Swimming against public opinion, Michael Lind in Tablet lays out the diplomatic and economic case for tariffs. While noting the “chaotic and inconsistent nature” of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policy, Lind says tariffs can make a lot of sense, especially when it comes to Chinese electric vehicles. Even Adam Smith, he notes, wrote in 1776 that “There may be good policy in [tariff] retaliations” of the sort Trump is implementing.
Blueprint for Alberta?
Writing in Jewish World Review, Frederic Fransen reminds Americans of a key lesson from Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. “The colonies need to declare independence,” Fransen summarizes Paine, “because so long as their goal was seen as reconciliation, foreign governments would consider the Americans as rebels and the conflict an internal affair.” But a unilateral declaration of independence, Fransen notes, instantly converts mere complaints from an aggrieved group into a negotiation between sovereign states.
