Every fiber of my economic being cries out against tariffs. If they are so good, why doesn’t each state in the US have one against the products of all of the other 49? That is, Ohio could “protect” its industries against the incursions from Arizona. This is obviously silly. One of the important reasons America is so prosperous is that we have a gigantic, internal, free trade area.
Donald Trump supports them on the ground that the McKinley administration was prosperous, and relied upon tariffs. But this is to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy: that since A precedes B, A must be the cause of B. No, America did indeed become rich during this epoch, but that was in spite of tariffs, not due to their benign influence. If you are looking for a historical episode to shed light on this matter, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 will do far better: it greatly worsened an already bad recession, plunging our economy into a deep depression.
Our President also claims that the US is victimized by a negative balance of trade: we buy more from Canada and other countries than they purchase from us. However, I have a horrid balance of trade with McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. I acquire several hundreds of dollars’ worth of their products every year, and neither has yet seen fit to reciprocate with any of my economic services (hint, hint!). On the other hand, I have a very strong positive balance of trade with my employer, Loyola University New Orleans. They pay me a decent salary; apart from a few lunches in their cafeteria, my expenditures to them fill their coffers to a zero degree. Should anyone worry about this sort of thing? Of course not. Ditto for international trade. If Country A buys more from B than it sells to it, money will flow from the former to the latter, reducing prices in the former and raising them in the latter, until matters balance out.
Everyone realizes the foolishness of tariffs when it comes to absolute advantage. No Canadian objects to the importation of bananas from Costa Rica. Producing this tropical product in the frozen North would be financially prohibitive (gigantic hothouses). Ditto for maple syrup in the country to the south. The only way they could produce this item would be to place maple trees in gigantic refrigerators. Ludicrous and prohibitively expensive.
But when it comes to comparative advantage, all too many people are out to lunch insofar as the teachings of Economics 101 are concerned. They fear that other countries might be more efficient than we are; with free trade, they would produce everything, we, nothing, and we would all starve to death from massive unemployment.
To dispel this myth, let’s consider a thought experiment. A lawyer is as good a typist as his secretary. He can produce $1,000 per day by practicing his profession. But for every such day, he needs a certain amount of typing. He can produce $200 worth each day. In two days, he can thus earn $1200 on his own. If he hires a typist, he can earn $2,000 from lawyering in two days, but must pay his secretary $200 daily for a total of $400. If he trades with her, he will come out with $2,000-$400=$1,600, an appreciable gain for him.
So is there any economic case for tariffs, given the foregoing? Yes, paradoxically, there is—in a way, if the alternative is a tax that’s even worse.
At the start of his second term, President Trump initially fired 6% of the employees of the Internal Revenue Service. He is now looking to end the employment of some 50% of them. Suppose he follows this up by getting rid of all of the rest of the IRS bureaucrats, eliminating the dreaded income tax, and achieving revenue neutrality with tariffs. His motto might be: “Let’s turn back the clock to 1912,” the year before this tax was implemented (when it ranged from 1% to 7%!).
What would the benefits be thereof? First of all, there are many intelligent, productive people who work for the IRS. There are some 90,000 of them. If dismissed by their employer, they would be freed up to produce goods and services desired by the populace. Ditto for the many accountants and tax lawyers who devote all or part of their time to helping their clients wrestle with complicated IRS regulations. Further, many of us fill out our own tax forms. This takes hours, days in some cases, time that could be better spent on leisure or productivity.
The benefit here is that it takes relatively little labor to run a tariff system. Hey, we already have tariffs in place. An increase in their level would hardly call for much more manpower, likely hardly any more at all.
Halfway measures will avail us little. But if Mr. Trump completely eliminates the IRS and the hated income tax along with it, there may be a reasonable case for increasing tariff rates. Not to present punitive levels, though.
To put it another way, if we accept that there has to be a government, and it therefore needs some revenue to function, this might be the least-bad option.
Should we worry about so many people becoming unemployed? Not at all. A similar sort of thing occurred when the car replaced the horse and buggy, when the cell phone substituted for Kodak, when we switched from typewriters to computers, etc. We are all the richer for this sort of thing, and will be in this case too.
Walter Edward Block is an American economist and anarcho-capitalist theorist who holds the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the J. A. Butt School of Business at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began a US-Canada economic summit designed to improve his country’s economic climate.
