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Trade, Tariffs, and Trust

By  David Hebert

Trade is not just about transactions. It’s about relationships and trust built and earned over time. Just over a year ago, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), President Trump began unilaterally changing tariff rates with countries around the world. The goal was to restructure global trade. Since this was the first time any .. MORE

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The Major Tariff Question

By  John O. McGinnis

Learning Resources reaffirms that taxation is Congress’s responsibility, and declaring “emergency!” does not rewrite the separation of powers. The Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump will have immediate political effects, substantial economic effects, and more subtle but long-run effects on the shape of the law. Doctrinally, its significance may seem limited because the .. MORE

Featured Article

The “Trade Deficit”: Defective Language, Deficient Thinking

By  Daniel B. Klein and Donald J. Boudreaux

President Donald Trump tells us we are “getting killed on trade”1 and stresses the country’s trade deficit. As a piece of language, however, “trade deficit” is almost as misleading as “getting killed on trade.” “Deficit,” like “getting killed,” has a negative valence, but it is phony. In a trade, one thing—a good or service—is exchanged .. MORE

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Sam's Links

Sam’s Links: February Edition

By Sam Enright

Tariffs

Trade, Tariffs, and Trust at Econlib

By Econlib Editors

Featured Article

Trade, Tariffs, and Trust

By David Hebert

Featured Article

The Major Tariff Question

By John O. McGinnis

Tariffs

The Major Tariffs Question at Econlib

By Econlib Editors

Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing

Friedman on Immigration: Setting the Record Straight

By Christopher Freiman

Economic Growth

AI, Technology, and Work

By Jon Murphy

Technology

Learning the Bitter Lesson in 2026

By Joy Buchanan

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

How Better Feedback Can Revolutionize Education (with Daisy Christodoulou)

Feedback on exams and papers–grades and comments–should be more than an assessment. It should point the way to improvement. So argues educational consultant Daisy Christodoulou, emphasizing that actionable feedback has to be more than comments scribbled in the margins of a paper or at its end. Listen as she speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about .. MORE

econtalk-podcast

John Taylor on Inflation, the Fed, and the Taylor Rule

What’s so bad about rising inflation? Why should we aim for a rate of 2 percent? Why is it a problem if interest rates are too low–and what do we mean by inflation, anyway? Stanford University’s John Taylor talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about these questions, the Taylor Rule, why inflation is rising, and what .. MORE

EconLog

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Tariffs

Trade, Tariffs, and Trust at Econlib

We’ve posted the second of two cross-posted articles with Law & Liberty in response to the Supreme Court ruling in Learning Resources v. Trump. Today, David Hebert explains why the economic fallout from the tariffs can’t be reversed by the Court’s ruling. From the article: Just over a year ago, citing the International Emergency Economic .. MORE

Sam's Links

Sam’s Links: February Edition

Sam Enright 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 January.  Blogs and short links 1. Henry Oliver .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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continued relevance of our classic titles.

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On Liberty

By John Stuart Mill

Fourth edition, published 1869. (This essay was first published in 1859.)

“F. A. Hayek and the Rebirth of Classical Liberalism”

By John N. Gray

In the recent revival of public and scholarly interest in the values of limited government and the market order, no one has been more centrally significant than Friedrich A. Hayek. His works have figured as a constant point of reference in the discussions both of the libertarian and conservative theories of the market economy; they .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Who’s Afraid of Artificial Intelligence?

By Joy Buchanan

For over a decade, Russ Roberts has been covering both sides of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) debate. A recent EconTalk episode is optimistically called “Why AI Is Good for Humans (with Reid Hoffman).”  Another booster episode was “Marc Andreessen on Why AI Will Save the World.” In the opposite corner: the infamous doomer Eliezer Yudkowsky .. MORE

Why AI Is Good for Humans (with Reid Hoffman)

Should we worry about the human future in a world of AI? Reid Hoffman is unafraid and even optimistic. He argues that the brave new world that awaits is going to be great for humanity. Listen as he talks about his book Superagency with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts and argues that the future is bright not just for .. MORE

Conversations

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A Conversation with Milton Friedman

Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History .. MORE

VIDEO

A Conversation with Harold Demsetz

A professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and a primary figure in Chicago School Economics and in the field of Law and Economics, Harold Demsetz has contributed original research on the theory of the firm, regulation in markets, industrial organization, antitrust policy, transaction costs, externalities, and .. MORE

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Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.

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Corporations and Financial Markets , Economic Regulation, Economics of Legal Issues

Innovation

“ Innovation”: creativity; novelty; the process of devising a new idea or thing, or improving an existing idea or thing. Although the word carries a positive connotation in American culture, innovation, like all human activities, has costs as well as benefits. These costs and benefits have preoccupied economists, political philosophers, and artists for centuries. Nature .. MORE

Basic Concepts, International Economics, The Marketplace

Comparative Advantage

When asked by mathematician Stanislaw Ulam whether he could name an idea in economics that was both universally true and not obvious, economist Paul Samuelson’s example was the principle of comparative advantage. That principle was derived by David Ricardo in his 1817 book, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Ricardo’s result, which still holds up .. MORE

Basic Concepts, The Marketplace

Information and Prices

Modern economists excel at identifying theoretical reasons why markets might fail. While these theories may temper uncritical views of the market, it is important to note that markets do, in fact, work incredibly well. Indeed, markets work so thoroughly and quietly that their success too often goes unnoticed. Consider that the number of different ways .. MORE

Quotes

The market economy is the product of a long evolutionary process. It is the outcome of man’s endeavors to adjust his action in the best possible way to the given conditions of his environment that he cannot alter.

-Ludwig von Mises

Regard to our own private happiness and interest, too, appear upon many occasions very laudable principles of action.

-Adam Smith Full Quote >>

We are as little able to conceive what civilization will be, or can be, five hundred or even fifty years hence as medieval man, or even our grandparents, were able to foresee our own manner of life.

-F. A. Hayek

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