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Here’s a letter to The Economist.

Editor:

Only by overlooking key historical facts is Joseph Stiglitz able to argue that “John Maynard Keynes saved capitalism from itself” (April 8). Perhaps the most important of these facts is one that’s famously documented by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz: the failure of the Federal Reserve. A central bank established to be a lender of last resort to a banking system that government, not capitalism, kept excessively fractured, the Fed allowed the money supply to contract by about 30 percent between 1929 and 1933. This spark for the Great Depression wasn’t a failure of capitalism; it was a failure of government.

And it was government failure that extended the Great Depression. Robert Higgs has marshaled ample evidence that New Deal policies and rhetoric – not capitalism – created such uncertainty for investors that they remained on the sidelines until after WWII.

As for Keynes, the irony – as George Selgin documents in his 2025 book, False Dawn – is that FDR rejected Keynes’s belief that economic downturns are best treated with deficit spending. And Keynes, to his credit, warned FDR not to cartelize the economy through the National Recovery Act – an unfortunately unsuccessful effort by Keynes to save capitalism, not from itself, but from the state.

If your readers want a more accurate history of Keynes and the Great Depression, they should ignore the potted one served up by Prof. Stiglitz and instead consult the works of economists such as Friedman and Schwartz, Higgs, and Selgin.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and\Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

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Here’s GMU Econ alum Caleb Petitt on yesterday’s U.S. Court of International Trade’s 2-1 ruling against Trump’s Section 122 tariffs punitive taxes on Americans’ purchases of imports:

The U.S. Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 against the Trump administration’s invocation of Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 to implement a 10% global tariff today. The ruling brings America one step closer to being free from President Trump’s executive overreach and harmful economic policies.

The use of Section 122 to impose 10% global tariffs was deemed illegal because the condition for allowing executive imposition of tariffs is not met in the current state of the American economy. Section 122 allows the president to impose tariffs in response to “large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.” The Trump Administration conflated balance-of-payments deficits with trade deficits to justify the tariffs.

The United States does not, and cannot, while maintaining floating exchange rates, have a balance-of-payments deficit. As Philip Magness observes, the “term referred to a drawdown on official gold and other currency reserves of the United States under the old Bretton Woods currency peg system, which was abandoned in the early 1970s and officially terminated in 1976.” Congress did not intend for Section 122 to apply to trade deficits when it passed the Trade Act of 1974.

Along with the ruling that the tariffs are illegal, the court issued a permanent injunction against the tariffs on the three importer plaintiffs (Burlap and Barrel, Inc., Basic Fun, Inc., and The State of Washington. The injunction means that the Section 122 tariffs are no longer in effect against those plaintiffs, but remain in effect for all other importers. All other importers have to either file their own lawsuits or wait for an appeal to a court that would issue a broader injunction.

The injunction is an indication that the court was more confident in its ability to curtail executive overreach in Congress’s tariff authority. When the U.S. Court of International Trade and U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs last year, they refused to issue an injunction on the tariffs. Although a universal injunction would have been more beneficial, the limited injunction is a step in the right direction.

President Trump has been far more willing to overstep the limits of his authority in his second term regarding tariffs. He implemented tariffs on steel and aluminum against China in his first term, which, although economically harmful, were done within his powers as President. His use of IEEPA and Section 122 to impose sweeping tariffs has gone far beyond his powers and has been considerably more economically harmful than his more limited tariffs in his first term.

The courts have rightfully struck down these attempts. However, Congress has done almost nothing to hold back President Trump from usurping its tariff authority. Congress needs to be more proactive in defending its constitutional powers.

The case will likely be appealed, where there will hopefully be a more definitive judgment. After that, assuming that the higher courts uphold the ruling, it is unclear what the Trump administration will do next. The tariffs are unpopular and are hurting the economy as the midterm elections are approaching quickly. Despite their illegality and unpopularity, the Trump administration seems committed to imposing burdensome and illegal tariffs. Only time will tell what the administration will do next.

Also applauding the CIT’s ruling against Trump’s contemptuous abuse of the law is the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. Two slices:

Another tariff swing and another legal miss for President Trump. A 2-1 majority of the U.S. Court of International Trade on Thursday ruled his Section 122 tariffs unlawful. Although the White House may turn to other statutes to dun businesses and consumers, the decision is important for the rule of law and limits on willful presidential discretion.

…..

Nixon imposed a global 10% tariff to stanch the deteriorating U.S. balance of payments. A customs court in 1974 ruled that tariff unlawful, which prompted Congress to enact Section 122. As it turned out, the end of Bretton Woods resolved the balance-of-payments problem since under a floating exchange rate system the balance always nets to zero.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that the President can still impose tariffs because trade deficits are part of the balance of payments, and the President can pick and choose among the components. “Such an expansive reading of the statute would raise a non-delegation issue, which in turn would prompt a constitutional question,” the judges write.

