Elon Musk and his corporate empire, much of it financed by taxpayer dollars, is very much in the news. Most of it is not good. And it may be getting worse.

At a mid-November hearing before the United States International Trade Commission, several US automaker groups complained that proposed car tariffs would undermine the success of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and cause heavy job losses for the car sector.1

The Creepy Line, a new documentary by director M.A. Taylor, is now streaming at Amazon Prime. It provides an interesting and revealing look at how Google and Facebook influence their users’ view of the world, and how the users we often presume to be the customers of these companies aren’t really the customers. The users are, in fact, the product being sold to third parties.

The Executive Branch’s recently released Volume II of the National Climate Assessment (NCA) is a massive document that is being cited as yet further evidence that the U.S. government should act quickly and boldly in the fight against climate change.

The trade policies of both the USA and the EU seem to be based on the contradictory philosophy that unrestricted trade is beneficial within its borders, even if across internal borders, but not with parties outside those borders.

But this makes no sense. From the point of view of trade, the voluntary exchange of goods, why are the borders between USA and Mexico, and Greece and Turkey, different from the borders between Missouri and Kansas, and France and Germany?

The difference is political and arbitrary.