ArcaMax

Whenever the subject of trade comes up, many right-leaning free traders and left-leaning neoliberals alike trot out the same talking point: "The economists all agree tariffs are terrible!" And perhaps they do -- or at least most of them do. Barriers to free and unfettered trade may well appear "inefficient" as a matter of an economic model's "...Read more

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent cautioned last month that Americans will likely experience "a detox period" after President Donald Trump implements his wide-ranging tariffs.

What are we detoxing from, exactly?

From an abundance of affordable goods and the world's highest living standards? From consistent economic growth? From leading the ...Read more

One need not rely on experts to know tariffs are typically not a good policy. Going back to Adam Smith writing "The Wealth of Nations," we know it is better to manufacture cheap commodities in areas that can make them cheaply so that wealthier nations can spend their wealth more productively. Adding tariffs historically disrupts that balance ...Read more

Our media elites love to tout themselves as "independent" and "fact-based." But on almost any story on Donald Trump, they can't help but put those words in the shredder.

The Kennedy Center illustrates one major difference between the two Trump terms. In the first term, the president deferred to the leftists who gave all the Kennedy Center ...Read more

Is President Donald Trump bent on political self-harm? It often seems that way. His overall job approval rating still hovers within a point or two of the 50% popular vote he received last November. But he is losing support on the economy and inflation, the No. 1 issue last year, while his overwhelming success in reducing illegal immigration has ...Read more

A Wall Street Journal editorial described President Donald Trump's tariffs as the "dumbest trade war in history." It's important not to overrate intelligence, even in leaders. Judgment and maturity may be more crucial. But Trump is no ordinary dunce. He displays a stubborn stupidity that threatens to plunge the world into chaos and potentially...Read more

The Trump administration is using Humpty Dumpty rules to justify its new tariffs.

The anthropomorphic egg famously said in the Lewis Carroll novel "Through the Looking-Glass," "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

For the Trump team, that word is "emergency."

President Trump has imposed ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom has a new baby, and it's the talk of the state.

Newsom recently launched a video podcast, and he's done a great job of getting it the oxygen necessary for every one of the more than 3 million shows that currently populate the podcast universe: publicity.

No surprise there. As those of us who are ...Read more

The U.S. Constitution was crafted in 1787 both to establish a new central government and to limit it. Some of the limitations are direct, some are subtle, and some are hidden. The chief instrument of limitation is the separation of powers, the brainchild of James Madison.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia called the separation of powers the most ...Read more

Civil disobedience practiced by the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one thing. Crimes against people or property for political ends are quite another. The latter risks return to the law of the jungle, a cure worse than the disease.

That provides the framework to assess the proliferation of criminal attacks on ...Read more

At this writing, President Donald Trump plans to impose sweeping new tariffs on imports from around the world. We're told that "Liberation Day" tariffs will raise $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade, plus another trillion from automobile tariffs. But the only true "liberation" will be us Americans -- consumers and taxpayers -- ...Read more

In mid-February, a firm representing a Democratic Republic of the Congo legislator contacted several U.S. officials. The recipients included Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The letter sketched a sub-Saharan version of President Donald Trump's Ukraine minerals peace initiative. Would the U.S. be interested in acquiring or investing in Congo's ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump likes to troll Canada. He has been threatening our neighbor to the north with additional tariffs, and he thinks it's funny to dangle his dream of turning our longtime trading partner into America's 51st state.

And yet Wednesday in the Rose Garden, when Trump declared a national emergency and announced a 10...Read more

A recent report from the American Enterprise Institute summarizes results from the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress -- also known as the nation's report card.

The test, given every two years, reports scores of our nation's children in reading and math at the fourth grade and eighth grade levels.

AEI characterizes the ...Read more

A deadly fungus is spreading like crazy across the U.S., sickening and killing hospital patients, and the federal response has been ineffectual at best.

It's in half the states, including New York, with soaring annual increases in the number of patients sickened, per the American Journal of Infection Control.

The Centers for Disease Control ...Read more

It's finally spring. Better mow your lawn. If you don't, your town government may fine you thousands of dollars a day. Worse, if you can't pay the fine, they may confiscate your home.

Six years ago, in Dunedin, Florida, Jim Ficken let his grass grow. His mom had died, and he'd left town to take care of her estate. He asked a friend to cut his ...Read more

When President George Washington was in his second term, there was nothing in the Constitution that prevented him from seeking a third.

But he did not.

In his Farewell Address in 1796, Washington explained why he was not seeking another term.

"The period for a new election of a Citizen, to Administer the Executive government of the United ...Read more

At the Capitol grilling of the PBS and NPR CEOs on March 26, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) asked PBS boss Paula Kerger, "Would you believe that PBS is fair and objective and nonpartisan?"

Kerger said, "Yes."

Fallon then noted that on "Washington Week with The Atlantic" in 2023, host and Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg pronounced ...Read more