But the judges say there is no need to address the constitutional arguments since the law doesn’t give the President the authority he claims. “Although the current account (and the balance of trade as a component of the current account) are relevant to balance-of-payments deficits, they are distinct, and the statute recognizes the distinction,” they write.

Eric Boehm, too, has a few words about the CIT’s ruling against Trump’s on-going attempts to use tariffs to subject Americans to artificial increases in scarcity. A slice:

With this latest defeat, Trump has now racked up five consecutive losses in tariff-related cases during his second term. The previous “emergency” tariffs were ruled unlawful four different times: by the CIT, by a federal district court, by a federal appeals court, and, ultimately, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Maybe Trump will finally get the message. The president does not have unchecked, unilateral power to impose tariffs for any reason and at any time. Thursday’s ruling is another victory for the rule of law.

Daniel Hannan tweets: (HT Scott Lincicome)

The courts have again struck down Trump’s tariffs on grounds of executive overreach. Good news for the US economy and for the US Constitution.

A question for the MAGA fanatics who will now respond. Who is claiming compensation? Has a single foreign country asked for its money back? No. The compensation is going to American firms. You know why?

BECAUSE TARIFFS ARE A TAX PAID BY AMERICANS.

Paul Gigot’s discussion with Ben Sasse is excellent. A slice from the transcript; Sasse is speaking:

I’m on a chemotherapy that’s being delivered to the 97% of my tumors that are benign, and those don’t get hit nearly as hard as the 3% that are mutated. And if you can deliver the poison straight to the tumor, you can have a much, much higher dose of chemotherapy. And so that was only possible because there’s a clinical trial, which is another way of saying to the FDA, “Hey, back off a little bit.” Instead of just saying no, no, no, no, to every drug, allow these researchers to experiment. And if patients are willing to take on some of the downside risk, which is a lot of toxicity, I mean, I’ve been able to regrow a little bit of skin on my face, but I bleed out of my scalp and I bleed all over the place, but a huge part of it is skin production is incredibly difficult. When you’re on the super poison, I’ll take it. I’m alive at almost five months because I’m able to deliver this, we’re able to deliver the superpoison to my tumors. And I think we need a world where the FDA is a lot less universal no, go really, really slow on the safety efficacy trade off and saying, “Well, we need to keep people safe, therefore we can’t give them access to this drug.” The way for research to move forward faster is to allow a lot more experimentation. And I think we should have less government prohibitions.

Here’s Bruce Yandle on “the great American bread machine and future prosperity.” A slice:

Any firm whose activities are significantly affected by federal government policies tends to hesitate when what the government may do next cannot be predicted accurately. Will my taxes rise nest year? Will tariffs be imposed on my products or my competitors’ products? Will my competitors be saved from bankruptcy? What about me? Will my manufacturing plants be raided by ICE and my workers taken into custody or shipped away? What about tariffs on what I use as major inputs—aluminum, steel, fertilizer? These are some of the policy questions firms across the United States are facing, and accurate prediction is partly determined by past behavior.

My Mercatus Center colleague Alden Abbott writes wisely about competition, cronyism, and antitrust.

GMU Econ alum Romina Boccia continues to warn of the ill-consequences in store for us Americans from  the U.S. government’s fiscal incontinence. A slice:

The United States is also different from other advanced economies due to the unique role that the US dollar plays in global financial markets. As the issuer of the world’s dominant reserve currency and a primary supplier of safe assets, the US benefits from what economists call an “exorbitant privilege.” This enables the US government to sustain higher debt levels than other countries.

Even this privilege is not without limits, however. Estimates suggest that the dollar’s status may expand the US government’s debt capacity by roughly 20 percent of GDP, putting the US threshold where debt begins to weigh on growth closer to 100 percent of GDP than 80.

And “exorbitant privilege” is not a permanent entitlement, either. It depends on investor confidence, the depth and liquidity of US financial markets, and the absence of credible alternatives to US dollar dominance. Should that confidence weaken, because of political dysfunction, fiscal irresponsibility, and the rise of competing safe assets, the US advantage could erode.

Counting on privilege as a substitute for discipline is a risky strategy. And allowing higher debt to depress economic potential reduces long-term income growth and Americans’ opportunities.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague, Veronique de Rugy, is no fan of TrumpIRA.gov. A slice:

The better path is genuine simplification: a universal savings account that shields its owner from the tax bias against saving, allows contributions from any after-tax income, imposes no restrictions on withdrawals, and requires no government match and no new federal spending. Canada and the United Kingdom have run this experiment. Accounts were used enthusiastically across all income levels, including by moderate- and lower-income households who value flexibility above all else.

