposed persons.” Mr. Andreessen told Joe about a friend who was debanked, apparently because his job title was involved in the business use of crypto-currency. 

And debanking is exactly what you think it is: de-​platformed from the financial system.

Don’t worry, statist: you are not “politically exposed.” This only applies to critics of our quasi-​fascist system.

This commercial censorship is run pretty much like censorship on the social media companies after 2016, by soft pressure … the “raw power” of a “privatized sanctions regime.” Government functionaries notify a bank that a person or business is “politically exposed,” and the bank — fearing getting on the bad side of regulators — kicks the customer off the rolls. 

Politicians can haughtily state that it was the bank that did it. Banks, after all, are not obliged to serve everyone! They can pick and choose their customers.

Besides, there is no First Amendment right to have a bank account.

This is how woke bureaucrats can rule like Nazis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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