Free Republic

The anti-Trump media are pounding the drums, trying to drive people into a panic by contending that Trump’s tariffs are a Smoot-Hawley moment combined with a 1929-style stock market crash. It is, they suggest, a perfect storm of Trump-created economic devastation. What they’re not telling people—indeed, what they may not know themselves—is that the situation is different, both as regards the stock market and what happened with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. I’ll start with the latter first. First, as Van A. Mobley explains with great clarity, it’s dishonest to compare Trump’s tariffs to the Smoot-Hawley Act. The difference is that, in...

COMMENT: The media including the financial media really going crazy with this Trump Tariff thing – as if the market wasn’t due for a pull back. REPLY: We had forecast that we would see a correction by April last year. I answered plenty of questions on various podcasts about whether this would be a big crash and the end of the bull market. I consistently warned that such a scenario was absurd, for that implied the classic flight to quality being government debt. Facing a global sovereign debt crisis, I warned that it was just not realistic. The press has...

Tariffs will not cause inflation in the long term. In fact, they will likely lower the cost of goods over time. On April 2, Liberation Day, President Trump imposed reciprocal tariffs across the board. The President noted that they were “kind” tariffs, since they were only half the rate that American producers are charged. For now, at least. Critics have lamented that tariffs will raise the cost of goods, as if the Constitution codified the right to buy “cheap” Chinese goods. While there will be an adjustment period -- as with any major policy shift -- tariffs will not cause...

that, because they drive up prices, which makes manufacturers and consumers very sad. However, I’m not worried (I’ll explain why) and Michael Lind is even less worried (and he does a great job of explaining why ). I won’t rehash all of Trump’s tariff actions here. I’ll just make three points that are why I’m sanguine about what he’s doing: First, Trump’s focus in pushing tariffs isn’t to benefit specific industries at home, although he certainly hopes they will benefit. That’s been the traditional approach to tariffs. Trump, instead, is using tariffs as a non-military cudgel against foreign nations that...

In the recent frenzy of commentary seeking to interpret U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s increasingly adamant comments about territorial expansion to Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, too much of the discussion has focused on matters of secondary importance. These range from assessing whether Trump is merely engaging in a game of showmanship or distraction, to deciphering how those regions’ inhabitants feel about ceding territorial control to the United States, to determining how much it would cost to purchase their acquiescence. From a policy perspective, though, more fundamental matters have gone surprisingly unaddressed, beginning with the question of whether any of...

So, I’m having a friendly debate with somebody about this “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” post by Mr. Trump…My friend, a retired police officer, is a great guy, salt of the earth, etc. He thinks it’s an understandable representation of Trump’s frustration. And maybe it is. But the question remains, did Trump’s attorneys have the chance to see that post before he pushed “send”? Did anybody above the age of 14? Does anybody honestly think had his attorneys seen it, they’d have said, “Yes, Mr. President, we think that’s a really swell post; put that jazz...

President Trump may have lost his chief economic adviser over the trade war he’s hatching with China. It looks, though, like he gained one recruit — Charles “Smoot” Schumer. Schumer was nicknamed “Smoot Schumer” some years ago for Utah’s Reed Smoot, a notorious protectionist. The Smoot-Hawley tariff act, passed in 1930, helped precipitate the Great Depression. America spent decades overcoming the consequences of the error. Not until Trump, though, did a president win office on such a pointedly protectionist platform. Trump announced last week he was going to start with tariffs on steel and aluminum. It humiliated National Economic Council...

Donald Trump's announcement that he is imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from other countries has aroused little enthusiasm and much criticism. It evidently prompted the resignation of Gary Cohn as head of his National Economic Council. It has also prompted free trade-minded Republicans in Congress to propose repealing Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which delegates to the president the power to adjust trade restrictions and impose tariffs. It's not clear exactly what trade restrictions Trump is poised to impose or whether negotiations with Mexico and Canada will end the North American Free Trade...

Americans are increasingly supportive of tariffs on cheap, imported goods from foreign countries to protect American industries and workers against wild globalization. In a poll by Rasmussen Reports, roughly 50 percent of Americans said the federal government should “place tariffs on goods from countries that pay very low wages to their workers,” as opposed to only 26 percent of Americans who said tariffs should not be imposed on foreign countries. About 24 percent of Americans said they were “not sure” if the government should use tariffs to protect American industries. Additionally, a plurality of Americans, about 44 percent, said the...

