Source: The Daily Economy
by David Hebert & Emily Bissett
“Imagine that you wanted to do some grocery shopping. To do so, you drive your car from your house not to the grocery store, but to a parking lot miles and miles away from the grocery store. There, you get on a bus (which you have to pay for) that will then take you to the grocery store. You do your shopping, get back on the bus (paying once again) with your groceries, which then takes you back to your car where you can unload the groceries from the bus and reload them into your car before ultimately driving home. This would be absurd. It’s also remarkably similar to how people in the great states of Hawaii and Alaska must do almost all of their shopping, thanks to the Jones Act.” (03/13/25)
“During a February 20, 2024, speech at a new General Dynamics factory outside Dallas Texas, Biden made the alleged ‘economic benefits’ argument explicitly. A supplemental spending measure pending in Congress at the time contained a total of $95 billion in foreign aid, including money for Ukraine, Israel, and other countries. Of the $60.7 billion for Ukraine, $38.8 billion would go to U.S. factories that made missiles, munitions and other gear. ‘While this bill sends military equipment to Ukraine,” Biden emphasized, “it spends the money right here in the United States of America in places like Arizona, where the Patriot missiles are built; and Alabama, where the Javelin missiles are built; and Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, where artillery shells are made.’ Republican pro-Ukraine hawks embraced similar ‘logic’ …. Such justifications, which should be termed military Keynesianism, are not only erroneous, but also sleazy.” (03/13/25)
“Poland’s President Andrzej Duda again called on the United States to deploy nuclear weapons to Poland as a deterrent to Russia, the latest indication that the frontline NATO nation is increasingly considering nuclear protection as fears of Russia grow. Duda made his appeal in an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, repeating an appeal he made to the Biden administration in 2022. Duda’s adviser for international affairs, Wojciech Kolarski, followed up on Duda’s appeal with an interview on Poland’s RMF FM radio Thursday morning in which he argued that nuclear protection would improve security for Poland, a NATO member along the alliance’s eastern flank that shares borders with Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.” (03/13/25)
“No serious person mourns the offshoring of apparel employment. Clothing production is a low-tech industry that even in its heyday mostly employed immigrants who, despite being represented by a powerful union, were paid low wages and often faced harsh working conditions. For a poor nation like Bangladesh, apparel jobs are a big step up from the alternatives. But American workers have better, and better-paying, things to do. As I said, no serious person wants the apparel industry to come back. But Donald Trump’s economic team aren’t serious people.” (03/13/25)
“South Korea’s military on Thursday charged two air force pilots with criminal negligence over the accidental bombing of a village near the DMZ last week that injured 43 and damaged dozens of buildings, citing pilot error as the cause. ‘The Defense Ministry’s investigation headquarters has confirmed that the pilot’s incorrect input of target coordinates was a direct cause of the accident,’ the ministry said in a text message to reporters. ‘Accordingly, as of March 13, two pilots were criminally booked on charges of occupational negligence resulting in injury,’ the message said. They were also charged for damaging military facilities, including a church, a ministry spokesman said during a press briefing Thursday.” (03/13/25)
“President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order renaming the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge after Jocelyn Nungaray, a Houston girl whose tragic murder at the hands of two unauthorized Venezuelan immigrants, captured national attention. The decision, while framed as an honor to the young victim, raised eyebrows. It marked yet another instance in which Trump leveraged symbolic renaming as a political tool. Previously, in a move that defied geography, diplomacy, and common sense, President Donald Trump signed an executive order renaming a section of the Gulf of Mexico as the ‘Gulf of America.’ But what exactly has been renamed? … While it was clearly intended as a symbolic assertion of American sovereignty, the renaming not only violated international conventions but also flew in the face of basic geographical principles.” (03/13/25)
“America’s central economic problem is preserving the nation’s capacity to sustain growth vigorous enough to counteract an impending fiscal crisis of escalating national debt. Part of the reason that growth has declined in the last decades is the stifling force of over-regulation. The new administration’s sweeping agenda for regulatory rollback thus need not represent merely political posturing, but has the potential to address one of the most profound threats confronting contemporary America. To understand its rationale and architecture is to grasp a bold attempt at putting the nation’s financial house in order and preserving its future prosperity.” (03/13/25)
“Past recessions have been the result of policy errors or disasters. The most typical policy error is when the Federal Reserve Board raises interest rates too much to counter inflation. That was clearly the story in the 1974-75 recession, as well as the 1980-82 double-dip recession. Then we have recessions caused by collapsing financial bubbles, the 2001 recession following the collapse of the stock bubble, and the 2008-09 recession following the collapse of the housing bubble. And of course, we had the 2020 recession because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now Donald Trump is threatening us with a recession — not because of something that is any way unavoidable, but rather because as president he has the power to bring on a recession.” (03/13/25)
