Free Republic

Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be here, and I’d like to thank the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute for inviting me to join you. Of course, this year’s forum carries special significance as we celebrate 250 years of the American story. But milestones of this magnitude demand more than ceremony. They ask something of us. They invite us to reflect not just on the creation of our country, but on its condition. And as we focus today on America’s economic future, they compel us to confront—and correct—decisions that have diminished our sovereignty in recent decades. President...

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson When voters in Seattle handed the mayor’s office to self-proclaimed socialist Katie Wilson, local Democrat Rob Saka celebrated the “change.” He praised her energy and looked forward to a city that would “uplift working families” while fighting the resurgent Trump agenda. Less than five months later, Saka is singing a different tune. Speaking to the New York Times, the council member admitted he is “gravely concerned” about the accelerating business exodus. “This is real,” he conceded. Wilson’s infamous response to fleeing millionaires—”like, bye”—has aged about as well as her economic vision. The mayor laughed off warnings...

It became more complex in 2025 to own and operate an internationally trading commercial ship. The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 2025 Review of Maritime Transport forecasted inhibited growth in global shipping, increased sailing distances, and elevated costs. Changing trade conditions led to frequent operational adjustments and fine-tuning of shipping routes. Geopolitical tensions and uncertain terms of trade punctured the rationale for interconnected markets advocated for by Ricardian economic logic and neoclassical economic theory. Global insurer Allianz remarked in its 2025 Safety and Shipping Review that the “volatile and complex operating environment” may alter even the long-term trend...

Howdy, pardner! Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is welcoming Big Apple companies relocating or expanding in the Lone Star State after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonized billionaire hedge-fund honcho Ken Griffin for being rich. “Governor Abbott is proud to welcome businesses and job creators from across the country to Texas, where we have no state income tax, reasonable regulations, and a pro-growth environment that encourages free enterprise to flourish,” Abbott’s spokesman, Andrew Mahaleris, told The Post. “Punitive policies that target successful job-creating entrepreneurs only accelerate the trend of companies choosing Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott’s spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said. Texas...

Zero. There are currently no European-headquartered public companies with a market capitalization of $1 trillion or more. As of May 2026, the largest European companies by market cap are all well below this threshold (figures are approximate and fluctuate daily): ASML (Netherlands): ~$580–590 billion (the current leader). Roche (Switzerland): ~$320–330 billion. LVMH (France): ~$260–275 billion. Others like SAP (Germany), Novo Nordisk (Denmark), AstraZeneca (UK), etc., are generally in the $200–250 billion range or lower. For context, the global trillion-dollar club is dominated by U.S. tech giants (e.g., Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet/Microsoft in the multi-trillion range), with a few others like Saudi...

Democratic tax policies always follow the same basic script: They tax the wealthy. The wealthy leave. Democrats increase taxes on the middle class and everyone else to make up for the revenue losses. Economic destruction follows. That's going to happen in New York City, too, as Zohran Mamdani's "tax the rich" plans have prompted the start of a wealth exodus from the Big Apple. Wall Street giant Apollo aims to open 'second headquarters' outside NYC - in latest fallout from Mamdani's war on the wealthy https://t.co/ozffxGvIbE pic.twitter.com/kNwowJ0Mqw— New York Post (@nypost) May 6, 2026Here's more:Yet another major Wall Street firm...

The European Commission has drafted plans to give more free emissions permits to industries ​over the next few years, a move that ‌could save companies 4 billion euros ($4.68 billion) in CO2 costs, an internal EU document seen by Reuters showed on Monday. The EU's ​carbon market is the bloc's main tool for ​addressing CO2 emissions, which it does by forcing ⁠industries to buy CO2 emissions permits when they pollute. The ​scheme has come under growing political pressure from member states ​worried about Europe's faltering economic competitiveness, while some heavy industries have urged Brussels to give them more free CO2...

“The real reason America created public schools… had nothing to do with education.” It’s a bold claim—but the truth is more complex, and far more interesting than the headline suggests. 🧠 Public education in the United States began taking shape in the 19th century, especially during the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann. His goal wasn’t to avoid education—it was to expand it. At the time, schooling was inconsistent, often private, and inaccessible to many families. Public schools were created to provide free, basic education to all children, regardless of social class. 🏫 But education wasn’t the only purpose....

Senior U.S. defense officials have held talks about producing weapons and other military supplies with top executives ​of companies including General Motors (GM.N), opens new tab and Ford Motor (F.N), opens new tab, the ‌Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the discussions. The preliminary and wide-ranging talks, which started before the war in Iran, come as the Trump ​administration wants automakers and other American manufacturers to play a ​larger role in weapons production, the Journal said. Defense officials told ⁠the newspaper that American manufacturers might be needed to backstop ​traditional defense contractors and asked whether the...

I just saw a list of the commodities that are undergoing restriction of distribution in the Strait of Hormuz. When seeing a stark view of them, together as a group, I hadn't realized how extensive it is: 1) oil (gasoline and deisel), 2) liquid natural gas (LNG), 3) urea (fertilizer for food), 4) sulfuric acid (phosphate fertilizers for farming), 5) helium (microchips). (Source: Larry Johnson, today 04/06/2026 at 9 AM E.S.T.). I would like to hear from someone who has a good, fundamental understanding of economics, about the following question, (not someone who is an academic egghead, not anyone who...

