Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Low-skilled immigrants would expand the supply of housing more than they increase demand, if local governments would just allow new construction.”
https://reason.com/2025/12/18/trump-blames-illegal-immigrants-for-high-housing-prices-blame-zoning-instead/
“From January through September, the most recent month for which U.S. Census Bureau trade data are available, the U.S. imported $1 trillion more in goods than it exported. This is a $118 billion jump compared to the goods trade deficit that the U.S. ran from January to September 2024. (Likewise, the overall trade deficit, which includes services, increased by $113 billion.)
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Recently published data from China’s General Administration of Customs show the Chinese goods trade surplus has increased since Trump took office. From January to September, China exported $875 billion more goods than it imported—a $185 billion jump vs. the same time period in 2024.
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Fortunately for consumers, these macroeconomic statistics are meaningless. You run a trade deficit with your grocery store, I run a trade deficit with McDonald’s, good little boys and girls run a trade deficit with Santa Claus, and we’re all better off for it. As as the economists Daniel Klein and Donald Boudreaux have put it, a trade deficit is equivalent to running a surplus on current stuff.
Likewise, as countries get richer, their labor markets transition from agriculture to industry and then to the service sector. Declining manufacturing employment as a share of overall employment is a sign that Americans are richer, not poorer, than our ancestors.
Trump’s targeted metrics are meaningless as proxies of prosperity. But the fact that his protectionist policies are failing to achieve their stated goals shows just how flawed they—and their justifications—always were.”
https://reason.com/2025/12/17/trump-said-his-tariffs-would-reduce-the-trade-deficit-and-bring-back-manufacturing-heres-what-the-data-show/?itm_source=parsely-api
“Some $1.6 trillion in annual imports are subject to the tariffs, while at least $1.7 trillion are excluded, either because they are duty-free or subject to another tariff, according to a POLITICO analysis based on last year’s import data.
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In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, Trump said he was open to adding even more exemptions to tariffs. He downplayed the existing carve-outs as “very small” and “not a big deal,” and said he plans to pair them with tariff increases elsewhere.
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In addition to the exemptions from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, more than $300 billion of imports are also exempted as part of trade deals the administration has negotiated in recent months, including with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and more recently, Malaysia, Cambodia and Brazil. The deal with Brazil removed a range of products from a cumulative tariff of 50 percent, making two-thirds of imports from the country free from emergency tariffs.”
An unstrategic mishmash of tariffs is not good for the economy.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/14/trump-tariff-exemptions-us-imports-data-00685168
A study found that due to Brexit, UK GDP per capita is 6-8% lower than it would be if the UK never left the EU.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSQ7LY0ca0o
“The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 percent in November, its highest level in more than four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The economy gained 64,000 jobs that month after losing 105,000 in October, mostly the result of federal government workers taking buyouts.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/16/jobs-report-trump-employment-economy-00692500
When it comes to manufacturing iPhones, no one can do it like China does. Creating such phones has a lot of needs, and China meets all of them.
China doesn’t see overproduction as a bad thing because the goal isn’t maximizing profits, but undercutting and deindustrializing other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9694CESmOZc
“The fee will affect workers in fields far beyond tech. Health care providers, religious groups, and educators are among those suing the Trump administration over the fee, “saying it would harm hospitals, churches, schools and industries that rely on the visa,” reports the Associated Press. The fee could exacerbate teacher and physician shortages, especially in rural areas that struggle to attract American workers. “About a third of H-1B workers are nurses, teachers, physicians, scholars, priests and pastors, according to the lawsuit,” according to the Associated Press.
Though the Trump administration argues that its visa fee will address the “large-scale replacement of American workers,” it might not lead to companies hiring American workers instead of foreign workers after all. “Firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment,” found a 2020 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. “For every visa rejection,” the average multinational corporation hires 0.4 employees overseas, while the most globalized firms “hire 0.9 employees abroad for every visa rejection.” Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond economist Nicolas Morales observed that “tighter immigration rules don’t just limit U.S. hiring, but they can also accelerate relocating jobs to other countries.”
Other countries are trying to attract foreign talent that might be deterred by U.S. visa policies, Roll Call reported in October. Germany’s ambassador to India and Bhutan compared the country’s immigration policy to a German car: “It’s reliable, it’s modern and it is predictable….We do not change our rules fundamentally overnight.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that “not as many people are going to get visas to the United States,” which represents “an opportunity for Canada.”
The H-1B program is imperfect. Many supporters of high-skilled immigration suggest fundamentally changing the visa or scrapping it altogether, arguing that it limits foreign workers’ mobility and long-term prospects and doesn’t prioritize the highest-skilled workers for the U.S. economy. But a $100,000 fee won’t fix those issues.”
https://reason.com/2025/12/07/what-would-a-100000-h-1b-fee-do/
“Texas farmers have long pushed for Mexico to send more water to meet the obligations of the 81-year-old treaty that says Mexico is obligated to deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water to the U.S. every five years. Trump also threatened sanctions and tariffs against Mexico in April, complaining then that the country had delivered less than 30 percent of the requirement over a five-year window that ended in October.
Mexico argues that climate change-driven drought has hindered its ability to send the requisite water, but officials promised to send 420,000 acre-feet to the U.S. by October.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/08/trump-tariffs-mexico-rio-grande-water-00682220
China is using its stranglehold on rare earth minerals to wage economic warfare against the world. If a company wants such materials from somewhere else, they will be more expensive, and those companies’ products will no longer be competitive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASaGYbN0dw
When countries like China focus on heavily investing, initially it works well because they invest in productive things and this grows their economy. However, later, they run out of that many productive things to invest in, in which case they are robbing their citizens of consumption and outcompeting other countries’ manufacturing, but not gaining much actual new productive benefits. This leads to debt.
Bilateral tariffs like Trump is doing don’t work. The U.S. has a huge deficit because it consumes more than it exports. A global tariff could work by making goods more expensive and incentivizing people to consume, now relatively cheaper, domestic products. Bilateral tariffs just mean Americans will import cheap goods from country C and D instead of the heavily tariffed countries A and B.
Getting foreigners to invest in the U.S. hurts the U.S.. The U.S. has plenty of capital to invest and doesn’t need more. Additional investment means driving up the dollar, making U.S. goods less competitive internationally, and hurting U.S. exports.
China has debt to support investment. The U.S. has debt to support consumption. The system is out of whack and needs adjustment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSNdzfydRU