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In the late 19th century, the GOP argued that tariffs would result in higher wages, as the industrialists who benefited from them would gladly pass their excess profits on to their workers. The actual results, as you might expect, were totally different. The industrialists pocketed their earnings–occasionally returning them to the public in the form of philanthropic enterprises they deemed appropriate–but did nothing to improve the lot of workers.

Trump and his acolytes will make a similar argument about tariffs this year. The problem is that even large tariffs won’t make import substitution a viable approach for many industries, and there is no pool of workers to handle the hypothetical jobs in any event. Using an Argentinian approach to an economy that is already running about as hot as it can without creating more inflation makes no sense whatsoever.

Some of the questions I would ask were incorporated in a previous post predicting the content of the debate. These were primarily about Gaza and Ukraine. Here are some other questions he should be asked?

1. You have been candid about your desire for revenge against your opponents. Please tell the American people what individuals or groups of people will be the subjects of your revenge, and what form the revenge will take.
2. Most observers, including members of your previous administration, think the Chinese refused to comply with the export deal you struck with them. Do you agree? If so, what would you do about it?
3. Housing costs are a big problem in this country. Undocumented workers make up a large percentage of construction employees. How will deporting them and creating a massive labor shortage reduce the cost of housing?
4. Do you intend to bring the Fed under the control of the executive branch?
5. Historically, you have threatened to stop traffic at the Mexican border if the Mexican government doesn’t do everything you want on immigration. That would cause massive hardship on both sides of the border. Is that your plan again?
6. The production of fentanyl is a decentralized business within Mexico. Do you seriously believe that starting a war with Mexico in order to disrupt gang activity is a good idea?
7. On several occasions, the Biden Administration has tried to impose immigration regulations that looked like yours. These regulations were mostly blocked by the courts. If the judicial system issues orders prohibiting your plans to use the military to create massive deportation camps, will you obey those orders?
8. It has been widely reported that you wanted to use the Insurrection Act to stop protests in cities in blue states. Do you intend to do that this time around, and will you extend it to removing blue state leaders from power by force?
9. Property insurance rates are soaring all over the country as a result of increasing losses tied to climate change. You have previously taken the position that climate change is a Chinese hoax. How does that help the people dealing with these higher insurance costs?
10. You have proposed large universal tariffs for the purpose of raising money and encouraging new American industries. This will result in significantly higher prices for consumer goods. Since the unemployment rate is also very low, it is unclear where the new industrial workers would come from. Where would the proceeds of the tariffs go, and how would you find workers for the new businesses without encouraging immigration?
11. President Biden has entered into relationships with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and India in order to deter Chinese aggression in Asia. Would you continue these relationships, or reject them and go it alone?
12. Social Security and Medicare are running deficits. Their trust funds will run out of money in the next decade, which would result in benefit cuts of about 20 percent. President Biden wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to fill in the gap. Would you consider raising taxes for that purpose?

Mainstream Republicans, who love Jews in Israel, but not in America, are enthralled by Netanyahu. To them, he’s a human bulldozer. He’s a man’s man. He’s the opposite of woke. He kicks ass in his neighborhood. He’s Churchill for the 21st century. He’s a man to be admired and emulated.

A relative handful of Israelis feel that way. To most of them, however, Bibi is a slippery temporizer who will say anything to anybody in order to stay in power. He’s the man without a plan to deal with Gaza after the war, or to get the hostages back, because having a plan could cost him his job. He’s the guy who deliberately coddled Hamas prior to October because it helped him argue that he didn’t have a negotiating partner. He was totally unprepared for the war. He has to go.

A group of Israelis makes the argument in today’s NYT that he should lose his invitation to address Congress. Frankly, I still can’t believe that Chuck Schumer agreed to it. If the invitation can’t be rescinded, the left should boycott the speech. Anybody who doesn’t boycott it should walk out ostentatiously when Bibi starts turning the speech into a Trump rally, as he is likely to do. Now that would send a message to the Israeli public that it isn’t a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you.

As far as I can tell, it consists of the following:

1. Deport millions of construction workers, thereby creating serious labor shortages;
2. Encourage suburban jurisdictions to exclude multi-family projects;
3. Reduce or eliminate the Fed’s independence, thereby reducing popular faith in the regulatory environment and the financial system; and
4. Throw large subsidies at developers to build large residential projects in areas that are allegedly poor, but are actually affluent.

Yep, that should do the trick, all right. If I’m a member of Gen Z, that’s a program that would surely win my vote.

The principal problem with selling climate change mitigation to voters is that the benefits are uncertain, diffuse, and largely in the future, while the costs are felt today. Not many people, Americans included, are inspired by that bargain. So how does Biden sell the issue to the voters?

The impacts of climate change are already being felt in the form of property damage and soaring insurance costs. That is something Biden can tell the voters that will move them in the here and now. Trump, on the other hand, is completely indifferent to these costs.

M: The first question is for President Biden. Mr. President, a lot of people in our country don’t understand why we’re continuing to give weapons to the Israeli military to kill civilians. Would you please explain your position?

B: We stand with Israel against Hamas. We agree with the Israeli government that Hamas should be destroyed to the maximum extent possible. Without doing that, no meaningful progress can be made on a peace plan. But we also think that Hamas is the enemy, not the Palestinian people. As a result, we’re pushing the Israelis to protect civilians and let in aid. We won’t give them weapons that can be used primarily against civilians.

M: President Trump, your position.

T: Crooked Joe and the Biden crime family stole the 2020 election from me and real America. Vote for me so I can have my revenge, because it will be your revenge, too.

B: There he goes again.

M: President Trump, from your public statements, it appears you think the Israelis should kill as many Palestinian civilians as necessary as fast as possible and get out of Gaza. Is that really your position?

T: During the Trump years, we didn’t have stagflation. We had a big, beautiful economy. It was the greatest in history. Crooked Joe ruined it all. Vote for me and I’ll bring it back.

B: Obviously, he didn’t answer the question, so America is free to assume that he thinks the Israelis should kill lots more innocent civilians.

T: I never said that.

B: If you refuse to answer the questions, everyone has a right to assume the worst.

M: President Biden, how does America define victory in Ukraine?

B: We need to guarantee the survival of a viable Ukrainian state. Questions about boundaries we will leave to the Ukrainian government.

T: The Ukrainian government was first in cahoots with Crooked Hillary, and then with Crooked Joe. It has to go.

M: President Trump, you have stated that you have a secret plan to bring peace to Ukraine. The popular assumption is that you plan to hand the country over to Putin. This is your opportunity to set the record straight.

T: Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while I was president. If America has a strong leader, problems like Ukraine will just go away.

M: You’re not denying the popular opinion.

T: My plans are secret. America has to trust me. I did a great job before, so I should be trusted.

B: His actual answer is, yes, I’m going to give Ukraine to Putin, probably in exchange for nothing, just because I hate the Ukrainian government.

M: President Biden, inflation was a serious problem during most of your first term. What is your plan for combating it?

B: Inflation was a worldwide problem due to the pandemic and supply chain issues. We have those under control. We’re fighting high prices on a variety of fronts–from insulin price caps to jawboning on shrinkflation to forgiving excessive student debt. The plan is working–inflation is almost back to normal.

T: We didn’t have inflation during my presidency. Crooked Joe created it. Vote for me, and I’ll bring back the big, beautiful economy of 2019.

B: Your tariffs and your mass deportation scheme will cause prices to skyrocket. America, take note.

T: No, everyone else in the world will actually pay the tariffs. Americans won’t pay anything. Trust me.

M: One last question for both of you. What are your plans to unite a badly divided nation?

B: I’ve done my best not to demonize my political opponents. That can be hard, the way they behave at times, but using Nazi-era rhetoric has consequences.

T: I need to have my revenge on my enemies in order to satisfy real America, because the attacks on me were really attacks on them. After that, we can think about unifying the country behind me.

