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.
After a week of insisting that a meeting with Putin on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Argentina was going to happen, President Trump at the last minute sent out a Tweet explaining that due to a Russia/Ukraine dispute in the Sea of Azov he would no longer be willing to meet his Russian counterpart.
French protests over a new climate-change-inspired fuel tax highlight high costs imposed on ordinary people by climate-change policies.
The so-called “Yellow Vest” protests that have sprung up in France in recent weeks now involve a variety of domestic policy issues. But they were triggered by a new tax on fuel prices. French residents from the less-prosperous countryside, where driving an automobile is required, took to the streets to protest yet one more burden placed on them to please French and European politicians.
[Editors Note: After days of rioting in the streets of Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to backtrack today on proposed gas taxes. While this episode demonstrated the unpopularity of trying to raise taxes in the name of fighting climate change, Mises Institute Senior Fellow Robert Murphy recently noted at IER that this is only the start for “climate interventionists.”]
