“a one percentage point increase in imports from China caused a 1.9 percent decline in U.S. consumer prices, saving a representative American household roughly $1,500 a year”
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“prices are not just about prices. When consumers have more purchasing power, they use it to buy goods and services in other, more high-productive sectors. Higher tariffs would lead to lost jobs, and inputs would become more expensive for American producers.
Some research suggests that competition from international trade can lead to better wages in new roles for U.S. workers. A 2017 paper by the economist Ildikó Magyari estimates that the American companies most exposed to Chinese imports expanded employment 2 percent more per year than other companies did. Some of these were manufacturing jobs—with higher wages, because they are in the stages of production where workers add more value—and some were complementary service jobs, in such areas as engineering, design, research and development, and marketing.
Apple offers a fascinating example. Trump has often complained that China is the biggest beneficiary of the iPhone, just because the devices are often assembled there. But when researchers Kenneth L. Kraemer, Greg Linden, and Jason Dedrick disassembled an iPhone 7 in 2018, they found that almost all of its value was captured by Western producers of parts, including hundreds of thousands of American researchers, designers, programmers, salespeople, marketers, retailers, and warehouse workers. China just got 1.3 percent of the price paid for an iPhone, and that offshoring made it possible to move U.S. labor to the more value-added parts of the supply chain.”
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“more than a million American jobs depend directly on exports to Chinese consumers. About 0.5 percent of the U.S. work force would lose their jobs if the U.S. lost access to its third-largest goods exporting market.”
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“more opportunities would be lost in the future, since protectionism reduces competition and innovation. If the United States shuts its doors to the best manufacturers of, say, electric cars, that may save some jobs in the short term, but it will turn the U.S. into a fenced-off auto show for more expensive and less efficient vehicles. American consumers will have to pay much more, and foreign consumers will be much less interested.”
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“A United States bent on decoupling from China risks pushing many more innovators and entrepreneurs to the Far East. On paper there are good reasons to stop the export of sensitive technologies to geopolitical rivals, but what good does it do to fence in a geopolitical rival if cutting-edge producers feel the need to join that rival behind the fence?
One German producer of lasers and chip toolmakers, Trumpf, has faced increased obstacles and costly delays after the U.S. government pushed Germany to restrict its exports to China. In response, Trumpf moved some of its 3D-laser-cutting production to China.”
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“This comes from a company in one of America’s closest allies, a country dependent on America’s security guarantees. Imagine how countries diplomatically closer to China will react if forced to choose between Beijing and Washington.”
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“When economies slow, governments have a harder time keeping the populace satisfied. That often leads them to crack down on dissent. China is now doing the bare minimum to fit into the global order, and it has an awful human rights and civil liberties record at home. There is a great risk that a declining, more isolated, and less interdependent China could be much worse on both fronts.”
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“If a rising power can see a future in which it prospers and is allowed to take its place in the established world order—or become so dominant that it can easily replace that order—it makes sense to hide its strengths and bide its time, as Deng Xiaoping encouraged the Chinese to do. But delay is defeat if further rapid growth seems impossible: if it suffers demographic decline, or if geopolitical rivals decide to starve it of resources or markets. Then the country must either accept that it will never realize its grand ambitions, or lash out.”
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“Xi knows an invasion of Taiwan would result in an economic war with the West that would cause China tremendous pain. But what if China had already been deprived of those lucrative markets and had already lost access to investments and technologies it needs?”
“Any new tariffs imposed by the incoming Trump administration will function the same way as every other tariff: It will drain wealth from American consumers and businesses to enrich the U.S. Treasury. That’s what tax increases do, even when they are proposed by a Republican president and cheered by a crowd of Republican lawmakers, donors, and administration officials.
Indeed, study after study after study has found that the tariffs Trump levied during his first tenure were paid nearly entirely by American consumers and businesses.”
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“The big change Trump is proposing this time around is the creation of a new “External Revenue Service” that will collect tariff revenue. The exact contours of that new agency are still unclear, but it is probably best thought of as a public relations maneuver rather than a meaningful policy change. After all, there’s already a governmental entity that handles tariff collection—that’s the “customs” in U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Changing the name won’t change anything about the transactions that occur.”
“In his inauguration address on Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump said his “proudest legacy” would be “that of a peacemaker.”
Moments later, Trump threatened to seize a portion of the sovereign territory of another country—specifically, the Panama Canal, a crucial link for global trade.”