This is one of those local stories that doesn’t get a ton of traction in the national headlines, but highlights quite possibly one of the most alarming trends in modern America: the failure to get the basics right. And by basics, in this case, I mean the ability for a town or city to put out fires. Fire departments around the Denver, Colorado, metro area have been struggling to afford new fire engines, which have ballooned in costs over the years, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic/economic catastrophe of 2020 and Wall Street’s private equity companies. They also have to navigate...

Matthew Gallagher took just two months, $20,000 and more than a dozen artificial intelligence tools to get his start-up off the ground. From his house in Los Angeles, Mr. Gallagher, 41, used A.I. to write the code for the software that powers his company, produce the website copy, generate the images and videos for ads and handle customer service. He created A.I. systems to analyze his business’s performance. And he outsourced the other stuff he couldn’t do himself. His start-up, Medvi, a telehealth provider of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, got 300 customers in its first month. In its second month, it...

It's a ~24-minute video that primarily consists of a transcript/narration of a major speech by Elon Musk. In it, Musk announces a massive collaborative project between SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to build what's called a "Terafab" — an unprecedented advanced chip fabrication facility (described as "the most epic chip building exercise in history"). Key points from the announcement: The goal is to produce 1 terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) of compute capacity per year, combined with terawatt-scale solar power — much of it deployed in space. This is framed as essential to advance humanity on the Kardashev scale (toward Type 1 civilization...

This chart shows manufacturing production growth (6-month average vs. a year ago). After spending most of 2022–2024 in contraction, output has surged since mid-2025 and is now approaching +2% — the strongest growth since the post-COVID rebound. So why isn't anyone talking about it? Partly because it's invisible in the jobs data. Manufacturing payrolls have been declining. If you only look at employment, you'd think the sector is still struggling. But flat jobs + rising output = productivity growth. The sector is producing significantly more with fewer workers. This is one more piece of evidence that the productivity acceleration story...

Nature documentaries abound, covering the various species as they embark on their epic migratory journeys. From bird flocks to wildebeasts on the savannah to even monarch butterflies, these travels and travails are captured in dramatic fashion. Currently, another group shift is taking place in the corporate world, where a growing number of companies are pulling up stakes and seeking out more verdant economic landscapes, escaping harsh environments wrought by Democrat tax policies. It is enough to warrant its own Netflix documentary. Have David Attenborough narrating the footage of these fiscal nomads, and title it “March of the Corporate Titans”. In...

Elon didn’t reverse that through inspiration. He reversed it by building companies that required understanding manufacturing or failing completely. SpaceX and Tesla forced engineers to learn how metal fractures, how tolerances cascade through systems, how physical iteration costs months and millions per failure. No debugging. No patches. Just physics that doesn’t negotiate. Boyle: “Training two generations of engineers.” The product isn’t the cars. It’s the people. Look at who’s founding America’s critical hard-tech companies now. The common thread isn’t Stanford or MIT. It’s time on factory floors at SpaceX or Tesla. They learned welding. They learned that “impossible” just means...

Taiwan has told Washington that its proposal to move 40% of the island’s semiconductor supply chain to the U.S. was “impossible,” Taipei’s top tariff trade negotiator said in an interview. Speaking on a local television broadcast Sunday, Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun said she had made it clear to Washington that the island’s semiconductor ecosystem, built over decades, could not simply be relocated. Taiwan’s international expansion, including its investments in the U.S., is predicated on the notion that the industry remains’ rooted in Taiwan and continues to expand domestic investments, she said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

As the Trump economy begins to boom even as inflation moderates, Democrats and the anti-Trump media are desperate for a spin that might discredit Trumponomics. Their latest Hail Mary: pushing a counterfactual narrative that President Trump’s tariffs are hurting, rather than stimulating, a manufacturing revival for blue-collar America. The latest manufacturing data obliterates that lie. In January, the ISM Manufacturing Index jumped 4.7 points to 52.6. That wasn’t just an estimate beat; it was a blowout, and an important one. The ISM Manufacturing Index is the most widely followed survey of factory activity worldwide. When it moves above 50, the...

Kevin Green is back to break down a pair of movers in the semiconductor space. Onsemi (ON) shares are looking for direction after a mixed earnings report. Meanwhile, TSMC (TSM) executives say the White House's plans to relocate up to 40% of its supply chain to the U.S. is "impossible." KG later turns his attention to the Cboe Volatility index (VIX) as it continues a recent upward trend. He notes the $26 level as a potential one to watch that could "wash away some of the bulls." For Tuesday's trading range for the S&P 500 (SPX), KG is looking at...

BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, 1881.In its ‘Climate & Energy’ newsletter on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s report on Germany’s chemicals industry headlined ‘The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries’ reads less like an industry report than a forensic examination of an industrial autopsy. Once Europe’s formidable manufacturing powerhouse, Germany is now presiding over the steady dismantling of one of its most foundational industries – chemicals – under the combined weight of self-inflicted energy scarcity, climate moralism and geopolitical miscalculation. In Politico’s view, the auto sector has already assumed the role of Exhibit A in Germany’s economic self-harm. But...