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| You Can't Have Your Tariff Cake and Eat It, Too |
| Brian Knight and Trace Mitchell | American Banker |
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| When it comes to trade policy, President Donald Trump and his adviser Peter Navarro continually make contradictory or logically incoherent statements. Navarro recently claimed that American consumers shouldn't worry about new tariffs because they won't be affected, but the point of these tariffs is to raise the price of foreign goods so Americans will buy more domestic products. In a tweet, President Trump boasted that China and other countries are pouring massive amounts of money into the United States, but the results are events that the president usually opposes: increasing trade deficits and a stronger US dollar relative to the rest of the world. The incoherence surrounding the White House's trade
policy would be entertaining if the policy consequences weren't self-destructive. |
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| What If Everyone's Wrong about China? |
| Tyler Cowen | Bloomberg Opinion |
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| Over the past 20 years, China has surprised onlookers as surrounding countries have liberalized. This could stem from a tendency for Americans to impose superficial narratives on China and the Chinese. Conventional wisdom that Hong Kong was a territory of apathetic, spoiled wealthy people, not very committed to self-rule or democracy has also been disproven as 1.7 million people took the risk of participating last weekend in a peaceful anti-government march. As other nations continue to observe developments in China, it's important to remember people’s continuing capacity to respond to current events and shape their futures for the better. |
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| Bad Bipartisan Ideas on Drug Prices |
| Robert Grabyoes | InsideSources |
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| Conservatives and liberals covet lower drug prices in Canada and Europe and implore federal officials to negotiate prices down, but both sides’ proposed solutions would likely fail. The Trump administration suggests allowing Americans to buy Canadian drugs, but this would most likely result in drug companies raising prices in Canada, or discontinuing the product in Canada altogether. Senator Bernie Sanders would like to see Medicare negotiators impose price controls, but this is not how Canada gets lower prices and would result in regulatory capture by bureaucrats. Policies that could reduce costs mostly involve the supply-side of the market — reducing the cost of developing new drugs. |
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