“The new Trump administration is “designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations” as part of a crackdown on drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexican border, President Donald Trump said during his inauguration speech on Monday.
Trump also promised “to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gang criminal networks” through the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the government to round up foreigners who are citizens of a country that Congress has declared war on or that is engaged in an “invasion or predatory incursion.””
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“”Because the cartels are so closely intertwined with legitimate businesses (in mafioso-like protection rackets), many people are forced to pay them off or be killed. Under US law, that could count as material support to terrorism,” writes attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
Ironically, immigration hawks worry that a terrorist designation might make it easier for Mexicans to come to the United States as refugees, since they can claim they are fleeing terrorism.”
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“Even though terrorism designations are not legally a declaration of war, they might make it politically easier to send U.S. troops to Mexico—which Trump’s advisers have said he wants to do—without asking Congress.”
“Trump told reporters Monday night that he’s thinking of imposing tariffs of up to 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian goods. The Peterson Institute for International Economics recently published a study finding that such tariffs “would slow growth and accelerate inflation in all three countries.”
Though the details of Trump’s tariffs remain uncertain, he promised in his inauguration speech to establish an “External Revenue Service [ERS] to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues,…massive amounts of money” from foreign sources. The Secretary of the Treasury was directed to establish the ERS on Monday night by the America First Trade Policy order. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick to run the Commerce Department, said that “the External Revenue Service will put up tariffs, or walls that protect you.” They will do just the opposite.
As Reason’s Eric Boehm explains, “The tariffs Trump levied during his first tenure were paid nearly entirely by American consumers and businesses.” Trump has to choose: Complement his deregulatory agenda with free trade policies that decrease the price of consumer goods, manufacturing, and production, or hinder them with protectionism that benefits select industries at the expense of the American people. Let’s hope the president chooses the former.”
“order outlined two categories of individuals born in the U.S. who do not automatically receive citizenship, in the White House’s view. The first is a baby whose mother was unlawfully present in the U.S. and whose father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of that baby’s birth. The second is a baby whose mother’s presence in the U.S. “was lawful but temporary” and whose father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of that baby’s birth.
In other words, the order doesn’t just apply to children born to undocumented immigrants. “Lawful but temporary” status includes people “on a student, work, or tourist visa,” according to the White House.
Some visa holders maintain a “temporary” presence in the U.S. for decades.”
How much money and man-hours will the federal government waste changing “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America”?
“Technically, Trump ordered that the federal Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) should be updated to reflect the new name, and ordered the secretary to “remove all references to the Gulf of Mexico from the GNIS.” Additionally, he ordered that “all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming.”
So, yes, as far as the federal government is concerned, the body of water between Florida and the Yucatan Peninsula will officially be the Gulf of America within the next month (the order allows 30 days for the change to be made).
Things are complicated by the fact that the Gulf of Mexico is a body of water that extends outside the borders of the United States—and thus beyond the bounds of federal law. There is no international body that officially names international bodies of water.”
“Trump’s executive order not only will revive capital punishment at the federal level, but attempt to expand the death penalty by directly supplying drugs to states and overturning Supreme Court precedents limiting the death penalty to crimes involving murder.
The executive order instructs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection.”
The death penalty has been in long-term decline nationally due to unrelenting legal challenges, governor-imposed moratoriums, and difficulties acquiring the drugs used in lethal injections.
Where the death penalty remains active, states have turned to extreme secrecy and novel methods to keep it going. They’ve passed new laws hiding their supply chains and methods, barred witnesses from execution chambers, imported drugs from shady overseas pharmacies, and paid cash to avoid paper trails. Despite all this, states haven’t been able to hide numerous botched executions that resulted.
In 2023 Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs paused executions in the state and hired a former federal magistrate judge to investigate its death penalty practices. However, Hobbs fired the investigator before he could release his report after he concluded that the sloppy injection protocols were not a viable method of execution. Arizona’s supply of lethal injection drugs is currently sitting in unmarked jars and are possibly expired.”
“”If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” J.D. Vance, now the vice president, said last week. But that “obvious” caveat was notably missing from the indiscriminate pardons Trump actually issued, which he claimed were necessary to remedy “a grave national injustice” and start “a process of national reconciliation.”
Such a reconciliation is impossible when the president is willing to excuse political violence as long as it is perpetrated by his supporters.”