In almost every case, whenever a tariff or quota is imposed on imports, that tax is strongly supported by the domestic industry getting the protective shield from lower-priced foreign competition. The sugar industry supports sugar tariffs; textile mills lobby for tariffs on foreign clothing. The steel industry and the aluminum makers are getting rich off of the high taxes on imported metals.
President Trump gave one of his most memorable and impactful speeches two weeks ago, when he systematically dismantled the case for socialism. In that speech, he recalled the economic harm and destruction in nations that have adopted socialism, communism or Stalinism. "America will never be a socialist country," Trump pledged in his speech in Florida.
"This is the flip side (of) tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?" said New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo on Feb. 4.
Does anyone know where all those free trade Democrats went?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, has released her Green New Deal plan to the nation -- and to great applause from the Democratic Party.
Well, what do you know! It turns out that amateur economist Donald J. Trump knows more about sound monetary policy than Fed chairman Jerome Powell and his team of hundreds of Ph.D. economists.
The government shutdown is over -- for now -- but the political ramifications are still being sorted out. The media has been chortling that Donald Trump "caved," and he may well have lost this battle with congressional Democrats. Their "victory," such as it is, is to notify American voters that they are so opposed to a wall and a secure border that they were willing to keep the government shut down for four weeks to ensure it doesn't happen.
On Saturday, Donald Trump shrewdly flipped the table on Nancy Pelosi in the government shutdown standoff. He has now proposed a grand bargain on immigration: legalization of some 1 million so-called Dreamers -- the foreigners who were brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents -- and an immediate end to the shutdown, if she agrees to expand funding to $5.7 billion for the wall.
Oh how far the Democratic Party has fallen. In recent days, we've seen the new darling of the Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, crusading for a 70 percent income tax rate.
In the months after the election of Donald Trump, there was a mini-political movement in California to get the Golden State to secede from the Union.
In one of the most remarkable Abbott and Costello routines in modern times, the economic wizards at the Fed again raised interest rates on Tuesday. Their crackerjack logic for doing so is to steer America on a course toward recession so they have the tools in hand to end the recession that they themselves created. Can anyone tell us who's on first?
The first iron rule of American politics is: Follow the money. This explains, oh, about 80 percent of what goes on in Washington.
The eulogies for George H.W. Bush keep rolling in, and a great American hero's life has been given proper tribute.
Republicans need to regain the offensive on the fiscal issues. The GOP has somehow allowed big-spending Democrats to get to the right of them on the issue of financial responsibility and balanced budgets.
There's an old saying that Wall Street economists have predicted eight of the last two recessions. The bears in the economics profession keep getting paid a lot of money misreading the nation's economic weather vanes -- whether it was the power and durability of the Reagan expansion in the 1980s, the ferocious bull market of the late 1990s, the after-effects of the 9/11 attacks, or most recently the phenomenal revival of growth in President Donald Trump's first years in office.
No one understands the dysfunctions and debilitating impact of America's political system in the swamp better than Mark Melcher and Steve Soukup. For decades between them, they followed Washington for Wall Street at one of America's largest brokerage houses. For the last 16 years, the two have run their own, independent research shop, delivering political commentary and forecasting to the investment community, studying the intersection between politics and economics. This pushed them into a relentless pursuit of the new left -- measuring its deleterious impact on everything it touches -- most especially Western civilization.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California appears a lock to become the next chairman of the House's powerful Financial Services Committee. Waters is pledging to be a diligent watchdog for mom and pop investors, and recently told a crowd that when it comes to the big banks, investment houses and insurance companies, "We are going to do to them what they did to us." I'm not going to cry too many tears for Wall Street since they poured money behind the Democrats in these midterm elections. You get what you pay for.
I've been arguing for months that the ideal outcome in the midterm elections to set up Donald Trump for a landslide re-election in 2020 is for Republicans to hold the Senate and narrowly lose the House.
Here is Moore's rule of modern-day politics: The better the economy performs under President Donald Trump and the more successes he racks up, the more unhinged the left becomes. It's a near linear relationship. And it goes for media as well.
It seems like just yesterday that Democrats were telling us that under Obamacare, "If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan."
