Category Archives: Free Markets

Donald Delivers Economic Expertise @ Free-Market Speed

Debt, Donald Trump, Economy, Free Markets, libertarianism, Trade

No sooner had I penned “Trump And Trade,” questioning the slavish devotion of my own philosophical tribe, libertarians, to trade deficits, without considering that America’s trade imbalances occur in the context of debt—personal, corporate, state—than the magnificent Maria Bartiromo introduced, on Sunday Futures, the equally impressive Stephen Miller to speak to these matters.

Miller is a Trump Campaign senior policy adviser.

To comport with his earlier contention that, “We can’t have a service only economy,” Miller stated today (3/20):

It’s the donors vs. the voters. “The choice we have is between the national interests vs. the special interests.”

Mr. Trump’s has killed off the Cult of Megyn Kelly. Next on his to-do list: Replace crappy journo Kelly with pro Ms. Bartiromo.

Related:

“The Me Myself And I Megyn Kelly Production.”

“Trump And Trade.”

3/21/016:

MSNBC Guest Claims Trump Abusing Put-Upon Media

Business, Democracy, Donald Trump, Free Markets, Media

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes entertained a guest who framed the fact that Donald Trump bowed out of the next debate, as the act of a strongman in power, bullying a put-upon, abused press. How does one unpack such messy thinking? First to consider is that Trump has been extremely accessible to media.

More important:

1. Trump is not in power. He is not bolstered by police powers. Not yet. So he is not a political strongman.
2. Trump has grown his support like a business grows on the free market, non-coercively. You offer a product. If people like it, they buy it. Your business grows through the democratic dollar vote of the consumer. Again, no coercion was involved in Trump’s rise.
3. In absenting himself from a media extravaganza with the showy Megyn Kelly, Trump might annoy media, but he is not disappointing his base, who’ve had enough of the debates, and he is certainly not violating anyone’s rights.

UPDATED: MIAMI Breakthrough: Not Just ANOTHER GOP Debate

Donald Trump, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Middle East, Republicans

For your convenience, here are my tweets in real time of the 12th, GOP debate, in CORAL GABLES, at the University of Miami (3/10). Since so few networks respect the written word, let us thank CNN for providing a transcript. For the first time, I’m comfortable saying Mr. Trump won the debate. He had never done so before.

UPDATE (3/11):

From first to last, with the most important tweet—you’re looking at it—in the lead:

UPDATED: TRUMP AND TRADE

Donald Trump, Free Markets, libertarianism, Regulation, Trade

“TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Mitt gives Mormons (whom I love) a bad name. I thought Mormons weren’t meant to bad-mouth others. Yet Mitt had nothing but bad things to say about Donald Trump, who is political tabula rasa and has never passed a law in his life.

Neither has Trump ever caused the death of a single Iraqi kid. But the religiously devout Romney called him evil for defiling the precious memory of someone who had caused many thousands of such deaths: Bush II.

The meme about Mitt Romney is that had he attacked Barack Obama with the vim and vigor he reserved for Trump, he might have made it to president.

(Likewise, if only Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League went after Muslims who lob bombs at Jews with the passion he reserves for gentiles who raise their right hand in a pledge of support for Trump. Poor Abe is seeing Nazi faces in the clouds again.)

Romney also claimed Trump would “propose 35 percent tariff-like penalties” and “would instigate a trade war that would raise prices for consumers, kill export jobs, and lead entrepreneurs and businesses to flee America.”

I don’t know that Trump favors protective tariffs, import quotas or export subsidies.

I do know that we don’t have free trade.

What goes for “free trade,” rather, is trade managed by powerful bureaucracies – national and international – central planners concerned with regulating, not freeing, trade; whose goal it is to harmonize labor, health and environmental laws throughout the developed world. The undeveloped and developing worlds do as they please.

My understanding is that Trump simply wants to make these agreements and organs work for the American people.

I know, too, who did support “labeling China a currency manipulator,” so that he could “put in place, if necessary, tariffs where … they are taking unfair advantage of our manufacturers.”

Mitt Romney in 2012.

When it comes to the glories of an aggregate, negative balance of trade, libertarian post-graduate cleverness deserves to be questioned. …

… READ the rest. “TRUMP AND TRADE” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATED (3/15):