Finally, if politicians truly care about securing Americans’ retirement income, they should have the courage both to reform Social Security (to stop lower-income seniors from being hit with an automatic 23 percent benefit cut while preventing massive increase of the debt) and to reform a tax code that creates silly disincentives to save.

Art Carden offers an example of how the free market supplies quality-assurance.

The Editors of National Review ponder the “Dems’ data center freak-out.”

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… is from page 525 of F.A. Hayek’s brilliant Postscript – “Why I Am Not a Conservative” – to the Definitive Edition (Ronald Hamowy, ed., 2011) of Hayek’s 1960 volume, The Constitution of Liberty:

The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.

DBx: Indeed so.

Hayek was born on this date – May 8th – in 1899.

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Here’s a note to a second cousin of mine.

Prentiss:

Suspicious of my and other economists’ support for free trade, you offered at my Facebook page the following comment:

So we remove all our tariffs and trade restrictions. America buys cheap foreign stuff exclusively. All domestic production ceases. The only jobs are in medicine, education, government, retail (Amazon) and gardening. Did Adam Smith discuss this?

I understand that it’s commonplace in certain circles – on both the political left and right – to conclude that if we Americans eliminate our protectionist policies, we’ll end up impoverishing ourselves by importing lots of things at low prices as we produce only services. But this conclusion makes no sense.

Forget the difficulty of squaring a fall in the prices of things that people want to buy with impoverishment of those people. Forget also that the empirical evidence contradicts your prediction about U.S. production: As tariff rates from the end of WWII until about eight years ago steadily fell, U.S. industrial production rose, as did U.S. exports of goods. Forget, too, that, even as we imported more goods from abroad, more than half of the value-added of the manufactured goods that we purchase today (2023) remains American-made. Instead, let’s explore your argument’s logic.

If you mean (as do large numbers of people who I encounter) that elimination of U.S. protectionism will result in Americans importing lots of stuff and exporting nothing in return, then, well, that’s bizarrely unrealistic. Foreigners supply their exports to us in order to earn dollars to spend or invest in the U.S. If foreigners wanted nothing from us, they’d sell nothing to us. It follows that the more foreigners sell to us, the more they’ll buy from us. Further, just as economic theory predicts, as our imports rise, so too do our exports rise.

It’s silly to worry that foreigners will deluge us with gifts, expecting from us nothing in return. (By the way, if foreigners were ever to put Americans first in this way, that would be to our enormous advantage, just as it is to our advantage whenever technological innovations enable us to get more output from fewer inputs.)

But perhaps you instead mean that elimination of U.S. protectionism will result in Americans specializing fully in services (and not at all at producing tangible things), and paying for our imported goods by exporting services. Again, as an empirical matter this outcome is extremely unlikely, but – national-security concerns aside – there would be nothing to lament about this outcome if that’s where free trade takes our economy.

The highest-paying jobs are in the service sector – a big reason why the vast majority of Americans aspire to work in the service sector. What’s true for service-sector workers Taylor Swift and Warren Buffett (and also Don Boudreaux and Prentiss Davis), who are much wealthier than they’d be if they were forced to work in manufacturing plants, is true for most American workers. And to the extent that free trade would increase the demand for U.S. service-sector output, the productivity of Americans working in the service sector would almost certainly rise as would the real wages earned by those Americans.

This outcome would be applause-worthy.

But, to repeat, the fact that today (2024) two-thirds of American exports are goods alone makes it’s highly unrealistic to suppose that elimination of U.S. trade barriers would result in the American economy specializing completely in services.

…..

As for Adam Smith, he understood trade very well and, therefore, he would never have supposed that a country that imports more after freeing its trade would export less.

Sincerely,
Don

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… is from page 8 of Scott Lincicome’s and Huan Zhu’s superb September 2021 paper, “Questioning Industrial Policy: Why Government Manufacturing Plans Are Ineffective and Unnecessary”:

A core part of industrial policy’s knowledge problem is timing: because markets and personal preferences are constantly evolving, the facts (products, investments, supply and demand, etc.) on which an industrial policy is designed will inevitably be different than the facts that exist at the time it is approved, and they will likely change again (and again) upon implementation. Discovery is endless. Thus, history repeatedly has shown that the “critical technologies” (and suppliers) of today are often not so critical tomorrow, and only markets are flexible and nimble enough to reveal the difference. Planners don’t stand a chance.

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