How will the moderators address Trump? Will they call him President, former President, or just Mr.? The first approach puts the candidates on equal footing but plays into Trump’s argument that he is still the lawful president. The latter two would probably make him crazy and cause him to lash out.

Was this even addressed in the rules? I haven’t seen any reference to an agreement on that point. It matters.

If Trump wins and has a GOP majority in both houses, what will his first priority be? To overturn the results of the 2020 election, of course. Expect some sort of legislation or resolution stating that the election was rigged and that Trump was lawfully elected to move swiftly through the system after the inauguration.

Would this piece of legislation explicitly invalidate all actions taken by Biden as president? Would it even criminalize expressing the opinion that Trump lost the election? No measure, no matter how extreme, can be completely disregarded here, because the idea of being a loser has always been totally anathema to Trump.

This blog turns nine years old in a few weeks. One of its recurring themes is that Trump is a man on golf cart–a wannabe man on horseback who simply can’t cut the mustard because he’s too lazy and easily distracted. Many commentators, mostly on the right, think his second term will follow the same pattern, so fears of a dictatorship are overblown. Are they right?

No, for four reasons. First, the 2024 version of Trump is angrier and openly seeking revenge against his many opponents. Second, as all of the books about the Trump first term will tell you, his worst instincts were held in check by the bureaucracy. This time, he will be surrounded by people who will be fanning the flames. Third, there is no one formula for being a dictator. Stalin was a hard worker, but Hitler was lazy; his practice was to give vague orders and leave all of the details to his subordinates, who were required to compete for his favor. Does that ring any bells for you? Finally, Trump knows he will never lose office through the impeachment process, and the judicial system will roll over for him as long as he is in the White House. What does he have to lose by pushing the envelope?

Today’s decision on the gun case doesn’t eliminate the Thomas test, which is based purely on gun regulations as they existed hundreds of years ago. It makes the test more flexible by requiring an “analogue” to the regulation in question, not a “twin.”

In other words, we have gone from an extremely stupid bright line rule to one that is subjective and unpredictable. The lower courts won’t know what to make of it. There will be lots more litigation before the Supremes before anyone really knows what it means. In practice, I suspect that only overwhelmingly popular regulations such as the one in the instant case will survive the new test.

It’s an improvement, but not one worth much celebration. Hunter Biden certainly won’t be celebrating; the rigorous version of the Thomas test was his best hope of overturning his conviction on the gun charge.

Part of it, of course, is that he sees import substitution as a way of recreating the economy of the fifties–one dominated by burly men working in factories and construction. But the other part is just as important. Trump thinks tariffs will give him a slush fund to reward his friends and punish his enemies.

Farmers are the most obvious example. Many of them became wards of the state when the Chinese retaliated against the tariffs in Trump’s first term. Did that bother them? The polls should tell you the answer to that one.

It isn’t just farmers. The wealthy will probably gain from income tax cuts funded by the tariffs; in fact, Trump has thrown out the possibility of getting rid of income tax altogether. Some portion of the slush fund could be used to bail out Social Security, thereby helping Trump’s elderly constituents. And so on.

Two observations are pertinent here. First, if you’re a company from a blue state that is losing sales abroad as a result of retaliation against the tariffs, don’t expect any help from Trump. Second, turning the complex American economy into a Putinesque neo-feudal system run from the top would be very difficult, but this would be a giant step in that direction.

The losers in this scheme will be export-driven businesses, consumers, the poor, and the middle class. They will pay significantly higher prices and get nothing in return.

It’s hard to believe that the American public supports this agenda. They just don’t know about it yet. Biden needs to make them aware.

Bret Stephens is a CL, which means he supports laissez-faire capitalism. When it fails, or when alternative models succeed, that means he has to look really hard for answers that don’t contradict his core beliefs. In the case of China, he basically argues that it can’t be an industrial powerhouse, so it isn’t. In the case of rampant dissatisfaction with the American model, he thinks he has found a reason–loose money. Is he right?

