Tariffs may be coming this week. Or they may not. They may cover everyone. Or they may not. So a few thoughts in advance of whatever may or may not happen this week.

In the wake of the realization that Europe must now provide its own security, the EU is launching a Buy European regime to support the effort. For those familiar with EU trade policy, the public discussion of Buy European by European officials represents a radical departure. 

Europeans are scrambling to adjust after the United States by all accounts withdrew the security guarantee it had provided since World War II. Well before then, Europe was already facing headwinds, with slow growth and deindustrialization amidst a lurch to the right. Mario Draghi produced a now-famous report and on February 18, 2025 addressed the European Parliament, insisting that…

Through our educational system, a sort of tyranny of introductory economics has permeated elite discourse for decades now. Economics deems itself a “value-free science.” Economist Robert Heilbroner tackled this issue, pointing out that “science exists to explain or clarify things that exist independently of the values of the observer. It is the study of…

Tariffs tariffs everywhere! We’re being flooded with tariff proposals. This post is about last week’s tariff merry-go-round with Canada and Mexico. A lot of the messaging criticizing the proposed tariffs has focused on price increases. This communications strategy is apparently meant to appeal to people’s concerns about inflation. Let’s start with a basic point. Arbitrary,…

Once upon a time in America, tariff revenue funded the government. As the country industrialized, a laissez-faire economic model gave rise to concentrated economic power, concentrated political power, and the Gilded Age. It was an era of extreme inequality, of the Homestead Steel Strike, of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Robber barons like Andrew Carnegie…

For decades now, the conventional wisdom has led us to believe there is a tension between a progressive trade policy – one that focuses on values beyond returns to capital – and American foreign policy. This is a false tension, however. Far from impeding American foreign policy goals, a progressive trade policy advances them. FDR’s…

The Open Society Foundation has published a white paper on a new model for trade agreements. As OSF explains: Around the world, the process of economic globalization is under fire for serving the needs of corporate elites rather than ordinary citizens. But it is important to recall that trade does not have to aggravate inequality.…

In a previous post, we discussed how it came to be that the rules of the rules-based system reflect the philosophy of Milton Friedman, not John Maynard Keynes. Today, even as the business community feels obliged to at least look as though it is distancing itself from the Milton Friedman regime; the Financial Times editorial…

Geopolitical strife? Let’s do a trade agreement! The latest version of this strategy involves Taiwan. China is a geopolitical concern; Taiwan is an ally; ergo, the United States should do a trade agreement with Taiwan, because it will reinforce economic relations between the two. Which two, though, is the question. Taiwan and the United States? Nope.…

The House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee had a hearing on September 10, 2020 to discuss U.S. trade preference programs, including the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act, which expires at the end of the month. My testimony focused on ways to reform these preference programs so that they more directly address the goal of promoting…

In Globalists, Quinn Slobodian examines the relationship between the Austrian School of economics, influential in the first half of the 20th century, and the rules for the global economy. Members of the School opposed the Havana Charter. The Austrian School was not monolithic. Its members variously supported pure laissez-faire, government intervention in the marketplace, and support…

As the Beltway sorts out the implications of Joe Biden’s VP pick, the trade world enjoys the benefit of having Kamala Harris’ views on the new NAFTA. While traditional critics of trade deals such as Senators Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren voted for the agreement on the strength of its new labor provisions,…

We think of Adam Smith as the father of free trade. Having coined the phrase “Invisible Hand,” he’s portrayed as something of a libertarian icon. But that’s a caricature of a man who had much more profound, and nuanced, views of political economy – and of the welfare of the working class.

Mr. Lewis was a civil rights icon. But he was also a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, and he had strong views on trade. Indeed, it is because of his views on civil rights that he had such strong views on trade. As he said in 2015: In a very few weeks,…