Source: CNBC
“Taiwan will not accept Washington’s proposal to locally manufacture half the chips it currently supplies to the U.S., the island’s top trade negotiator said. Speaking to reporters, Cheng Li-chiun, also the country’s vice premier, said on Wednesday that the proposal for a ’50-50′ split in semiconductor production was not even discussed, as she returned from trade talks in the U.S., according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency. Cheng said the talks were focused on lowering tariff rates, securing exemptions from tariff stacking — additional duties — and reducing levies on Taiwanese exports. Taiwan currently faces a ‘reciprocal’ tariff rate of 20%.” (10/02/25)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/02/taiwan-us-chip-production-tsmc-trade-tariffs.html
Source: New York Times
“The Fight at the Center of the Government Shutdown.” (10/02/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh7ggCyRc9g
Source: Law & Liberty
by Julia R Cartwright
“The American diet is increasingly a state-managed affair. For more than a century, Washington’s alphabet soup of agencies like the FDA, USDA, CDC, and EPA have determined what goes into our food, how it must be labeled, which claims can be advertised, and even what counts as ‘healthy.’ Yet despite all this oversight, Americans are heavier, sicker, and less active than ever. This is no coincidence. The economics of government food control make success nearly impossible. Misaligned incentives, regulatory capture, and the knowledge problem ensure that bureaucratic management of something as personal and local as food can only produce failure.” (10/02/25)
https://lawliberty.org/too-many-bureaucrats-in-the-kitchen/
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“How stone-faced generals, Wall Street pushback, and a government shutdown may save America’s quickly declining democracy.” (10/02/25)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-autocracy-of-dunces
Source: United Press International
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s net worth reached $500 billion Wednesday, making him the first person [publicly known] to be worth half a trillion dollars. Forbes'[s] Real-Time Billionaires list ranks him at No. 1, followed by Larry Ellison of Oracle, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Musk had a net worth of $499.1 billion at close of trading Wednesday. It spiked higher earlier in the day, when he hit $500 billion. On Sept. 10, Larry Ellison surpassed Musk for a short time when Oracle’s stock soared, but that didn’t last.” (10/02/25)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/10/02/elon-musk-worth-500B/4311759410772/
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The Government Shutdown and Trump’s Militarization of American Society.” (10/02/25)
https://www.fff.org/freedom-in-motion/video/libertarian-angle-the-government-shutdown-and-trumps-militarization-of-american-society/
Source: The Atlantic
“The Justice Department Won’t Break Easily.” (10/02/25)
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/10/the-justice-department-wont-break-easily/684428/
Source: EconLog
by Marcos Falcone
“For some reason, urban planning has become a hot topic on social media. Even more strangely, it has become ideologized. In the name of the community, left-wingers are generally for state-run public transportation and government housing. In the name of families or individuals, many right-wingers want more suburbs and, particularly, taxpayer-funded highways to accommodate cars. They all want the government to subsidize their lifestyles. But with regard to urban planning, we need to get it out of the way.” (10/02/25)
https://www.econlib.org/letting-markets-work-urban-planning/
Source: Fox News
by CJ Pearson
“Let’s get one thing straight: Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t singularly lose because of President Joe Biden. She didn’t lose because of so-called racism. She didn’t lose because of ‘misinformation,’ or because Mercury was in retrograde. Harris lost because millions of Black Americans like me abandoned both her and her party. And that’s the one truth she can’t stomach to say out loud. Her new memoir, 107 Days, is being sold as an inside look at the shortest presidential campaign in modern American history. But let’s call it what it is: a 320-page therapy session. A master class in finger-pointing.” (10/02/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/kamala-harris-blames-everyone-black-voters-who-rejected-her
Source: Reuters
“U.S. President Donald Trump said he will meet with his budget director Russell Vought on Thursday to determine which ‘Democrat Agencies’ to cut, as he looks to inflict pain on his political opposition in the second day of a government shutdown. ‘I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,’ he said in a social media post. Trump has already frozen federal transit and green-energy funding, opens new tab for Democratic-leaning states and has threatened to fire more federal workers during the shutdown, which began on Wednesday due to a partisan standoff in Congress. He is already on track to push out 300,000 federal workers by the end of the year. In his post, Trump mentioned Vought’s involvement with Project 2025, a plan by the conservative Heritage Foundation that calls for radically downsizing the federal government.” (10/02/25)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-discuss-agency-cuts-with-ombs-vought-thursday-2025-10-02/