Canada’s political landscape is shifting. After nearly a decade in office, Trudeau has announced his resignation, with the Party leadership election scheduled for March 9. He will leave behind a country that has been grappling with a decade of disillusionment. Trudeau’s legacy will be marred by soaring taxes and a Canadian economy that many now describe as being on “life support.”
The country’s healthcare provision is the weakest part of its economy. For years, American reformers have idolized Canadian healthcare, touting it as the gold standard for universal care, and a model to replace an American system that is also broken. But the reality tells a starkly different story. In Canada, wait times are unmanageable, access to services is dwindling, and public trust is eroding. Recent data indicate that one in six Canadians lacks a regular family physician, and fewer than half can secure an appointment with a primary care provider within a day or two. This shortage has led to overwhelmed emergency rooms and significant delays in care. In 2023, more than 1.3 million Canadians abandoned emergency room visits due to excessive wait times. Some hospitals have even exceeded 200% capacity, forcing patients into hallways and onto floors.
As Americans reckon with record deficits and runaway government spending, some voices are once again touting the Canadian example as cheaper and more effective than the US system. One of the loudest cheerleaders for Canada’s model is Wendell Potter, a former healthcare executive turned activist, who has lately been painting a utopian vision of Canada’s government-run healthcare in op-eds and interviews. But like all advocates of socialized medicine, Potter is peddling an illusion rather than reckoning with the harsh realities Canadians face daily.
Consider the data. Patients in Canada often wait months for critical procedures. According to the Fraser Institute, the median wait time for medically necessary treatments in 2022 was over 27 weeks—nearly double what it was in 1993. For many Canadians, timely access to care is not a guarantee but a gamble. For patients with life-threatening conditions, these delays can mean the difference between recovery and irreversible harm.
The deterioration of Canada’s healthcare has not gone unnoticed by its citizens. Recent polls show that dissatisfaction with healthcare is at an all-time high, with many Canadians now exploring private care options to bypass the public system’s inefficiencies. Some 75% of Canadians now believe their nation’s healthcare is in crisis. “Free” healthcare costs the average citizen nearly $9,000 a year in taxes, and people who once championed Medicare are acknowledging its shortcomings.
The problems plaguing Canadian healthcare are deeply rooted in its design. A single-payer arrangement relies on the government (i.e., the taxpayer) as the sole payer for healthcare services, ostensibly ensuring universal access. But basic economics predicts two problems. First, as sticker prices fall (because a portion of the cost is subsidized by taxpayers), demand will increase. Second, as the government does not respond to market forces, there is no incentive for supply to grow.
When demand outpaces supply, as it has in Canada, the limitations become glaringly obvious. Hospitals face chronic underfunding, staffing shortages are widespread, and technological investments lag behind those of other developed nations. Despite a population of 40 million, there are only 432 MRI machines in the country. The US has more than 13,000. These structural issues lead to the long wait times and reduced access that have become hallmarks of Canadian healthcare.
Another alarming consequence of these failures is the rising use of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). Reports have emerged of patients feeling pressured into considering euthanasia due to inadequate access to care. Since its legalization in 2016, MAID has accounted for 4% of deaths in Canada, and some fear that systemic healthcare failures are influencing these decisions. Scarce resources must be allocated somehow; if markets can’t encourage increased supply, rationing will take place through waiting. Or worse.
Meanwhile, advocates of Canada’s model argue that the American system is broken because it prioritizes profit over care. There is certainly room for reform in the US. But US healthcare is anything but a free-market wonder (or the market dystopia condemned by its detractors). Before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“Obamacare”), more than half of US healthcare expenditures were already funded by various government sources. If we add a tangled web of regulations and distortions, it’s no wonder that prices are so high. No country’s healthcare is without flaws, but Canada’s current crisis should serve as a cautionary tale rather than an aspiration.
By romanticizing Canada’s healthcare system, advocates of fully nationalized healthcare gloss over the lived experiences of countless Canadians struggling to access essential care. Their narrative does little to address the failures that have led to this crisis, offering a one-sided view of American healthcare that conveniently ignores the shortcomings of the alternative.
Whether the US-Canada summit delivers meaningful solutions or simply serves as a political farewell tour remains to be seen.In any event, Trudeau’s resignation signals a new chapter for Canada, and it is an opportune moment to confront the mythologies surrounding its policies—particularly its healthcare system. Canada offers a cautionary tale of what happens when lofty ideals collide with practical realities. The cracks in Canada’s healthcare model are too large to ignore.
