“Amazon and Walmart’s third-party sellers are hoarding stock in Canada as they try to wait out President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. Independent vendors who sell products — from cheap dog toys to appliances — through the companies’ US ecommerce platforms are shifting goods from China to Canadian warehouses, according to half a dozen sellers, logistics providers and consultants. Several makers and distributors of Amazon’s and Walmart’s own products, as well as suppliers to companies such as Disney, are also using the tactic, some of the people said. … Flexport, a US logistics group, said there were early signs that shipments were being routed to Canada after it observed a 50 per cent increase in consignments from China to the country last week.” (04/22/25)
“In high school in West Texas in the late 1970s, psych meds were Veblen goods; that is, products desired as markers of status. They were conspicuously consumed by the children of the well-to-do with profound awareness that their schoolmates could afford neither the treatment nor the supposed cure. … in the decades since, this Veblen good went the way of all luxury purchases over time. It became mainstream. Psych meds are now common among adults and children. It’s a massive industry: like cell phones and TVs generations ago, they migrated through the class structure year by year. Now comes Unshrunk by Laura Delano, a book that could change everything. If it were not an autobiography, it would make great fiction of the gothic sort popular in the Victorian period.” (04/22/25)
“Usually, one hears one of two arguments for liberalizing immigration — the conservative, self-interested argument or the progressive, altruistic argument. The self-interested case for immigration basically emphasizes the economic benefits of immigration for the host country. The progressive case stresses the benefits for the immigrants themselves. But there is a third, classical liberal case, for immigration — namely that border controls and immigration restrictions lead to state violence not just against immigrants but citizens themselves. They curtail the liberties of native-borns because attempts to control outsiders inevitably result in controlling insiders as well.” (04/22/25)
“Voice of America workers who were placed on leave or fired should return to work and the Trump administration must restore funding to the VOA and other U.S. government-funded news outlets, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. The ruling effectively halts the Trump administration’s plan to gut the VOA and its parent, the government-funded U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). In addition to VOA, USAGM houses several other internal broadcasters, some of which are waging their own legal battles against the administration in an attempt to survive.” (04/22/25)
“The Trump administration’s breakneck pace is obviously no accident. While citizens are busy processing their shock over any one shattered norm or disregarded law, Trump is already on to the next one. This is the playbook authoritarians have used all over the world: First the leader removes those with expertise and independent thinking from the government and replaces them with leaders who are arrogant, ignorant, and extremely loyal. Next he takes steps to centralize his power and claim unprecedented authority. Along the way, he conducts an all-out assault on the truth so that the truth tellers are distrusted, corruption becomes the norm, and questioning him becomes impossible. The Constitution bends and then finally breaks. This is what tyrants do. Trump is doing it now in the United States.” (04/22/25)
“Multiple tourists were killed and others injured Tuesday when suspected militants opened fire on civilians in Indian-controlled Kashmir, according to reports on Indian and international media. Many outlets, including the French news agency AFP, cited unnamed security officials who put the death toll as high as 24, but there was no immediate confirmation on casualties from authorities. The attack took place in South Kashmir’s Pahalgam area, a scenic destination dotted with meadows and glaciers that attracts hundreds of thousands of Indian and foreign tourists every summer. … People injured in Tuesday’s attack were taken to nearby hospitals. Police, army and paramilitary forces launched a search operation to find those responsible for the attack.” (04/22/25)
“The Fed shouldn’t lower — or raise — interest rates. The Fed should dissolve, or be dissolved, and the job of ‘creating money’ should be left entirely to a free market. There’s simply not enough room in an op-ed column to explain the intricate processes through which the Fed has debased the value of American money over the last 112 years, but lengthy explanations aren’t really necessary. The results of giving a banking cartel a monopoly on the creation of ‘money,’ the power to create that ‘money’ from thin air, and a mandate to loan that ‘money’ to politicians who can borrow as much as they want as often as they want, were predictable from the start.” (04/22/25)
