The Tariff Act of 1828 quickly became known as the “Tariff of Abominations.” That tariff now has a contender for the name.

The Trump tariff program seems to be metastasizing by the day. What are Mr. Trump’s objectives? Consider a different question first. Would Trump be on this course if he thought that it would cost campaign contributions or votes in November? Silly question. As I see it, Trump tariff policy is the most brazen reach for votes and political cash since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, and may go down in history as just as big a mistake.

Imagine a county sheriff that took a suspected drug-law violator into custody more than 10 years ago. Since then, the man has been held in jail without being accorded a trial. The district attorney and the sheriff promise to give the man a trial sometime in the future but they’re just not sure when. Meanwhile the man sits in jail indefinitely just waiting for his trial to begin.

New home prices are rising in Las Vegas, with rising costs being blamed. Andrew and Dennis Smith write in the June edition of The Las Vegas Housing Letter, “Rising costs have been one of the key factors cited by home builders when it comes to rising home prices.”

This October, recreational cannabis will become legal in Canada. Or, put more accurately, it will become legal again.

As in the United States, the prohibition of marijuana was a twentieth-century invention, but nevertheless remained an untouchable prohibition for several decades, and in spite of a 1972 recommendation from a federal commission that marijuana be de-criminalized.

Medical marijuana was finally legalized in 2001, although efforts at de-criminalizing recreational marijuana failed in 2003 and 2004.

I occasionally see libertarians who advocate the decriminalization of marijuana and other illegal substances as being preferable to outright legalization. The logic is one to which we might be sympathetic: decriminalized substances cannot be taxed, while legalized substances are more easily subjected to sales or excise taxes, as well as a panoply of other regulations. Therefore, according to this argument, decriminalization would represent a freer market than the tax-and-regulate environment of legalized sales.

With your support, the Mises Institute can send the students home with a stack of Austrian classics such as America’s Great Depression and Where Keynes Went Wrong. After the week has destroyed every preconceived, state curriculum notion of how the world works, Mises U grads have another month before returning to their college classes. Fresh from the exhilaration of Mises U, our graduates can continue to dive into their Austrian education before sitting in classrooms where Democratic Socialists of America are the norm and universal basic income is the hottest policy trend.