The lesson is clear for Americans still enamored with replicating Canada’s single-payer arrangement—be careful what you wish for. Promising universal access but failing to deliver timely care is not a model worth emulating. Canada’s healthcare crisis is a wake-up call for its citizens and anyone who believes in the promise of universal care. As Trudeau’s political legacy fades, the urgent task of addressing Canada’s failures remains. Advocates of full nationalization of healthcare would do well to shift their focus from selling dreams to confronting realities. Only then can the conversation about healthcare reform—on both sides of the border—begin to move in a meaningful direction.
Healthcare in Canada, the US, and beyond needs more consumer choice, less regulation, and better-aligned incentives—not more socialism.
Well, the Donald surely did hit the ground thundering, and some right good noise it was— starting with the 1500 + pardons of the J6 offenders. That promise-kept was crucial because it was one big presidential middle finger rebuke to the Giant Lie that the Washington establishment and MSM have been egregiously peddling for the last four years.
For crying out loud, it wasn’t an “insurrection” and did not threaten American democracy even a teensy tiny bit. Instead, the January 6th brouhaha was a case of piss poor police work at the US Capitol Building. It could have been readily barricaded from the unruly crowd streaming off the Ellipse with a few locked steel doors and some water canons and bear spray canisters unloosed for good measure.
Indeed, we spent 15 years around the place back in the day, and the truth is this: If they don’t want you to get in, you just plain can’t penetrate what is a fortress made of 400,000 sandstone blocks weighing upwards of 75 million pounds in the aggregate. The so-called rioters got in because they were let in, not because they broke in. They had no plan of action whatsoever and for an obvious reason: It was a disorganized, unarmed, leaderless mob of political yokels and yahoos, which like the car-chasing dog who unexpectedly caught its prey, had no idea of what to do once they got inside—except to meander around the building taking selfies and grabbing mementos such as the paperweights on Nancy Pelosi’s desk.
None of them were armed. There was also never a moment of material threat to the Secret Service-protected Vice-President or the Electoral College certification procedure.
And contrary to the flagrant but typical lie on CNN last night by the dopey Dem Senator from New Jersey, Cory Booker, no “police killers” got pardoned at 7:30 PM Monday. The only person “killed” at the Capitol Building that day was an unarmed citizen, Ashli Babbitt, who had been a decorated war hero before coming to Washington to protest an outcome that was decided by 44,000 votes in three states out of 158 million counted in an election in which only 57 million voters actually came to the polls on election day (the other 101 million ballots were absentee ballots or early voting ballots).
Was there reason, therefore, to suspect the validity of this razor thin outcome conducted under untested pandemic voting procedures—even apart from Donald Trump’s self-serving whining? As Sarah Palin would have said, you betcha!
In any event, the event was a non-event. The vast majority of the protesters/rioters should have been fined $100 for trespassing and defacing of government property and sent home. That should have been the end of it—but the Washington establishment had other ideas. To wit, taking the weaponization of the Deep State to the next level by spending $2.7 billion of taxpayer money prosecuting a case against thousands of citizens that was so threadbare as to actually amount to a transparent Democrat campaign ad.
That’s right. These liberal poseurs spent enough money staging their J6 theatrical extravaganza as would have supported food stamps for 770,000 needy people for an entire year. They are just shameless.
Yet, even that is not the whole of it. For instance, consider all the talking head bleating about the police officers “injured” on January 6th. Dig as deep as you might, however, and you can’t find a record of even a dozen of them being admitted to any Washington DC hospital. That is to say, the “140 injured officers” canard was either made up out of whole cloth entirely or they counted every scratch, scrap, first aid bandage, nosebleed or slight heart palpitation that occurred among the ranks of the desk jockeys and glorified visitor guides who are pleased to be called the Capitol Hill Police force.
Actually, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves, who was in charge of this entire miscarriage of justice and the source of the 140 injuries figure might well be considered an “expert” in illegal assaults. His career prior to joining the Biden DOJ in 2021 was at a Washington “law firm” which lobbied for represented middle eastern nations and banks accused of supporting terrorism!
