President Andrew Johnson, who is best known for being the first president to be impeached, vetoed protectionist legislation that looked to raise tariffs on imported copper. Congress overrode his veto, but his free-trade message is just as relevant today as it was in 1869.
Since the financial crisis, industrial policy has experienced a renaissance in the Western world. Government programs are launched, then large pools of subsidies, targeted R&D funds, and cheap loans are made available for corporations, opening opportunities for cronyism.
While Elon Musk and his DOGE team have made some highly-publicized “cuts” in federal spending, much of the federal budget has been hammered in stone for a long time. It will take fundamental changes in spending patterns to make a real difference.
People commonly believe that our society couldn‘t survive without an all-powerful state making sure everything runs properly. Yet, if one takes a hard look at that belief, it soon becomes obvious that government destroys society.
An end to Ukraine’s suffering requires a realistic deal with Putin, something that Trump at least partly understands.
President Trump has announced his intentions for the government to set up a sovereign wealth fund. However popular the idea might be, it runs headlong into the realities of economic calculation and would soon deteriorate another government slush fund.
How can we determine if a private company is a true partner of the state—truly benefiting from state power—or if the private company is really a victim of the state?
The US government has long pushed to establish government-sponsored cartels and monopolies that weakened free-market competition and enriched incumbent businesses, unions, and other interest groups.
The American Revolution struck a heavy blow to mercantilism. Unfortunately, many mercantilist policies persisted under new labels: cartelization, monopoly, regulation, and taxation to support corporate friends. Today we call these neomercantilist practices cronyism and corporatism.
In a post-Cold War world, there is an opportunity to find useful insights among even the New Right that Rothbard loathed. James Burnham‘s The Managerial Revolution produced important points about the relationship of government and business.
