Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy

“Shortly after the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were announced back in April, Janet Bufton wrote an excellent post about whether or not Adam Smith would approve of those so-called ‘reciprocal’ tariffs. I also riffed off her post here. In both cases, we argued these tariffs were not compliant with Smith’s argument and thus he would not have approved of them. Six months later, we have four pieces of good evidence that U.S. tariffs would not have met with Smith’s approval.” (10/28/25)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/adam-smith-would-not-approve-the-evidence

Source: Beat the Press
by Dean Baker

“It’s understandable that Trump’s team likes to pretend that his random ramblings and angry acts of revenge are all part of some grand strategy, but why would anyone not on his payroll play along with this obvious absurdity? To anyone paying attention, it should be pretty clear that Donald Trump is clueless about the economy. Just to take an obvious example to make the point: Trump has repeatedly promised to lower drug prices by 800, 900, or even 1,500%. As he rightly says, no one thought it was possible. It wouldn’t be a big deal that he got confused once or twice and forgot that you can’t lower prices by more than 100%, unless you envision drug companies paying people to use their drugs. But Trump has done this repeatedly, over many months.” (10/28/25)

https://cepr.net/publications/trumponomics-the-economics-of-crazy/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Nathan Smith

“Economists have an old habit of assuming that people are strictly selfish and rational, maximizing their ‘utility.’ In theory, everyone is ‘Max U,’ as Deirdre McCloskey mockingly puts it. The assumption can be useful — people often do act selfishly, and belief in market efficiency sometimes clarifies moral choices — but it is false as a generalization. Virtue and capitalism need each other, and have long quietly collaborated to improve the human condition. That truth is kept quiet, ironically, by economists themselves. They understand capitalism better than most, and generally defend it, but Max U is a moral blind spot that causes them to underrate capitalism ethically, and teach others to do so. With friends like these, capitalism hardly needs enemies.” (10/28/25)

https://lawliberty.org/virtue-economics/

Source: Eunomia
by Daniel Larison

“The death toll from the president’s murder spree has now risen to 57 with the latest attacks …. The illegal attacks are coming faster now as the spree approaches the end of its second month. First there were a few strikes spread out over weeks, and now there are several attacks each week and sometimes multiple strikes in one day. There have now been at least thirteen U.S. military strikes on civilians at sea. The administration shows no sign of slowing the pace of the senseless killing.” (10/28/25)

https://daniellarison.substack.com/p/the-presidents-murder-spree-claims

Source: Niskanen Center
by Gerasimos Tsourapas

“In early September 2025, United States immigration authorities carried out the largest workplace enforcement action in the history of the Department of Homeland Security. At a Hyundai–LG electric vehicle battery plant in Savannah, Georgia, agents detained nearly 500 workers. More than 300 were South Korean nationals employed by subcontractors or on temporary business visas. Images of handcuffed workers being led to buses circulated widely, prompting Seoul to dispatch diplomats and announce a charter plane to bring its citizens home. … For Washington, the operation was presented as the routine application of immigration law. For Seoul, it was a national crisis that required emergency diplomacy.” (10/28/25)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/when-trumps-immigration-raids-become-foreign-policy