Specifically, Graves represented the Qatari government, which has faced accusations of supporting terrorist organizations including Hamas, and also a passel of foreign banks including the Bank of Palestine, Arab Bank PLC, and Bank of Beirut—all of which were accused of financing terrorism. In short, we are not inclined to credit Mr. Graves’ claims about police injuries on J6 since it is evident that his field of vision is heavily colored by whoever his paymaster might happen to be at any moment in time.
Worse still, all of this wailing about the alleged desecration of the People’s House is downright nauseating. After all, the Capitol Building is desecrated day-in and day-out by the greatest assemblage of crooks, knaves, hypocrites and bootlickers you can find in any one building in all of America. In fact, they are spending and borrowing the nation into fiscal calamity—with the public debt now rising by more than $10 billion per day.
Of course, as Trump jabbered-away at the Resolute Desk—signing 48 executive orders, repealing 78 Biden executive actions and taking more unscripted, un-preapproved questions from the press in 50 minutes than Sleepy Joe did in 1,460 days—he was just getting warmed-up with the pardons.
In fact, the far more sweeping and consequential “pardon” issued last night was that for fossil fuels and the lowly CO2 molecules that their combustion unleashes to fertilize and green the planet. Quitting the Paris Accord (again), canceling the EV mandates, opening up Alaska and pausing Federal leases for off-shore wind turbine carnage of sea-life wasn’t really the half of it.
Far more crucial was the flat-out utterance from the Bully Pulpit of the White House itself that the whole Climate Crisis campaign is a hoax and a scam. Unlike the normal GOP BS about “balancing” s0-called climate protection measures with economic needs or phasing-in fossil fuel rollbacks more judiciously or putting taxpayer money into smart hideous boondoggles like CO2 capture and “burial”, the Donald pulled no punches. To wit, he flatly said that the predicate is utterly wrong. So be gone you climate fraudsters!
In the same “be gone” vein the 51 ex-intelligence community grifters who signed the petition saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plant got their security clearances yanked—led by those belonging to the five most odious dicks in the lot: Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, Morell and Panetta. This action may well relieve the American people from their lies and propaganda as national security “experts” on the cable networks night after night, but also something even more crucial: Namely, it was message from the Oval Office that contrary to Senator Chuckles Schumer’s warning the first time around that no one in their right mind would tangle with the intelligence community, the nation’s re-elected sheriff just plain ain’t afraid of the Deep State. Period.
That is, the folks pictured below and their legions of cohorts and confederates took a proverbial shot at the king and missed. So the Donald’s payback is just starting in these precincts, meaning that the future of constitutional government may be getting one big shot in the arm—including in the next few days when all of the remaining material in the classified archives about the assassination of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King is released.
This long overdue release amounts to both a defiance of the Deep State and evidence that lessons have been learned on the Donald’s side of the table. Last time, he got talked out of releasing the JFK files by the deplorable neocon troll, Mike Pompeo. But this time he knew enough to send Pompeo, John Bolton, Gina Haskell and the rest of the neocon pack packing before they even packed for another job in his second administration.
The litmus test as to whether the national security Deep State is really on the run, however, will be if the Donald sticks it out with his brilliant choice of Tulsi Gabbard for DNI (Director of National Intelligence). Tulsi knows her brief cold—so give her a few months as DNI and the wailing sounds coming from the 17 intelligence agencies will turn into roaring crescendo of disclosure and exposure of the evil deeds done by many of those pictured below.
Then there was the shit-canning of Washington’s horrid $1.3 billion per year contribution to the WHO (World Health Organization). Indeed, this tool of globalism and crony capitalists capture by the likes of Bill Gates and Big Pharma has received $16 billion from Washington over the last decade. After the WHO’s treachery on the COVID pandemic and vax front, however, the zero funding put in place last night needs to stay zero as far as the eye can see.
Again, the Donald should never be forgiven for unleashing Dr. Fauci, Scarf Lady Birx, Operation Warp Speed and the rest of the Covid mayhem on the American people. But his ridding the US of any and all affiliation with this destructive UN institution would be a decent starting form of penance.
Likewise, the executive order forbidding any Federal agency from indirectly thwarting the absolute constitutional protection of free speech was a veritable clarion call. It unmistakably announced that the Biden era outbreak of Federal-agency thought control is now over and done.
