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Without trade, life more complex than bacteria could not exist. We are literally made of free trade. It is in every cell of our bodies. The first lifeforms to evolve on Earth, at least 3.5 billion years ago, were very simple. They were single-celled organisms that lacked a nucleus or the organelles we see in .. MORE
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International Trade
In my recent post on US manufacturing jobs and tariffs, I mentioned a Wall Street Journal article that pointed toward American tariffs having little impact on Chinese exports; the exports are simply being shifted to other countries. In the earlier post, I discussed what that fact meant for US manufacturing jobs. Here, I discuss what .. MORE
Price Theory
This is the latest in our series of posts in our series on price theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple .. MORE
Sam's Links
Sam works on innovation policy at Progress Ireland, an independent policy think tank in Dublin, and runs a publication called The Fitzwilliam. Most relevant to us, on his personal blog, he writes a popular link roundup; what follows is an abridged version of his Links for December. Blogs and short links 1. I’ve finished my .. MORE
Price Theory
Question: Is the following true or false? Explain your reasoning. If the quantity of higher education services supplied does not rise with the price of those services, i.e., if supply is perfectly inelastic, then subsidizing the demand for higher education services will primarily benefit universities and their employees. Solution: I use this question in my .. MORE
Competition
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently caused something of an uproar when he contrasted the “the frigidity of rugged individualism” with the “warmth of collectivism.” This framing echoes the familiar criticism that capitalism forces people to go it alone as “atomistic individuals.” The thought goes like this: markets do real damage to the social .. MORE
Labor Market
Mass deportation is often framed as a pro‑worker policy. Remove unauthorized immigrants, the argument goes, and native wages will rise as labor supply contracts. This logic is intuitive, politically potent, and economically incomplete. Mass deportation is a massive market intervention. When examined through the lens of labor markets, production complementarities, and historical evidence, mass deportation .. MORE
International Trade
Tyler Cowen recently made an uncharacteristic mistake: But there is another way to pose the question and that is “should the resources in the EU be allocated toward export, or not?” And then exports are VAT-free, and within-EU sales generally are not VAT-free. So there is an encouragement to exports here. America has sales taxes, .. MORE
Tariffs
Writing on Facebook, AEI economist Mark Perry points to evidence that the tariffs imposed in April by the Trump Administration have not resulted in job creation for the manufacturing industry (Mark’s graph is recreated below for those of you who do not have access to Facebook. The solid red line indicates the day the tariffs .. MORE
Economic History
Cleveland-Cliffs Chief Executive Lourenco Goncalves’s invocation of “unfairly traded steel” shows, a contrario, many reasons why free trade is an essential feature of a free society. Mr. Goncalves said that adding tariffs on steel products to tariffs on primary (semi-finished) steel provides (“Trump Leans on National Security to Justify Next Wave of Tariffs,” Wall Street .. MORE
IN this book I have endeavored to determine whether protection or free trade better accords with the interests of labor, and to bring to a common conclusion on this subject those who really desire to raise wages.I have not only gone over the ground generally traversed, and examined the arguments commonly used, but, carrying the .. MORE
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776. This edition of Smith’s work is based on Edwin Cannan’s careful 1904 compilation (Methuen and Co., Ltd) of Smith’s fifth edition of the book (1789), the final edition in Smith’s lifetime. Cannan’s preface and introductory remarks .. MORE
The main purpose of the present volume is to consider and illustrate some questions of principle in the controversy on free trade and protection. The three chapters which constitute Part I state these questions and summarize the main conclusions. The succeeding Parts give illustrations and verifications drawn from the history of several industries,—sugar, iron and .. MORE
Politics makes for strange bedfellows—and strange policies. This is the story of three trade policies and the harm they cause. The Uncanny X-Man Versus the Amazing Harmonized Tariff Schedule Heroes of comic books and the silver screen, the X-Men are given super powers by their mutations. The theme of both the comics and the movies .. MORE
"Without trade, life more complex than bacteria could not exist. We are literally made of free trade. It is in every cell of our bodies." Never thought about it that way. Enjoyed this very much!
Craig, May 30