Donald Trump played up his plans to tax companies that move jobs out of the United States as he tried to appeal to blue collar workers in a New York rally Sunday. Speaking for about an hour Sunday in Rochester, N.Y., Trump recited statistics about the area's loss of manufacturing jobs and economic hardship in recent years. He reiterated his desire to tax goods sold by companies once based in the United States that moved away to find cheaper labor. The plan has been widely panned by economic experts. But the Rochester crowd ate it up. "I'm the only one...

Donald Trump has been savaged by economists and media aligned with establishment candidates for tough positions on trade—including a 45 percent tariff on imports to force China to the negotiating table. Actually, he's got it right. Establishment Democrats and Republicans embrace free trade because it puts free markets first with benefits any decently trained economist should extoll. Unfortunately, trade with China and many nations is hardly market-driven. It hurts U.S. growth and victimizes America's families. Obama's six-year expansion has averaged 2.2 percent annual economic growth and added 13.6 million jobs. Coming off a similar bout with double-digit unemployment, Reagan delivered...

By Stephen Moore & Lawrence Kudlow Here's a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover. Obviously that economic strategy didn't turn out so well — either for the nation or the GOP. Does Trump aspire to be a 21st century Hoover with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff that helped send the U.S. and world economy into a decade-long depression and a collapse of the banking system? We can't help wondering whether the panic in world financial markets...

Here's a historical fact that Donald Trump, and many voters attracted to him, may not know: The last American president who was a trade protectionist was Republican Herbert Hoover. Does Trump aspire to be a 21st century Hoover with a modernized platform of the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff that helped send the U.S. and world economy into a decade-long depression and a collapse of the banking system?

Donald Trump’s candidacy raises more urgent issues than the Donald’s sometimes poor choice of words: Trump has sparked a less-noticed but far more important debate about the future of our nation’s economy, the sustainability of American life, jobs, and a decent salary for Americans. This ultimately fuels the economic strength of the United States that makes it possible to defend our nation and its people. It’s about Smoot-Hawley. I am talking about the myth, the ghost, the coat hanging on the back of the door that looks like a monster in the dark, the nightmare that makes uninformed and gutless...

Tuesday marks the anniversary of one of the most destructive pieces of legislation in U.S. history: the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act of 1930, which triggered a disastrous trade war, intensified the Great Depression and helped set the stage for World War II. Unfortunately, as the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act demonstrate, Washington continues its long-held tradition of passing ill-conceived legislation. The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank, both passed in 2010, clearly have hurt the U.S. economy: increasing business costs, slowing hiring, adding to the uncertainty that investors face. But Hawley-Smoot arguably was worse. The...

For far too long, American conservatives have become accustomed to "blaming" the destruction of American jobs (rightfully) on unions and lawyers. It's all true, but while it's true - America is falling apart. Blaming those who caused the problem won't prevent the destruction of our great nation.

Just when you thought Congress couldn't possibly do more damage to the battered economy the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan act of impotent fury, voted 348-79 to light the fuse of a global trade war. Not since Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt tag teamed to turn a cyclic recession into the Great Depression have Democrats and Republicans jointly indulged in such destructive economic legislation. Congress is upset that China has pegged its currency to the dollar, as do many countries seeking monetary stability, not allowing it to appreciate as Uncle Sam prints up trillions. So the House passed the...

In 1932, FDR had an opportunity to change the conventional way that governments deal with a recession. His predecessor, Herbert Hoover, who also had a tendency towards central planning, had started the process. Instead of allowing markets to correct themselves as they had in all the previous panics, as depressions were then called, both men instituted programs of government intervention. Hoover signed the Smoot Hawley tariff even after many of the leading economists of the time personally implored him not to sign it. A tariff would help improve farm prices, which was a cornerstone of the progressive movement. He asked...

Climate Change: A suppressed EPA study says old U.N. data ignore the decline in global temperatures and other inconvenient truths. Was the report kept under wraps to influence the vote on the cap-and-trade bill? This was supposed to be the most transparent administration ever. Yet as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on the Waxman-Markey bill, the largest tax increase in U.S. history on 100% of Americans, an attempt was made to suppress a study shredding supporters' arguments.

Climate Change: A switch of four Republican votes would have defeated Waxman-Markey, the Democrats' global warming legislation. But like the Clinton Btu tax, the bill could die in the Senate and turn the House over to the GOP. What were these RINOs thinking? The GOP is supposed to be the party of low taxes and free markets. Rep. Mike Castle, one of the eight offered an explanation right off of President Obama's teleprompter...Illinois Republican Mark Kirk, who has senatorial ambitions to replace the choice of impeached former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Sen. Roland Burris, demonstrates why GOP fortunes in the Land...