Yet to make sure this order will stand forevermore, the Trump people need to follow up with a deep and sweeping investigation of these unconstitutional misadventures and assaults on free speech. The purpose would be to identify, expose and prosecute, if warranted, every single one of the Bidenite malefactors by name, rank and serial number so as to discourage any future political appointee from even thinking about weaponizing an agency of the state against domestic political rivals or dissidents from the prevailing orthodoxy.
In this regard, the 75 day reprieve for TikTok is a big stride in the same direction—with the added feature that it calls out the “national security” ruse for state-driven thought control and censorship. The fact that the Chinese owners allegedly capture user information is a pitifully weak excuse for banning free speech. After all, the very modus operandi of free social media is that they capture and monetize your viewing habits otherwise known as your “information”.
Besides that, even though the Donald’s eagerness to “make a deal” with the Chinese has its own problems, his delay of the TikTok ban at least clarified one thing. To wit, it gave occasion for the great Senator Rand Paul to school a typical Fox News China-basher about who owns the joint. And it turns out that the parent company, ByteDance, is owned 60% by global investors, 20% by the two founders, 20% by employees including thousands of Americans and zero percent by the Chicom government in Beijing.
As to the latter, the only thing the Chinese government actually owns is a 1% golden share in a China-only subsidiary of ByteDance because, well, TikTok itself is illegal in China!
You can’t make this stuff up. Both the House and Senate chambers are crawling with UniParty demagogues who based the ban on the hideous grounds that Beijing might find out, what? Whether 13 year-old American girls like videos of puppies or kittens better?
According to The Wall Street Journal, ByteDance agreed in 2021 to allow the Chinese government to take a 1% ownership stake known as a “golden share” at one of its China-based subsidiaries, Beijing Douyin Information Service Co., which runs Douyin, an app available in China that’s similar to TikTok. (TikTok is not available in mainland China.).
It goes without saying, of course, that DEI took it firmly on the chin last night, as well. And appropriately so. There has not been any statist operation more inimical to personal liberty and free enterprise prosperity in recent decades than the DEI campaign that infected much of the Fortune 500. That is, until Bud Light was stupid enough to hired a creepy transgender TikTok influencer named Dylan Mulvaney, which triggered Trump buddy Kid Rock to post a video on Twitter blasting cases of Bud Light to smithereens with a machine gun.
Alas, it all came together over the weekend when Kid Rock serenaded the Trump rally Sunday evening while the Donald went on yesterday to literally deliver the DEI death knell. His ringing endorsement of meritocracy and the plainly evident truth that Mother Nature invented just two genders may have finally awakened the corporate, university and government HR departments from their destructive sojourns in the deranged world where men have babies and women have a pair.
At the end of the night, of course, there was one real big, nay huuuge, thing missing. The Donald didn’t say a word about the fiscal time bomb that has been deposited on his door step by the UniParty. But the fact is, the $624 billion deficit posted during the two first two months of FY 2025 was a shocking 64% bigger than the prior year and even exceeded the 2020 COVID year deficit by a large measure.
Moreover, it’s just the tip of the iceberg coming down the pike. The built-in spending momentum will generate $85 trillion of outlays over the next decade versus barely $60 trillion of revenue, and that’s according to a CBO baseline forecast that assumes uninterrupted full employment for the next decade and a level of total GDP and employment by 2035 that even supply-side gurus like Art Laffer have barely projected.
That is to say, the public debt is heading to $70 trillion by the mid-2030s and $150 trillion (yes, with a “T”) by the middle of the century—a level which would crush main street prosperity and constitutional liberty as we have known it.
And yet and yet. The Donald had absolutely nothing to say on the very topic that is at the heart of everything.
Nor did he say a word about how he will extricate the US from the catastrophe in Ukraine or rein in a $1.6 trillion national security budget that is at least $500 billion greater than what an America First homeland security policy actually requires. Instead, he went off on a tangent about planting the stars and stripes on Mars.
And that’s to say nothing about how the 8 million illegals now on US payrolls will be replaced if they are deported by ICE or self-deported by fears of a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
Finally, Trump was yapping yet again about Chicom control of the Panama Canal. To be sure, someone apparently told the Donald that the Panama Canal Authority is gouging American shippers and China may have something to do with it. Of course, neither is remotely true.
But there is a larger issue here. The matter of Panama is so utterly irrelevant that the Donald’s preoccupation with it is still another reminder that his good thunder on issues where he feels he has been personally wronged can readily give way to immense blunders on important matters on which he is wholly misinformed or completely misguided.