No, for two reasons. First of all, low interest rates had nothing to do with the job losses associated with globalization and technological change and the resulting loss of status for male workers. That is where the real sense of grievance is, and why Trump is proposing tariffs to deal with it. Second, low interest rates weren’t even primarily responsible for the explosion he correctly notes in housing and asset prices; that was primarily due to the increased inequality inherent in the dollar store economy, and the corresponding belief that investing in businesses that would serve the declining American middle class was a bad bet. With lots of money in the form of regressive tax cuts and booming profits floating around, the wealthy chose to invest in real estate, government bonds, and expensive paintings. This right-wing recycling, as I call it, only entrenched the dollar store economy even more firmly. It is still with us today, in spite of Biden’s best efforts to reform it.

There are lots of other reasons for the increase in the cost of housing, including the loss of construction workers during the Great Recession, pandemic-driven increases in demand, inflation in material costs, and issues with exclusionary local regulations. None of these have anything to do with interest rates, either. Stephens will have to find another reason why American workers don’t gratefully embrace laissez-faire.

An effective political commercial does at least one of two things: it tells you something you didn’t already know about the candidate; or it makes you feel more strongly about him. What does this mean for commercials in 2024?

Commercials which portray Trump as an evil crook or which complain about inflation probably won’t make much of an impact, since everyone already has a view of Trump and has experienced inflation. But a commercial about the impact of Trump’s tariffs might very well move the needle, because the average voter knows nothing about these plans. The same would be true of Trump’s supposedly secret plan to end the war in Ukraine. The public deserves to hear more on this issue.

Josh Stein, the Democrat running for governor in North Carolina, is running a particular commercial about every ten minutes. It features Mark Robinson, his extremist Republican opponent, saying that abortion would not be necessary if women would be responsible and keep their skirts down. The commercial is getting a bit tiresome at this point, but it is extremely effective. What does that tell us?

That insulting over half the electorate probably isn’t a good idea. That abortion is still a big issue. And that most of the anti-abortion movement is more driven by the desire to punish what it views as inappropriate sexual conduct by women than by any wish to protect fetuses, as I’ve noted on many previous occasions.

In other words, the right continues to believe that the wages of sin is birth.

C: I haven’t talked to you since the trial started. What were your reactions?

S: The trial was rigged, of course.

C: How so?

S: In so many ways. First of all, all of the witnesses were liars who hated Trump.

C: Hope Hicks? David Pecker?

S: They’re all liars. Everyone but Trump.

C: The man who told 30,000 lies in office?

S: The Washington Post lies, too. Second, the judge was biased.

C: His rulings were consistent with New York law. No serious commentator thinks otherwise.

S: He’s a Democrat, so he’s biased. He should have recused himself.

C: Just like Thomas and Alito?

S: That’s different. They represent real America. They have to vote to save us from moochers and woke warriors.

C: What else?

S: The jury came from Manhattan. They were all Trump haters, not real Americans.

C: But Trump is from Manhattan, not real America, as you call it.

S: He got over it. He hates cities as much as I do. Real America is white, Christian, and rural. It’s the only America that counts.

C: You don’t trust the jury system?

S: I only believe in juries in red America. Blue people aren’t real Americans. All they do is try to tell us how to think and ship our jobs overseas. They shouldn’t even have the right to vote.

C: So I guess you don’t really believe in liberal democracy, either?

S: I believe in Donald Trump. He’s all that stands between me and a blue wall of wokeness. He’ll make America great again, and then we can go back to normal.

C: Do you think a dictatorship is necessary to make America great again?

S: A short one, maybe. The guilty need to be punished. Revenge is required. Then we can go back to normal.

C: What does Trump stand for that you find so compelling? After all, his personal weaknesses are a matter of public record.

S: He hates the same people I do, and he’s determined to destroy them. He may not be much like me, and he may give lots of handouts to rich people, but he wants to get rid of wokeness and the elites and give power to real Americans. That’s what I believe in.