In the case of Panama, for instance, the Chinese government has absolutely no role in the operations of the Panama Canal Authority. Nor did they fund the recent $5 billion expansion to accommodate more and larger ships. In all, the canal authority collects just $3.38 billion per year in tolls, which doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in the scheme of things.
Actually, the tolls averaged just $16 per ton against the 210 million long tons of cargo handled by the canal in FY 2024. So perhaps the Donald’s opinion is what—that the toll should be much lower at say $13.50, $9.25 or $5 per ton?
In fact, if the tolls were actually exploitive, the containers coming from the Far East and heading for the US Atlantic coast would divert to the Long Beach/Los Angeles Port and then go by train and truck to the east coast. Alas, they don’t at today’s $16 per ton average charge because after the Teamsters, rail unions and Warren Buffet’s Union Pacific railroad eats their fill, it’s still cheaper to take the canal route and pay the tolls—the Donald’s new found monopolistic assessment or not.
More importantly, about 70% of the Panama Canal traffic is accounted for by US port originated or destined traffic. So call the annual charge to the US economy $2.4 billion, which amounts to the rounding error sum of $7.0 million per day.
As for the Chicoms, their footprint apparently stems from the fact that the venerable Chinese investment titan, Li Ka-shing, owns and operates two Panama Canal ports through CK Hutchinson Holdings. In turn, these two ports–one on the Atlantic (Cristobal) and the other on the Pacific (Balboa)—move about 4.5 million TEUs (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) per year. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but even then it amounts to barely half of the annual 8.0 million TEUs moved by the two largest Panama operations at the Port of Colon and the Port of Manzanillo. These are not Chinese owned or influenced, nor are several more smaller ports that also operate in Panama.
That is to say, why in the big wide world of national problems and crises is the Donald blundering around threatening to seize the Panama Canal—which is a 20th century relic, at best?
Moreover, we don’t know whether the legendary Li Ka-shing is a commie agent or not, but if so he has been pretty adept at playing the role of empire-building capitalist. After all, he has accumulated a current net worth of $36 billion.
More pertinently, we don’t see much reason to sweat Li Ka-shing’s ownership of two of the seven Panama ports—especially when the American economy already has been living quite comfortably with the CK Hutchinson empire of ports all around the world.
Actually, the company is the world’s leading port investor, developer and operator. The Group’s ports division holds interests in 52 ports comprising 291 operational berths in 27 countries, including container terminals operating in six of the 10 busiest container ports in the world, such as the premier US port at Long Beach.
In 2021, the division handled a total throughput of 88 million TEUs, meaning that its Panama operation accounts for barely 4% of its global volume. So if CK Hutchinson is a dangerous tool of Xi Jinping, its Panama holdings are the least of our worries.
Of course, there is actually nothing to worry about down there in the Panama Canal Zone when it comes to global commerce and the purported machinations of Chiiina.
It turns out that the current volume through the Long Beach/Los Angeles Ports is 20 million TEUs per year or five times more than the traffic through the so-called China ports in Panama. At an average value of about $75,000 per TEU, the annual volume into these leading US ports is worth about $1.5 trillion. That is to say, if you put the Donald’s “big beautiful” 25% tariff on the incoming goods at Long Beach/Los Angeles, you get $375 billion per year drained out of the pockets of American consumers. Now, that’s actually some kind of harm.
In short, the $7 million per day of tolls paid by US bound shipments through the canal are utterly irrelevant to anything that matters when it comes to restoring non-inflationary growth in an American economy now freighted down under $101 trillion of public and private debt and a central bank that has painted itself into an inflationary corner.
Stated differently, the Donald’s day one thunder was superb but his blunder in totally ignoring the big issues—taming the Warfare State, reining in the explosion of Federal spending and debt and throttling the madcap money-printers at the Fed—needs to be corrected real soon.
We don’t have much hope for that, however. At the end of the day Donald Trump is a statist Cesarean who thinks governance is a principle-free transactional “art of the deal” to be performed on a global stage.
It is not. Not in the slightest. What America actually needs is not a bully boy CEO, but a Federal government that sobers up, balances its books, brings the Empire home and gets out of the way.
Then again, we just don’t see the Donald signing up for Jeffersonian quiescence and modesty now that he is back in the Oval Office. He has spent a whole lifetime pursuing the opposite, and is not about to execute a volte-face now.
